daw.com - Novermber 29

Dear Parents,

Each week there are students in charge of a current event. I have sent home a reminder with these students but I will also list them here.

Monday - Pablo
Tuesday - Norika
Wednesday - day 2, no current events
Thursday - Sabrina
Friday - Christos

Here are some student friendly sites for Current Events.

Good News Daily
Science News for Kids
Time for Kids

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend and that all our tummies are now full of those things that help us celebrate this special time of year. We had a Thanksgiving chapel with the whole school last Wednesday where many reasons for the holiday were explored.

This week is two big events happening. The first of these is the annual PFO book fair. The PFO and several professional book companies will have their wares set up in the library for both display and purchase. Our class day is Wednesday so if students want to bring some money to purchase books on this day they can. I have no way to predict what books cost as it varies quite a bit among retailers and the PFO. The amount depends on the kinds of books being purchased. Hard cover books are more expensive than soft cover books.

The second event will happen toward the end of the week with the annual SinoLink school visit from Schenzen, China. I believe I will have three students from the school attending on Friday with their sponsors from my room. It is a great way for students to interact with others from our neighbor China. there will also be special activities during the week to make the UPS students more aware of the Chinese culture and language. Should be a fun week.

The last two of the pollution experiments will be completed this week. The students spent last week looking at hard water and the pH of liquids. They then determined how this affects pollution and themselves. Some interesting conclusions were drawn. We will complete this on our Pollution Blogs this week.

For reading this week we will start our second book talks. This time they will be in the form of a Podcast which is a sound file of the students talking about a book. No video, just a voice file. I have an MP3 recorder in my room to help them with this. Watch for them starting to show up on their reading blogs prior to the Christmas holidays.

There are two concerts this week that involve students from the class. The band concert on Tuesday and the Strings concert on Wednesday. If you have some time to come and support our budding musicians, I know they will greatly appreciate it.

Since students will have special guests with them on Friday we will not have a Vocab Test this week. Students will have their regular vocab homework, but no test. This is different that what is on their homework organizer as I was not aware of this when I made up the sheet. I will remind student on Monday and again on Thursday.

We will complete another blog post on our learning blogs this week. It will be on the last unit of math which was on Division. Some students have already started this and one or two may have completed it. IF you need to get to the class list of blogs click here.

This weeks pictures are from our Aberdeen Field day on Nov.18. Hope you enjoy them.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Harold Daw

daw.com - November 22, 2009

Dear Parents,

Each week there are students in charge of a current event. I have sent home a reminder with these students but I will also list them here.

Monday - day 2, no current events
Tuesday - Zehra
Wednesday - Trey
Thursday - Simon
Friday - holiday - no school

Here are some student friendly sites for Current Events.

Good News Daily
Science News for Kids
Time for Kids

This past week has seen the class fully involved in the science experiments for the pollution unit. We completed the particle detectors, completed the filtration of water and are in the middle of the oil spills lab. Some real neat learning going on in these labs. I think there are 4 more left for this unit. Each of the labs is designed to show a particular point in pollution and what can be done about it. Not every lab is a perfect solution.

This week we start unit 5 in math. This unit is on fractions, decimals and percent. Because the three are so closely related to division it is a natural move for the program. We will continue to look at division but this time as fractions, decimals and percent. The unit 5 webpage with games and other interests can be found here. The family letter will be sent as part of the weekly email. I expect to have the final assessment for the last unit in this weeks Monday Folders.

We have also completed out realistic fiction stories unit and started the unit on Essays. This unit will focus on taking the seed ideas from large ideas and really thinking deeply about them. These ideas can come from observations, personal thoughts or beliefs. One thing that will be stressed is how passionate the writer needs to be about the topic.

We had a great time at Field day on Wednesday inspite of the cold weather. Students were so active that I do not think they even felt it. I have put some pics up on the website along with the Sports Day photos. Have a look here. Thanks to Mr. Moreno for most of these pics.

This week is American Thanksgiving week. Students get Friday off and teachers will be doing work on the technology for next year's one-to-one program. I will be presenting several workshops using what we have done in class as some of the examples. Because of the short week there will be no Wordly Wise for the week. Instead students need to complete their pollution poister from their non-fiction reading and hand it in with all the Thinkmarks. The school's Thanksgiving chapel will be on Wednesday.

I would also like to begin asking for any plans you may have leaving early or arriving late for the Christmas Holidays. This helps me plan in advance some of the aspects of my class that must be completed. I prefer to do these with everyone here. It also helps me with advance planning for some of the events of the last week (crafts, assembly etc.). Please let me know as soon as possible if you have had to make any such arrangements.

This weeks pics are from our science labs. They really show some of the neat things we are learning in science.

As always, if there are concerns or other questions please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Harold Daw

daw.com - November 15

Dear Parents,

Each week there are students in charge of a current event. I have sent home a reminder with these students but I will also list them here.

Monday - Lucas
Tuesday - Jennifer
Wednesday - Michael
Thursday - Tara
Friday - Jonas

Here are some student friendly sites for Current Events.

Good News Daily
Science News for Kids
Time for Kids

We had a great time at Sports Day on Friday and I am proud to announce that 5C1 finished second in the grade. Everyone also seemed to really enjoy the afternoon and 'fun' seemed to be the opportune word. Our thanks go to the PE department. Here is a picture of the 5C1 Red Army Ants. Thanks go to Mrs. Park for the photo. I have scattered some of mine throughout this letter. There is also a video later in the post.We have a field day this Wednesday from 9:30 - 11:00 in Aberdeen. These are different from Sports Day in that the students have to organize the activities themselves. There will be lots of equipment for them to choose from. Students do not get a lot of opportunity for this so they are already excited about going.

Our math unit on Division will wrap up this week with the final assessment later in the week. Students seem to be doing well with this. We have covered two algorithms for math and this week we will look at what to do with remainders and some problem solving with division.

Our pollution unit is well underway now and we have started the first of 9 experiments. There are two more on the way this week and we will wrap up our first on when students bring back their particle detectors on Tuesday. You can look for students additional section on their Google Sites this week for the pollution unit. Should be some interesting insights there. If you have troubles getting to the sites here is a listing of the links. Your students names are in initials only.

By now students should be well underway with their pollution reading assignment. It is four books from the general collection and one specific to the section of Pollution they wish to make a poster on. I have outlined the specifics of their poster in their homework packet this week and will do the same next week. We have also discussed it in class. Remember, this is not in addition to their nightly reading but rather to take the place of. Students should be keeping track of their reading time and books on their reading log which is part of their homework packet every week.

Students will need some time on the computers at home this week as part of their homework is to complete their second reading journal blog. By now I expect that all students are familiar with this kind of operation, however, if questions arise please email me. The first blog entries were quite well done. The instructions for the blog and a scaffold of what to put in the blog entry are in their Google Docs. They have two nights this coming week to complete this. Students may not use the pollution books as their blogs - it must be the fiction books they have been reading since that is what we have been studying.

Students also need to complete the Unit 4 Vocabulary presentation on Google Docs. This is a file I have shared with all my class. They are to define the words, use pictures, find movies that explain the topic or what ever. All they need to do is leave their name as one of the collaborators of the project. They have two nights to complete this as well. When it is completed, I will post it on our class website which is located here.

As always, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Harold Daw