PTO is currently running a mitten fundraiser for classrooms. Teachers have written items they need for their classrooms on mittens posted on their doors. Parents and students can take a mitten and donate that item to our classroom. Then I post a 'Thank You' snowflake for the items donated. THANK YOU so much to the parents who have already donated supplies to our classroom! We are endlessly appreciative! :) Wheelock Family Theater Field TripStudents were enjoying reading and choosing their own poems to work with. We will continue to work with poetry and poetic devices over the next few weeks! We just finished up our fractions study and we are taking some time to learn about using line plots with fractions! Students spent some time today learning about and building their own line plots. Our next benchmark assessment will include ALL fraction operations and line plots. We are continuing to review fractions for the next 2 weeks. Below students are using Google Draw to build and share their own line plots. We are working hard to learn about the uneven heating of the Earth! This leads into our understanding of weather. Ask your students to explain why it is more windy at the beach in the afternoon! THANK YOU to all who bid for our "Teacher for the Day" auction item for MCPE's Treasured Experiences. Congratulations to Dariella who made a FABULOUS teacher for the day! We had a blast with our Math stations, Science activity and using Google Expeditions!
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I hope everyone had an enjoyable February break! Our 5th grade Spring Conferences are rapidly approaching! Please read all the information below to understand how our Spring Conferences work in Room 1.
Our spring conferences are run with the option of having your conference led by your student. This would require you to bring your student with you to your conference time and the student would lead the conference while I would facilitate. This differs from a typical conference model where I would lead the conference without the student present.
This is a personal choice for parents to make. I recognize conferences can be a time to discuss sensitive content and it is not always a the best choice for the family to have the student present. Please choose whatever model works best for you! Please fill out the Conference Focus Form below to help best guide our Spring Conference. THEN register for a conference time here.We hope everyone has a fabulous winter break! |
ReadingWe are working on important reading concepts such as Making Inferences and pulling out the Main Ideas. We are honing in on these specific reading skills as we focus on books that are part of Mrs. Cowell's 'Tournament of Books.' This tournament involves a large bracket of books that the Dale Street Students can vote on. Which book will be the winner?! | WritingOur research unit is well underway! Students have already chosen their topics, found credible sources for research, begin taking notes, AND chosen the medium in which they will be creating their final project. Check in with your students about their topic choices and progress! Many of them could have some cool things to show you on Google Drive! :) |
Social StudiesWe are currently studying the Age of Exploration. This week we learned about why and how people began to explore. Ask your students which explorer they have chosen to research! | ScienceThis week we are wrapping up our unit on weather and the atmosphere! Students have done a great job experimenting with air and researching various types of weather instruments. |
Here's what we've been up to these past two weeks! :)
SCIENCE
What is air? In Science we are learning so much about the invisible space around us and how it comprises our atmosphere. After jumping into the phases of matter, students now have a clear understanding of what makes a solid, liquid, or a gas. Ask your students about our experiments with moving and compressing the air around us!
MATH
After wrapping up our division unit this week we are well underway into working with our fractions! In the fifth grade students must add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions and mixed numbers with unlike denominators. We have a lot of work ahead of us but we are off to a great start! We spent our days this week understanding equivalent fractions and finding common denominators. Next week we will move into the fraction operations.
Reading & Writing
We have moved into our nonfiction unit! Students are exploring with and reading nonfiction books of their choice. In addition to our nonfiction reading skills, students are also working on their next piece of non fiction writing. We spent this week choosing our topics and learning appropriate research skills by using Google safely as well as the databases available to us at Dale Street. Ask your students what they are researching about! Can they tell you about how to evaluate if a website is a valid source or share any of our "Google Hacks" with you?
SOCIAL STUDIES
We are wrapping up our learning about the Vikings as we dive into the Age of Exploration! Students will soon be studying the many explorers and there struggles and conquests. We are excited to learn about the happenings that shaped our present country!
DALE STREET HOLIDAY MALL!
Students were AMAZING business owners at the Holiday Mall this year! I am so proud of them!
Special thank you to the wonderful room parents and parent volunteers for putting together an extra special holiday celebration today! We had a blast!
We have decided as a class that we would like to do small gestures for each other during the days leading into the Holiday break. Each student has been assigned a "secret snowflake," another student, to leave small gifts for this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We have decided on the following criteria:
*If you choose to spend money please only spend $0-20
*Give secret gifts Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
*Secret gifts could be presents, snacks, notes, pictures, etc.... anything that would bring a smile!
*All food must be nut-free
*All students have an information sheet they brought home Friday.
*If you choose to spend money please only spend $0-20
*Give secret gifts Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
*Secret gifts could be presents, snacks, notes, pictures, etc.... anything that would bring a smile!
*All food must be nut-free
*All students have an information sheet they brought home Friday.
Tuesday: Flea Market Fundraiser
Students have the opportunity to shop for small gifts on Tuesday! All proceeds go to the Medfield Home Committee.
Wednesday: Holiday Mall
Our business unit is coming to a close and our students are ready to open their shops! We can't wait to see how shoppers respond to our store fronts and business plans!
Thursday: Geography Bee
We are looking forward to watch our class representative, Will M., compete in the school-wide GeoBee this Thursday! All the students in our class took part in 7 preliminary rounds and Will M. was our winner!
Friday: Holiday Happenings
Thank you to all who are contributing to make our class holiday party a success! We are looking forward to celebrating!
Baby Foley Arriving May 2018!
