Reading, Social Studies, and Beginning of the Year Activities

We started the year in reading by reviewing comprehension strategies and practicing these strategies either through read alouds or independent reading. This past week we launched the first unit of our Reader's Workshop. This first unit is an interpretative book club using realistic fiction. We will be focusing on character development, plot, and theme. One of the first things we did in reading workshop was have a gallery walk. The gallery walk included samples of other fifth grader's writing about reading. The students rotated through the stations in a group. The students' job was notice what characteristics make up good writing about reading. This will help the students have a sense of the quality of writing about reading that I am looking for in their reader's notebook. On Friday we did a Venn diagram comparing to characters from the same. We compared two characters from our shared read aloud Home of the Brave. We compared Kek and his cousin Ganwar. After doing this together, students were sent off to read from their book and to start taking notes and forming theories about the characters in their book. I am loving reading workshop; it is great to see the kiddos so excited about reading!

                              Venn diagram comparing Kek and Ganwar

                           What makes good writing about reading gallery walk

Please be sure that your child is completing their weekly reading log. Reading logs are sent home on Monday and are due the following Monday. During the week students are required to read for 100 minutes. The 100 minutes can broken up however the student chooses. (However you may not do all one hundred minutes in one night. The easiest way is to read for 20 minutes for five nights.)

In Social Studies we started the year with our government unit. Students learned about the three branches of government and what their main responsibility is in helping to make our government run. Right now we are learning about the Bill of Rights and how the first ten amendments help to protect some very important rights of our country's citizens. We do a lot of cooperative group work in Social Studies: from jigsaw reading activities, sorts, and even skits.

   

I found more pictures from math.

                                                           Graphing lunch data 

At the beginning of the school one of the team building activities that the students did was build a pyramid out of red Solo cups. The trick? The students were not allowed to touch the cups they had to use only the materials they were given to make a tool to stack their cups. Each group was given 10 cups, a rubber band, and four pieces of string. The teams worked together to complete the challenge.

I will post again later today. I hope you are having a great day!