Halloween Breakfast Reminder!

Below is a link to our signup for the Halloween Breakfast on Wednesday. Thank you to all of the parents who volunteered to send in items. We appreciate it!! Stay tuned for pictures from Wednesday! :-)

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e044dabae29a4fc1-halloween1

Weekly News for October 26th!

Take a Peek at Our Week!

This week in Lang & Lit we dug deeper into our planner to explore the debatable question "can there be benefits to adversity?". Students kicked off the week by watching a video about a chef in D.C. who overcame his challenges (homeless, little family support, struggles in school) to find his passion in cooking. We practiced our accountable talk statements while discussing his path to success. 

 We utilized "accountability checks" throughout the week to help us refocus and monitor our independent work. Students checked in with a partner to make sure they were on the right track!

 In reading groups, after analyzing articles about individuals and groups who overcame adversity, we responded to the text in writing using the RACCE strategy and Google docs!

We had another opportunity to practice our accountable talk statements this week (I'm already hearing more and more during group and class discussions...yeah!). Students worked in small groups to answer questions connected to the topics of our reading group articles. As we did the first time, we made it a competition to see which group could use the most talk statements in their discussion! Keep up the great work!! :-)

Thank you for all of the donations for our Harvest Food Drive!! Your generosity is appreciated!

Fifth Graders Show GRIT!

This week we discussed the idea of "G.R.I.T.". This inspirational acronym was the perfect extension to our debatable question this week "Can there be benefits to adversity?". To explore this idea, students watched a video about Olympic runner Derek Redmond with a partner. Then students came up with their personal definitions of GRIT and discussed examples of how they could show GRIT in school, at home, in sports, etc. What a great message that success takes HARD WORK and that giving up is not an option in Mrs. Carr's room! The poster below now hangs in our room as a reminder.

Weekly News for October 19th!

Accountable Talk Statements to Enhance Class and Group Discussions!

This week we worked on our accountable talk statements. Accountable talk statements help students extend, deepen, and enhance their discussion skills in order to make class and group discussions more effective. For example, instead of saying "the same as what Sally said", a student would be expected to say "I head that Sally said the theme of the story is family is important. I agree because .....". We practiced by answering some questions in small group and even had a competition to see how many accountable talk statements we could use! Next week, we will practice again using the topics from our reading group articles.

Harvest Food Drive

Take a Peek at Our Week!

We had our second social emotional lesson with faculty from Villa of Hope this week. During our post-lesson reflection, we discussed what "stuck" with us from the lesson and what strategies would help us in the classroom. The students identified that transitioning from recess to our afternoon academic block can be tough and focus can be an issue. We decided as a class that we would try using the meditation strategies learned this week to help us calm down and refocus prior to starting our afternoon lessons. What a reflective and introspective group!!! We will keep you posted how it is helping us! 

In Individuals & Society, students are conducting research on their expert civilization choice (Maya, Inca, or Aztec). This week, we used the jigsaw strategy to come together and share our research thus far and identified similarities/differences between the three civilizations. This was also a perfect opportunity to practice accountable talk strategies to make our discussions more focused and effective! 

In Lang & Lit, we worked on summarizing articles on famous individuals who suffered adversity and caused positive change as a result. We used Flip Grid to record our summaries and give peers feedback on the skill!

In writing, students worked on researching their three categories of interest on Titanic for our first informational essays.