Our 5th grade year has started off with a bang! In just the first two weeks of school we have been setting the tone for a fantastic school year of exploration, inquiry, and collaboration. I have been absolutely delighted to get to know your children and start to develop relationships with each and every one. This year we have a classroom of twenty-seven very unique, thoughtful, and passionate kiddos -- and we have already started to build a classroom culture where we learn from each other and grow together as a community. Here's just a taste of our journey and accomplishments from the first weeks of school.
Knowing Each Other with Bag of Me
This week students cultivated and shared their own "Bags of Me" -- a way to express their identity, interests, and experiences with special objects. All students participated through presenting an array of items -- photos, souvenirs, stuffies, books, games, t-shirts, instruments, handmade crafts, original comics and stories, scrapbooks, sports gear, and any number of symbolic objects. "Audience members" rotated from presenter to presenter and had the opportunity to learn about what makes each of their classmates tick. We all agreed that it was a wonderful way to start the year and develop trusting relationships.
Building Classroom Community, Culture, and Guidelines
Over the last two weeks we have been starting our school days with meetings to build community and reflect on the values that will guide our learning environment this school year. These conversations are foundational to our classroom's social and emotional growth and will ensure that all community members feel safe to learn, grow, and take risks. So far, we have agreed to try out "Flex Seating," in which students choose where they sit to fit their own needs as an individual learner. Other benefits to students include developing responsibility and independence as well as having the opportunity to collaborate with different classmates everyday.
We are Wild Readers!
The first two weeks have set us off on our "Wild Reader" journey. We are in the process of establishing our "Wild Reading" habits that are critical to living our lives as passionate and intrinsically motivated readers -- reading independently, selecting "just right" books, tracking our reading lives, setting up our reading notebooks, and sharing our reading lives with our peers. Also, we've established our school year's "40 Book Reading Challenge" through which we read will widely across various genres. Next week we will be setting individual reading goals and diving deeper into the characteristics that differentiate genres.
Week of Inspirational Math
We have started the school year with YouCubed.org's "Week of Inspirational Math" which provides a variety of inquiry-based and collaborative math activities and encourages students to internalize powerful "growth mindset" math messages. Already we have learned that making mistakes and struggling through a math challenge cause brain growth, that anyone can be a "math person" as long as they try, and that everyone sees and thinks about numbers differently. Check out some of the explorations we have embarked on over the last week.
Challenges Galore
Collaborative challenges are a critical part of our 5th grade year! Ongoing partner and team challenges exemplify the kind of developmental growth we like to see in our older students as they are compelled to cooperate, communicate, and problem-solve with a wide variety of students. Activities such as these help to foster social-emotional dispositions such as perseverance, flexibility, collaboration, and metacognition -- as students reflect on their process. Our first partner challenge was to create and present an "invention" out of random materials. Our first team (and cross-grade) challenge was to build the highest possible structure out of newspaper and tape that could also withstand "hurricane-force winds" (i.e. a hair-dryer). Both challenges brought out incredible creativity and teamwork in our students -- and we also had a blast.
Parent Communication - Reminders + Ways to Support your Child
Your support and communication will be critical to making our fifth grade school year a success! It will be important for your child to understand that their parents and teachers are working together as a team and I look forward to all the different ways that we will partner up this year.
In the meantime, here are some ways that you can support your child as we move into our third week:
In the meantime, here are some ways that you can support your child as we move into our third week:
- Transitioning to our early start time is a challenge for all of us! However, please do your best to get your child to school on time every day, as we start our work right as the second bell rings at 7:55am. Getting this habit established early on in the school year is important for the functioning of the whole class.
- Please support your child as we establish our 5th grade home-to-school routines with homework and supplies. Students are responsible for bringing a number of learning materials back and forth every school day. Routines, organization, and responsibility are key -- please guide your child and help them check and pack their bags at an established time and location before every new school day. Items that your child can expect to pack up every day include: orange folder (with flyers, homework, and parent-school communication), planner, green reading notebook, and independent reading book(s).
- One goal of homework this year will also be to develop responsibility and organizational skills in your child. At this point, we're starting off slow to support your child's success. One tool we will be using regularly is our planner. During our classroom "End of Day Routine" we will all be writing down homework assignments and other important reminders. You can support your child by making sure that they check their planner every afternoon/evening. You may also want to establish a routine where they check off completed assignments in their planner every day.
- Loooong Parent Letter from last week: If you somehow missed it, please click HERE. This is a letter I sent home last week which explains some other important things to know about the school year (e.g. Snacks, Birthdays, Specials Schedule, etc.).
- I have been updating our classroom Twitter feed with photos and updates from our classroom almost everyday! If you haven't already started following us, please do! Our Twitter handle is @MsGoldmanQAE
- Last - please continue to engage your child with questions and conversations about what they are doing every day in school. One entry way into this discussion is to read this blog post together - it will hopefully provoke a rich discussion! Also, feel free to comment or ask questions on this blog. Next week, we will be looking at the blog as a class and discussing what it means to post effective and appropriate comments online. It would be wonderful if we had a chance to respond to some of your own thoughtful comments!
- Thanks for reading this far and please feel free to email me with any questions. Here's to another fabulous week of fifth grade!