A Peek At Our Week

Check out some of the cool things the Gummy Bears did this week!

Math

We learned to play a new math game called closest to 20. This game can easily be adapted to play at home. All you will need are some playing cards.

Once you have a deck of playing cards, take out all face cards. You should have aces-9s. Aces can count as ones. 

The objective of the game is to use your cards to build an equation that will get a sum closest to 20 or exactly 20.

Here's how to play: Each player gets 5 cards. Both players can use any combinations they choose to get as close to 20 or exactly 20. Be careful, you can't go over! Once your partner has checked that your addition is correct the player closest to 20 gets 1 point. If a player hits 20 then we decided that they would get 2 points. After you have awarded points for round one, each player gets 5 new cards and you begin a new round.

Writer's Workshop

This week we reviewed what we already knew about punctuation from first grade, and man do we know a lot about punctuation! 

We also read Punctuation Takes a Vacation by Robin Pulver

You can read the story again by clicking play below.

Science

The Gummy Bears are partnering up with our buddy class to complete a symbolic butterfly migration project. We have began talking about how Monarch butterflies migrate (or move) south for the winter. Our students are Barretts will create butterflies to send to a partner school in Mexico. These students will keep our butterflies through the winter and when it is time for the butterflies to migrate back to the United States we will get our butterflies back. 

Read more about the project here. 

Class Meeting

Our habit this week was Habit 4 - Think Win-Win. 

We talked about some strategies for compromising at school. We also read The Sandwich Swap.

You can read this story again at home by clicking play below.

Field Day 2014!

Here's a peek at some of the fun things we did during Field Day!

Math Workshop - September 25th

Students, today during Math Workshop you will play this game while you are at the computer station. 

I would like for you to first play a round of "Doubles" and a round of "Near Doubles" then you may choose any number to play. 

Today, you are only playing this game. 

CLICK HERE TO BEGIN PLAYING

Have fun!

National "Talk Like A Pirate Day"

The Gummy Bears spent the entire week celebrating "Talk Like A Pirate Day"

First we worked in pairs to read a variety of pirate books. We worked together to find out more about how pirates talk. We came up with some great pirate lingo!

Some of the books we read were:

   

After reading How I Became a Pirate we wrote our own versions of how we became Pirates. Some students chose to share their stories with the class. 

And finally we finished the week with our awesome Pirate attire.

Synergizing at it's best! 

The Magic Pot

This week as one of our math lessons we learned about the Magic Pot. 

The Magic Pot doubles anything that goes in!

We also read the story Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hung.



Next, the students each created their own page to our very own Magic Pot book. Each student got to decide what they would put inside the Magic Pot.

First we took some time to share our work with the rest of the class.

Check out our book below. You'll find just a few examples. Ask your student want he or she decided to put in the Magic Pot.

 

Meeting our Buddies

Today we met our fifth grade buddies. We were so excited to get the chance to sit down and get to know each other this morning. 

Here's what we think of our buddies so far!

"He's cool and he knows a lot!"

"They're both cool and one of them is named Harry, like my brother."

"I love them and they're really nice!"

"We both like sports, crafts (but not art), and math so that's good."

"Well...one of them plays Pokemon on their DS and the other one really likes Skittles and I love Skittles so that's awesome!"

"Well she's really nice and I already know her." 

"She's nice." 

"They are nice and they like a lot of stuff that I like."

"Um...they like the same stuff - they like ALL the same stuff I like, like video games!"

"She's AMAZINGGGG!"

"Umm my buddy is really kind and we're almost like the same. We both like strawberry shortcake (like the food) and we both like pizza and macaroni and cheese. We both have brothers."

"We all play lacrosse. Me and Spencer play soccer."

"Both of them? One hates math and one likes math. They're kind and we all like gymnastics!"

"I like being paired with my brother because we never get to see each other at school."

"She likes some sports like me. I also like her because she likes music and doing art too."

"She's nice. She's cool. We talked about sports and stuff, and our favorite foods."

"He's cool!"

We're looking forward to a great year with our new 5th grade friends!