Tonight's Homework

Pictures from the week

Pictures include our lit circle reading at the outdoor classroom and our memorial day celebration.

Live Birds of Prey

While doing our research we are watching the live Peregrine Falcon cam atop my alma mater's library; W.E.B. Library at UMass Amherst.  Check out the live feed!

Lots of pictures including a guest appearance by Mr. Chelman

Students had a fun and busy week.  We finished our last 5th grade topic in math as well as our unit on the American Revolution.  We'll also be wrapping up our writing unit on historical narratives on Monday.  The PARCC math tests begin this week on Wednesday and Thursday.  Be sure to get plenty of rest on the nights before testing days.

On Friday we got to see the musical performance of Peter and the Wolf.  During the week, students worked on a team building activity with Mrs. Cardin.  With 5 or 6 strings attached to one marker, students had to work together to write "Mr. Kelley" on their paper...while not speaking!  It was a fun and challenging task.  Check out all the pictures from our week!

Updated Calendar, Talent Show, and Other Updates

I've updated our classroom calendar with all of the scheduled end of year events.  Additional information will be sent home for each, but if you would like specific information about any of the events please don't hesitate to be in touch.

A quick message to all the talent show performers from J15:
I was amazed to watch all of you show off your unique talents and abilities to a crowded auditorium.  All of you should be proud of your performances and for the time, practice, and dedication that went into each act.  Lastly, courage is doing something that frightens and scares you.  Not only did I get to see many of the amazing talents within our classroom, but I also got to witness a tremendous amount of courage from many of you.

We have three important things scheduled for this week.  On Tuesday, we will take our last math test for the 5th grade curriculum.  We will review many of the major concepts we have learned this year during the coming week leading up to the PARCC.  When the PARCC math is completed, we will spend the rest of the year looking ahead to 6th grade math and also working on group projects.

Lastly, we will have our American Revolution test on Thursday.  Our historical narrative pieces will be due on Friday.  I will send these pieces home on Tuesday and Thursday to be looked over with a parent using some checklists.

Spring Mile & Updates

Students of J15 were able to blow off some steam today with Mrs. Carter in PE as they began their Spring mile runs.  Joel was so fast...I couldn't catch him with my camera!  Check out the pictures below.

We've recently wrapped up our unit on the American Revolution and will have our test next Thursday.  Be sure to have your POS completed by next Tuesday.  We began our new unit on Coordinate Planes/ Grids.  Check the videos at the end of this post.

Stretching before the mile

Getting pumped up!

And they're off!

Joel; too fast for the camera!

Updates and Reminders

A few reminders before a ton of updates!  First, PARCC testing begins next with for the ELA portion of the test.  On the nights prior to a PARCC session, no homework will be given.  Please be sure to be well rested the day of the test.  Also, it may be a good idea to pack an extra snack on these days.  Next, a friendly reminder that bottles and cans for the month of May is next Friday, the 6th.

For some content updates, we are continuing our social studies unit on the American Revolution.  The test is scheduled for mid May on the 19th.  In science, we are continuing with simple machines and engineering.  Check out the pictures below where we tried building our own "humdingers"  The task was to engineer a device that hums and then dings when you pull on a string.  All of the groups were...mostly successful!  It required a lot of creativity and perseverance.  We began new lit circle books this week and had our first discussions today.  Also, we began our new math unit on Classifying Plane Figures.  Be sure to watch the videos below.

Pictured above: Students rehearsing for their DARE skits.

Pictured above: Students trying to make their "humdinger" hum...and ding!



Math videos to help with our current topic on Classifying Plane Figures:

Reminders & Updates

Please be sure your child has shared their trimester 2 report card with you and you have signed and returned it to school.

Tomorrow, photographs for the 5th grade celebration will be taken.  If there is rain/snow it will be postponed until the following Monday, April 11th.

We will begin our new math topic on data this week.  Students will need to be able to organize data into line plots, identify outliers, work with line plots that have fractions, and create their own surveys and organize the data from those surveys.  Be sure to watch the video below!

We'll continue our work in social studies on the causes of the Revolutionary War and continue our work in engineering in science.  Lastly, students have been writing scripts during our writer's workshop that relate to some of the D.A.R.E. scenarios they've been discussing with officer Mucciarone.

Last Friday we crowned a winner for our March Booktalk Madness tournament.  Congratulations to Izzy and Kiera for their creative and entertaining booktalks!

Spring?

In less than 24 hours it will officially be Spring!  And potential snow on the way??

Quick update of happenings in J15.  We finished our unit on numerical expressions and order of operations this week.  Our next unit will be on converting customary units and metric units.  We are nearing the end of our simple machines unit and the quiz is this coming Wednesday.  In Social Studies, we also finished a unit on the 13 original colonies.  For writer's workshop, we've been writing journal entries as colonial boys/girls and we've also been working on writing our own original fables.  Next week we'll begin a longer writing unit on script writing.  Students will be writing their own scenes for an original play.  Details will be announced in class.  Last week we got see a cool science assembly on liquid nitrogen and a few students from our classroom were lucky enough to help out in a few of the experiments.  Lastly, we finished our second lit circle book!  Students presented their books to the class on Friday.  Pictures below!

Report cards will go out.  Please be mindful that student marks reflect complete through the entire trimester.