Today I was very excited to share with your students that my husband and I are expecting our first child this coming May. Baby Foley is due to arrive May 23 and I intend to be here right up until my due date! As it stands, your students will have a substitute for the final 15 days of school. Thank you so much for sharing in our excitement! We are really looking forward to welcoming our new addition! :) |
Dear Parents,
We are happy to announce that ALL fifth grade students will be hosting the Dale Street Holiday Mall this year! This is different from past years where only some classrooms ran this event. The Holiday Mall project is designed to give students insight into holiday shopping and spending. Our classrooms will be working together to create a mall simulation for the rest of the Dale Street students to come “shop” at. Students will practice important business ideas such as supply & demand, budgeting, sales tax. They will be challenged to budget their money and do their best to sell their products. In addition to the stores, we will have a “Food Court” that consists of a bake sale. All proceeds for the bake sale will go to the Medfield Home Committee.
The Dale Street Holiday Mall will be open for business on Wednesday, December 20 from 9:00-11:00. We ask that you continue to discuss this with your student to gain insight into what he or she is learning and creating.
We are looking forward to this valuable learning experience! What a great way to celebrate the holidays!
We are happy to announce that ALL fifth grade students will be hosting the Dale Street Holiday Mall this year! This is different from past years where only some classrooms ran this event. The Holiday Mall project is designed to give students insight into holiday shopping and spending. Our classrooms will be working together to create a mall simulation for the rest of the Dale Street students to come “shop” at. Students will practice important business ideas such as supply & demand, budgeting, sales tax. They will be challenged to budget their money and do their best to sell their products. In addition to the stores, we will have a “Food Court” that consists of a bake sale. All proceeds for the bake sale will go to the Medfield Home Committee.
The Dale Street Holiday Mall will be open for business on Wednesday, December 20 from 9:00-11:00. We ask that you continue to discuss this with your student to gain insight into what he or she is learning and creating.
We are looking forward to this valuable learning experience! What a great way to celebrate the holidays!
We are still working hard on our standard algorithm division with 1 and 2 digit divisors! Next week we will begin extending these concepts into dividing decimals. Please continue to check in with your students about their Math homework. We are working hard to make sure the standard algorithm process is mastered! Wondering about standard algorithm? Luckily, this is likely that way you learned how to divide in school! See the images below for some insight. |
I am so proud of all our students collaborative effort to make a successful Dale Street Core Values Assembly this past Friday. We took the time to highlight our core value of COLLABORATION for the entire school! Check out our video we made with Mrs. Lowerre's class below!
After the assembly our students, along with the entire school, worked on a collaborative project that will be displayed in the hallway soon! We can't wait to see the final product!! :)
RUSH BOOK PROJECTS
Our first RUSH book projects will be due Friday, December 2. Students came home with all the information regarding these projects and their potential project choices last week. Read all about our book project directions and ideas on my website under About Our Classroom>Assignments or click here.
MATH UPDATE
We just finished our benchmark assessments and I am going through the process of finalizing grades and inputting data. While I am not permitted to send these home at this time, please feel free to contact me with questions or concerns regarding the benchmark assessment. We are moving into DIVISION of whole numbers and decimals! Definitely spend some time helping your students review his or her division facts! This is immensely important as we focus on long division. Please see the letter below describing what we are learning in this topic.
We recently taught Ms. Bertschmann's class how to use the Math app "Cuethink!" We loved showing them how we solve math problems and screencast our thinking!
We are hard at work understanding all the parts of our Solar System! Ask your students if they can name the planets in order :) What other objects can you find in our Solar System?
READINGThis week we studied the difference between a play and a story. Students practiced Thanksgiving themed plays with their small groups. We focused on adding tone and actions to our plays and characters. Two groups performed today and one will perform after the break! Everyone has been doing a GREAT job! :) | WRITINGStudents are putting the finishing touches on their Thankfulness writing project! Ask to take a peek to see all the things they are thankful for and why! :) |
Wishing you and your families a wonderful Thanksgiving and a nice long weekend!
Sincerely,
Marissa Foley
Conferences are coming!
Double check the schedule here to remind yourselves what time you chose!
Thank you to everyone who helped make our Halloween day such a success! We had a blast with our Reader's Theater, STEM challenges, and 'Escape the Room' style Halloween tasks! Click here to see our folder of Halloween photos! |
We have begun a new interactive approach to problem solving in Math with the aid of a new app, CUETHINK! Dale Street is lucky enough to have this program funded for us so we can work on problem solving skills with our students. Students are assigned a problem and then moved through the stages of Understand, Plan, Solve & Review. In the solve stage students screencast their approaches to the problems using a variety of visual tools available to them. All the students screencasts are available to one another for viewing and commenting on. We are enjoying sharing ideas and strategies in this new, interactive way! Ask your student about it! :)
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Math Workshop
We have been hard at work multiplying whole numbers and decimals!! As we finish topics 3 and 4 students have been participating in Math workshop activities that are challenging them to work with these concepts in a variety of different ways. CLICK HERE to see some of our Math workshop in action!
We have a brief assessment on Tuesday to see where everyone stands with multiplication of decimals. Looking ahead, we are taking our first Benchmark Assessment for Trimester 1 during November 15-17. This will include Topics 1-4 and everything we have covered so far this year. We will spend the next two weeks reviewing and taking this assessment. |
SCIENCE |
SOCIAL STUDIES
We are just finishing up our unit on Ancient Civilizations! Students really enjoyed sharing and listening to other's presentations. I love seeing them teaching and learning from one another! We have a few more learning activities before launching into our unit on the Age of Exploration. What fun!
RUSH BOOK PROJECTS!
Our first RUSH book projects will be due Friday, December 2. Students came home with all the information regarding these projects and their potential project choices last week. Read all about our book project directions and ideas on my website under About Our Classroom>Assignments or click here.
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