December 12th Through the 16th

Keenoy Koala of the Week:  Hailey Homann

Hello, my name is Hailey and I am the Koala of the week.  I have three other people in my family (besides me).  They are my mom, dad, and younger sister.  Some of my favorite things to do are to read, draw, and play piano.  My favorite thing to read is Harry Potter and I recently finished the series.  I also go to dance class every Monday night.  I am looking forward to the Holiday Break in the next couple of days.

Keenoy Koala News

One of the Koalas surprised me with an early present!  Fun!

Dear Families,

I cannot believe that our Winter Break is already here, and we are nearing the midway point of 5^th grade.  I am looking forward to spending the extra time with family and wish everyone a wonderful break!  This will be my last newsletter until after the New Year.

700 Keenoy Cash Celebration

Our class earned their 700^th card this week and met their latest goal.  Gabby is so excited to come to school and watch a movie with her daddy and the Koalas.  I’m happy that they want to spend time with my daughter and we will enjoy another picnic style lunch/movie in the next week or so.  I have to work out the logistics with our daycare provider and find a copy of the movie before setting a firm date.  As soon as I know, I will pass that information along at least one day prior.  They class wants to watch the movie, The Watson’s Go to Birmingham-1963.  I thought that was a great idea and we will be finishing up with that read aloud in the next couple of days.

What a Great  Idea and Class!

Math - Variables & Expressions

*  We continued working on order of operations. When numbers with decimals were added to the problems, many students needed a refresher on how to add, subtract, and multiply with decimals.

*  Students  will take an assessment over this topic on Monday.

*  After winter break, students will be spending a great deal of time with fractions.

 Writing – Paragraphing and Charities

Students practiced organizing unorganized paragraphs this week.  They are also improving with their paragraph planning. 

This week students learned more about various charities for their informational writing reports. Students will chose a charity to research once we return from winter break.

Reading – Main Idea and Theme

*   I am happy with the progress that students are making with identifying main ideas and themes.  We have had many great conversations and students are showing understanding my supporting ideas from the text. 

*   Students took an assessment over inferring, context clues, and predicting today.  These will be scored and returned after break.

Science – Experimental Design

Thank you for participating in our research activity during our Holiday Open House.  I was SO happy to share that the small group adult research average was better than the 5^th graders.  They seemed pretty confident that they would have faster reflexes than the adults.  Oh how I love a good/friendly competition. 

We calculated the average of the three trials for each person.  We then took 15 people’s average from each group and calculated those averages. Results included: 

2^nd grader average= 46 cm

5^th grader average = 23 cm

Adult average = 18 cm!!!

We concluded that as you get older, your reflexes improve.  Students do think that when you reach a certain age, your reflexes may start getting slower again.  I had a lot of fun with this activity and I love how our research ideas improved along the way.

Important Dates:

Dec. 20            Winter party at 2:15

Dec. 21-Jan. 3 Winter Break

Jan. 4               School Resumes

Jan. 16             Martin Luther King, Jr. Day-No School

Have a wonderful Break!

                                                                                                Sincerely,

                                                                                                Dan Keenoy

December 5th through the 9th

Keenoy's Koala of the Week: Elliot Bone

My name is Elliot and I'm not really into athletic things very much.  I'm interested in different things like building models.  I like to build models called Gundam, because it is relaxing and fun for me.  I also like Dungeons and Dragons because of how free you can be in the game.  I would like more people to try it because it is more fun than they might think.  I also like animals a lot and my favorite food is sushi.  My family includes an older brother, mom, dad, and a dog.  I love them very much!

Keenoy Koala News                                                                12-9-16

Dear Families,

I wanted to take the time to let you know how thankful that I am about having your child in my classroom, and the support that each of you have given this year.  Have a terrific Holiday Break and I look forward to a terrific second half to the year. 

Writing and Social Studies

Writing paragraphs continued to be our focus this week. Students practiced researching and taking notes for an explorer they selected in Chapter 3.  Students then focused on a specific area of information about their explorer (such as their early life, accomplishments, challenges, etc…).  After organizing their researched information, students wrote a paragraph about the explorer. I noticed a lot of paragraphing improvement during this process.  Students realized the importance of coming up with a main idea (first sentence) then supporting that main idea with other sentences. If you made it to our Holiday Open House, I hope that you enjoyed the information about their explorer on the fun Photo Speak app!  They seemed to have a lot of fun with this project. 

Next week, I will send home information about our January writing project.  After break, students will begin their research about a charity that they have selected. We will use mentor texts along the way as well as specific lessons will be taught to improve the craft of the informational report.

