The Kersey Chronicles
Rockstars Choosing to Matter in Room 25
Soft Skills Initiative: Honesty
We continue this month with working on building our ability to tell the truth, be honest, and have integrity. I will ask students to push themselves to be open and vulnerable through their writing and discussions in the coming weeks. I think it is a beautiful trait for a person to be truthful and bare in their writing and conversations. I believe we have built a culture and respect for one another to be able to stretch ourselves in our classroom. I encourage you to continue conversations at home with your children about what it means to be really honest. Also, if you're reading at home together (I hope so) then keep your eyes peeled for quotes about honesty to share with Mr. Haney!
Try This At Home ...
Talk to your child about the core values, beliefs, opinions, and ideals you and your family work to uphold. Discuss characters (in movies and books) or real people (politicians, businessmen, football players, etc) who showcase these values - or not. We are working on this in writing as well as in discussion groups, so it will be great background knowledge for your child to build upon.
Mini Soap Box Derby Races
Force & Motion Unit
Genius Hour Projects
Next Week's Set List (November 9-13)
Week at a Glance/Skills for the Week:
LITERACY – We will turn our attention to learning how to discuss and talk about our reading in a justifiable way by providing evidence for our thinking to support our ideas. We will also focus on how our deeply held beliefs, values, and opinions impact us as readers. We will work on our next Novel Study of Maniac Magee.
WRITING – We continue our unit on persuasive and opinion writing, focusing on topics that are meaningful to us because they are at the core of who we are, and we can provide reasons for why others should consider our viewpoints on these topics.
MATH – We begin Unit 4, which focuses on fractions. This is a challenging unit!
SPELLING – We will test on Thursday. Unit 2 5th grade words: among, does, written, single, and build. Unit 9 4th grade words: notice, special, toward, people, and kept.
SCIENCE – We will review our learning through the soap box derby last week, as well as continue our Project Based Learning by answering How do we make transportation safer? By the end of the unit, students will create a product to share with their community on how to increase safety of transportation. This project will be due on Monday, November 23rd.
SOCIAL STUDIES – We are taking a break from Social Studies and will resume later in the school year.
TIPS - We will continue to use Time for Kids magazines to explore nonfiction text features, and small groups will meet to practice skills identified as areas of need from NWEA testing.
Upcoming Events
November 9th-13th: Book Fair
November 11th: Early Release Day, 2:55pm Dismissal
November 23rd: Science PBL project due
November 25th-29th: Thanksgiving Break
December 10th: Book Review Assignment due
December 14th: Genius Hour Presentations due