Fire Prevention Day, Picture Day, Shelburne Farms

Endeavor 5th grade had another busy week!  We began Spelling/Word Study, we discovered a working definition for Rotational Symmetry, met a 911 dispatcher and talked about habits of being kind, and putting our best effort towards everything we do!

Here is a bulleted list by subject of what we accomplished this week!
Readers Workshop
*As their Reading Coach, I encouraged them to reflect on their reading and gave them strategies to use to make them read longer, stronger and faster!  We also did a little NECAP practice, writing a narrative paragraph and correcting grammar (commas, capitals and sentence structure).  This week we will continue with this practice.  We have been comparing our writing responses to "real 5th grade" responses, this shows us how we can put more effort into our work and make our responses score higher than a 1 or 2, we are striving for 3 or 4 points for our responses.

Writers Workshop
*As their Writing Coach, I encouraged them to think about how they were going to make writing the best it could be this year.  We recorded this reflection on our Kidblog, we were able to read the reflections of peers and leave comments for them.  Curious about our Kidblog, ask your child to show you, they can log on from home by using the link on the Endeavor webpage.  This week we also added to our lists of First, Last and Times we realized something.  Thanks to our Turning Point shares, students have been able to make connections with one another and add to their writing topic lists.  We also wrote fast and furious about our names and the stories they hold.  Next week we will do some practice NECAP writing as well as build some entries in our journals.  We also hope to bring home our pocket notebooks, to jot down the stories that surround us at all times!

Math
*This week we unpacked multiplication and division.  We were able to talk about multiplication and division as inverse operations and we discovered the commutative property.  We talked about important vocabulary such as factor, product, dividend, divisor and quotient.  Our core math ideas this week were: Array models allow mathematicians to visualize and understand multiplication as division. Mathematicians think of division in terms of sharing and grouping.  During Number Corner we continued to make thoughtful mathematical observations about our calendar pattern and our two penny toss data. are working hard to define and understand reflective as well as rotational symmetry.  We had an exciting seminar on rotational symmetry, here is what Lucas has to say about what we discovered!

video coming soon....


Lastly, our Shelburne Farms fieldtrip was so worthwhile!  The weather was beautiful and the engagement from all students and chaperones was high as we tackled our group work skills.  Each group was involved in activities that honed in on team building, habits of mind such as listening, responsibility, accuracy and precision, collaboration, and interdependence.  One group harvested vegetables from the Market Garden and prepared them, another group worked had to build a fire! Trough these activities the Shelburne Farms staff strived to have students realize that we all have skills, opinions, and ideas to offer and that together we can accomplish more and we can learn form one another! Photos from the trip at the top of this post!