Carlisle's Hotshots Robotics teams BOTH advance to district competition! Fifth graders Julie, Tyler, Luke, and Becca are on the teams. See more photos and information...

Classroom News Announcements

• Science News - We're making a wormery! Special guest, Elizabeth Kimmel, a high school student working on the girl scout equivalent to the Boy Scout's ranking of  Eagle Scout. She is bringing her project to our science classroom on Monday, November 14th, along with a special guest speaker from Marvin's Organic Gardens in Lebanon. this will tie in beautifully with our Ohio standards about decomposers and soil, and give students another hands-on experience with the food web!

• 5th Grade Explorers Festival - Important!! Fifth Grade teachers need your help! Please check the note we sent home for whatever items you are willing to provide for the Fifth Grade Explorers Festival which will be held on Thursday, November 17th. Items should be sent in on Wednesday. Students are required to dress in costume for the Explorers Festival. Looking for good ideas for your child's costume? You can see some examples on the Explorer Projects page. Go there....

• Explorer Projects - Explorer projects are due this week for social studies class. Students will mount the explorer and other required pieces on construction paper in class. Would you like to see some examples of past projects?  Go there....

• OAA News - We have been focused on going back into the text to find evidence text across ALL our subjects in recent lessons. It is not as easy as it sounds, since questions or prompts often do not include exactly the same wording as was in the text. We need to focus our attention on finding key words as targets, and reading for understanding. If you happen to come to school and see us wearing our Sherlock Holmes detective hats, don't be alarmed: we aren't off-topic, we ARE the S.S.E.  -- Students Seeking Evidence!

More Classroom News

Social Studies and Reading

In anticipation of Thanksgiving and as part of the study of the history of this time period, students will be reading Eating the Plates.

The Pilgrims' hardships and accommodations to the New World are revealed through their diet and changing lifestyle. From the time of their voyage, when the biscuits were full of weevils, the Pilgrims' had trouble finding food they liked to eat. The first winter, when food was scarce and many died, gave way to a summer of bounty, though the newcomers were unaccustomed to many of the foods. Then--with the help of Indians--corn, deer, and turkey appeared on their tables; trade brought molasses, spices, and sugar. The evolution of diet in early America is a subject that should appeal to children; the glimpses of Pilgrim manners and home life are sure to amuse. Ten tasty, simple recipes provide directions for a full meal.

-  Kirkus Reviews

Related Links:

• Pilgrim Hall Museum

• Scholastic: Thanksgiving

Math.  We are working on fractions, decimals, and percents. The students are doing a super job with their questions and practice in class! We are using fraction sticks to get a visual picture that 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, 6/12, and 8/16 are the same value (1/2). We compared and ordered fractions using common sense strategies. We also looked at fractions that could easily be turned in to equivalents of 10ths or 100ths, and rewritten in decimal form. This week we will employ mathematical strategies with fractions and decimals, like converting fractions to common denominators for comparing, and dividing the numerator by the denominator for finding the decimal and percent equivalent. Soon we will be ready  to take our exam on Unit 5!

Science.  We just finished up our science technology and keyboarding! We have enjoyed our time in the computer lab polishing the skills we started in 4th grade, however it's time to move back into the science lab and wrap up our exploration of life science, including the energy cycle, ecosystems, and all we learned in 3rd and 4th grade science. We'll start the week with an exciting lab making wormeries!

After Thanksgiving we will take a final life science test before moving into the 5th grade topics on Earth Science.

Graphic by the USDA

RTI.  All teachers in our building have been working hard to implement a new program called RTI, Response to Instruction. All students in each of the grade levels takes a pretest in math and reading, and are divided into instructional groups as recommended by that testing. Those groups meet for a focused 40 minutes a day. Some of the students receive focused math intervention, some focused reading intervention, some receive additional experiences in reading and math such as informational text or other reading skill at their current grade level, and still others receive enriched instruction at a challenging level for their grade or age. You may have heard from your child that they are reading an additional novel such as Gentle Ben, or doing another activity in a different class for 40 minutes the first thing each morning. The groups will change throughout the year a couple of times, based on periodic assessments.

The enriched class has been learning to read, compare, and interpret line graphs on the finance pages as they read the news and make stock purchase choices in the Stock Market Game. Each team is responsible to figure their purchase price, including broker fees/commissions, and keep a running total of their account and balance. They start with $100k virtual money. There are currently 49 elementary teams playing the game in the Greater Cincinnati area; we have five of those teams. At the last checking, we had two teams in the top ten! Our top team, "Purplicious", had built an equity of over $102,000!

The enriched class has also been researching food safety: food contamination, decontamination, and data/statistics. Great sites for information include the USDA, Food Safety News, and others. That 40 minutes flies by very quickly as we are challenged to use our reading and math skills in real world applications!

Conferences. What a great turn-out for conferences! Thank you! I enjoyed talking with each of you about our favorite topic -- your child! Students are certainly doing well, and I appreciate all you do to support your child's learning in our classroom.

Have a great Thanksgiving Break next week!