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