Room 20 Classroom Notes September 9-13

Good week to you, room 20 families! You ALL have such wonderful children!!!!! The first three days are always challenging because the schedule is not fully set up. Our schedule will go into full swing this week. I will post the schedule to this blog and outside of the classroom. We have been busy getting to know each other and how our ship functions. Students created and are maintaining their binders with all of their assignments, dates, and logs. We started an "I Am From..." poem. These poems started simple: "I am from Portland." Eventually, I want students to insert at least two adjectives and a prepositional phrase to make it more descriptive. "I am from eclectic (adj.), fascinating (adj.) Portland, Oregon, in the lush northwestern United States (prep. phrase)..." In math, we used our skills of observation to identify patterns and then write algebraic expressions. This week we work on factors, multiples, composite and prime numbers. We will begin a geography unit this week of the United States of America and also learn about various maps. We will begin a geography project that will be ready by Back to School Night. In reading, we will organize our classroom library by genre and begin the beautifully compelling story, "Island of the Blue Dolphins." This story by Scott O'Dell is a moving story about culture clashing, native peoples, change, and making big decisions. We will also study Native Americans in the fall, so the book should tie into our Language Arts/Social Studies curriculum well. The entire fifth grade will have information about science camp and volunteer opportunities by Back to School Night. I also received your volunteer information/interests from the surveys I sent home last week. Thanks for returning them! I will be setting up an online volunteer sign up. Also, please have all beginning of the year forms to room 20 by the 20th of September. Thanks to you who have contacted me for check-ins. If you email me, I'll try to respond as soon as possible. See you soon!