Keyboarding at Home

Students can Practice Keyboarding both at School and at Home

 

3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade students now have access to the updated version of Typing Master.  This is an online program that helps students learn keyboarding.  It keeps track of their progress and allows them to learn at their own pace.

 

To access the program from any computer click HERE.   At school there is a direct link from the desktop of all school computers.  The link is called “Typing Master”

 

Students will need to enter their own school ID and password.  This is the same as the ID and password that they use to login to the computer each time they are in the computer lab at school.

 

Here are some of my Keyboarding Guidelines:

1.      The goal is to type without looking at the keys.  At school we have orange covers that go over the keys.  These are “painful”, but they work to train the students to keep their fingers in one place and to know that they can type without looking at their fingers.

2.      Using the correct fingers and typing accurately is more important than speed.   Accuracy first – the speed will automatically follow.

3.      Just a few minutes once in a while will make a big difference in the long run.  (A perfect activity for the 10 minutes before supper!)

4.      Practice, practice, practice J

 

Please contact John Shaw in the Media Center if you have any questions.

Saturated Solutions!

What is a saturated solution?  When you mix water and salt together, it becomes a solution.  However, when you keep adding in salt, at first it dissolves, however if you keep adding spoonfuls of salt eventually the salt will no longer dissolve. When this happens, you have created a saturated solutions.  Students this week created a salt saturated solution and a citric acid saturated solution.

5th Grade Camp Open House

5th Grade Camp is quickly approaching.  If you'd like to visit the facility, there will be an Open House on Wednesday, January 29, 2014 from 5 pm - 7 pm.  It will only be open for visitors at this time. 
 

Parents and students are welcome to tour the Walled Lake Outdoor Education Center prior to their overnight camp experience.  This is a chance for you to take an informal tour any time between 5:00 and 7:00 pm on Wednesday, January 29, 2014.

 A camp meeting will also be held at your school before your camping experience.  This will be your chance to ask specific questions and get all of the necessary paperwork.

 Please call Stuart Riley @ 248-956-5120 for any questions regarding 5^th grade camp. Our website is http://www.wlcsd.org/programs.cfm?subpage=441025.

 

Walled Lake Outdoor Education Center
3577 Sleeth Court
Commerce Township, MI 48382 

 

Fractions

Today, students were working on using manipulates to demonstrate their knowledge of fractions.   Our goal was to find different methods of showing the same fraction.  This work will quickly move into adding and subtracting fractions, ordering fractions, and finding equivalent fractions.

Experimenting with Distance

As we move from the Water Planet unit, students are experimenting with ramps and the distance a ball travels.  I purposefully did not give students a target goal for there ball to roll.  Students are experimenting with the incline of the ruler and noticing how the distance changes when they move the ramp.
Eventually, I'm going to tell students that there ball needs to travel a certain distance.  Then, using their data, the teams have one chance at getting close to the target number.  They are going to realize how important their data is and I bet, they are not going to be happy with what they've recorded or how they've recorded it.

More to come.....

Free Everyday Math APPs

The publisher of Everyday Mathematics, McGraw-Hill is once again offering five of its ten EM game Apps for free on the following dates:

November 4-8, 2013

 The following apps will be free and available via the iTunes App Store: 

Addition Top-It

Monster Squeeze

Equivalent Fractions

Beat the Computer

Divisibility Dash

To learn more about the game apps go to: MHEonline.com/apps

Halloween

Using Resources

Today, students are working with their literacy partners and a variety of resources to learn about parts of speech.  Students are using their laptops, dictionaries, and resource texts to find information.  Each team is providing information about nouns, verbs, articles, adverbs, adjectives, and prepositional phrases. The kids are discovering that copying definitions does not help them understand, but using multiple resources and talking to their partners helps immensely.  Once students have a clearer understanding of these terms, we will find them in their reading.  The ultimate goal with this project is to improve student writing by understanding these parts of speech.

 

Ice Cream Social today

Come and get a MISS PIGGY today at the Ice Cream Social. The teachers will start serving ice cream at 6:00 and then open up the classrooms at 6:30.  Please stop by and say 'hi.'

Meap begins

Meap testing began this week.  5th graders are taking science, reading, and math this year.  We are testing this week and most of next week.  So far students are doing a great job with handling the stress of these important tests.  Keep up the good work, 5th graders!

The students created this sign this week to add a little humor to the serious topic of state testing!

Capture the Flag

Today in physical education, the students played capture the flag.  There are two teams, the red team and the yellow team.  The object of the game is to grab the other team's flag and run it back without being captured.  There is area in the middle of the field called No Man's Land where you are safe.  If the red team goes onto the yellow side, they are no longer safe which means the yellow team can take their flag and they enter the jail.  In order to get out of jail, someone from your team has to deliver your flag to you without getting caught. If you take the opposite team's flag and happen to get it back without being captured, your team gets a point.  Today the yellow team was victorious 7 - 3. Everyone had so much fun!

Reaction Time

Today, students used a strip of paper to calculate their reaction time.  One student would drop the paper without warning and the other person had to catch the paper with their fingers.  When students grabbed the sheet, there were numbers showing how quickly they reacted.  The goal of the lesson was to teach students about decimal values in the tenths and hundredth place while also practicing landmark data.  Once students had a lot of reaction time data for each hand, they calculated mean, mode, range, maximum, and minimum.  The kids noticed that each hand had different speeds and they had a chance to compare their data to the other students.

Curriculum Night

Thank you to everyone that could make it to curriculum night.  As you can see the students were very busy with creating replicas of themselves.  The students worked so hard creating these true autobiographies. 

Learning the Expectations

We are wrapping up our first week at school, and I'm so excited for my class.  They have been doing a wonderful job learning the routines and expectations. Building stamina in our reading and writing lives is one of the first things we work on.  We compared how a marathon runner trains by increasing the amount they run over an extended period of time and how that relates to them as building stamina during readers' and writers' workshop.  Take a look at the photos below of my students building their reading stamina.  I was so impressed with each and every one of them.

Bag it!

Welcome to 5th grade!!!

Welcome to 5th Grade! So glad you're checking out the blog.  I will be posting pictures of the classroom, student work, upcoming events, and much more.  Please bookmark the site or sign up to follow as I change the blog often.  I hope that your child had a wonderful first day of school.

Field Day Postponed

Next Wednesday, May 29th, will be the make up day for Field Day.  Unfortunately, the weather the next 2 days calls for thunderstorms. So the decision was made to move it until next week.  There will be more information coming home regarding Field Day soon.  If you have other questions please call the office.  

All students need to bring in a Sack Lunch/Cold Lunch tomorrow as the kitchen will not be open.  On Thursday, the kitchen will reopen with 'cook's choice.'

Water Tolerance experiment

Students are learning about how water plays a vital role in the development of plants.  Together we created a water tolerance experiment.  The investigation surrounded the question: How does the amount of water affect plant growth?  Students wrote their hypothesis into their notebooks and then began figuring out an experiment that would answer the question.  Teams decided to plant 16 seeds (of 4 different varieties)  into 1 quart containers.  In each container they agreed on a certain amount of water (0 ml, 10 ml, 40 ml, and 80 ml).   They decided to let the plants grow for 14 days and then to check to see which plants in which container grew the best.  Students measured root length, stem length, number of leaves, and made a decision on which water amount yielded the best plants.  Take a look at the scientists in action.