Science

Thanks for participating in our reflex data experiment during the Open House.  Our class will figure out the average of 15 adult’s reaction scores.  Then we will compare this new data with the data that we already collected with 2^nd and 5^th grade reaction results.  Hopefully the ADULTS WIN!

We paused our science unit (experimental design) this week due to our Photo Speak social studies project.  This project took a bit more time than I had planned out.

Reading

Next week, students will take an assessment over the comprehension skills taught during the past several weeks (inferring, predicting, and using context clues to figure out the meaning of words).

After winter break, our focus will move to main idea, theme, point of view, and cause/effect.

Math - Variables & Expressions

We continued working on order of operations. When numbers with decimals were added to the problems, many students needed a refresher on how to add, subtract, and multiply with decimals.

Next week, students will be assessed over this topic.

Important Dates:

Dec. 20                   Winter Party 2:15-3:00

Dec. 21-Jan. 3       No School  - Winter Break

                                                                                                                                Sincerely,

                                                                                                                                Dan Keenoy

November 28th Through December 2nd

Koala Of The Week: Grace Shin

Grace is from South Korea and is a big fan of the Warrior book series.  She really enjoys being with her class, and also enjoys learning with Mr. Keenoy.  Grace's favorite subject is math, and thinks that learning is the most important thing for a person to do.  She is also very thankful that she has a chance to learn these awesome things in 5th grade. 

Keenoy/Gilliland's Thanksgiving Buddy Activity Pictures

 

 

 

Food Drive Pizza Party!

Keenoy Koala News

December 2, 2016

Dear Families,

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I enjoyed the extra time off with the family.  We always host Thanksgiving the day after and our children had a blast playing with their cousins.  Have a wonderful week and thanks again for your continued support this year.

Homework

As you know, the majority of the homework that I give is nightly reading with short reading notebook response assignments (thinking spots).   Lately, when I have given homework within a different content area, the completion of this work is overall inconsistent.  I am thinking that students may have fallen out of the habit of doing additional homework and therefor are forgetting about taking it home or completing it. 

Starting this week, I decided it is in the student’s best interest to start consistently getting an additional assignment most evenings.  My purpose is not to just give busy work, but to reinforce the responsibility and improved organization.  Many of the additional assignments that I give will be relatively minor with regards to the amount of time it takes to complete.  Thank you for understanding this change and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Holiday Open House Reminder

Please join us on Friday, December 9 for our annual holiday event. Your child will be singing in the gym with the other 5th graders, and then afterwards is an open house in our classroom. Here is the schedule for that day:

Grade Level                           Perform in Gym                    Open House in Classrooms

5th                                           11:15 am                                 After Choir Performance

Choir                                       11:35 am                                 11:55-12:15

3rd Grade                                11:55 am                                 12:15-12:35

4th Grade                                12:15 pm                                 12:35-12:55

2nd Grade                               1:05 pm                                   1:25-1:45

Kindergarten                           1:25 pm                                   1:45-2:05

1st Grade                                1:45 pm                                   2:05-2:25

Math

Our class continued learning about variables and algebraic expressions this week in Topic 6.  Students are enjoying their first exposure to algebra by using variables to solve problems.  The main concepts that will be taught during this unit include:

*translating words into algebraic expressions

*using patterns to show relationships and evaluating algebraic expressions

*writing and evaluating expressions involving addition, subtraction, and multiplication

*using the Distributive Property to solve equations

*solving algebraic expressions with three or more numbers and two or more operations

Reading

I will continue reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 and modeling good comprehension strategies as I read.  We are still working on inferring, using context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words, and theme.  I have really been impressed with the deep level of thinking that is happening during class discussions.  Students are also doing a much better job of keeping their reading notebook work up to date and organized. 

Writing

We have entered our informational genre of writing this week.  After carefully looking through the pre-assessments that students took prior to Thanksgiving, it was noticeable that organizing ideas within paragraphs is an area for us to work on.  We will work on these skills daily for the next week or so.  I feel like building this paragraph understanding will pay dividends when we start working on our research project after break. 

During our work with organizing factual information into paragraphs, we will also build crafting techniques that help to make facts sound interesting.  Even though this is a different genre than Personal Narrative, I do not want students to lose their writing “VOICE.”  Non-fiction writing does not have to sound boringJ

Social Studies

Continue learning about the first settlements in North America in chapter 4.

Science

We conducted a fun experiment by measuring our own reaction time with a meter stick.  Our class then decided to compare 5^th grade reaction times with our 2^nd grade Buddy Class reaction times.  Students then found the 5^th and 2^nd grade reaction time averages and created a graph to display their findings.  Make sure to ask your child more about the conclusion (results) of this fun experiment. 

Have a wonderful week!

                                                                                                            Sincerely,
                                                                                                            Dan Keenoy