A Peek at Last Week!

For the past two weeks we have been focusing on analyzing characters in fiction. This past week we started putting what we have learned into action with character analysis projects! These took a lot of hard work from the students but they turned out great! We worked on using evidence from the text to support our opinions about characters in our reading group books. 

These kids filled their books with sticky notes, marking each and every page when they found evidence. They would come up to me and ask:
"Would "determination" be a good trait for my character?" and I'd say "Well, let's see, do you remember any events in the book that would have shown your character being determined?" and then I would see their faces light up and they'd say "Yeah! I remember a part! It was back in the beginning when he/she......." and so on. I got so much joy from seeing them all beginning to make connections in literature and truly begin to have conversations with their books. When I told them they would be having conversations with their books they all looked at me like I was crazy, but by the end of the week I am sure they all understood what I meant. 

One of the projects that the students had fun with was when we made Character Selfies! The kiddos had to imagine that they were a character from their book and think about what that character would have taken a selfie of. They had to decide what their character's mood would be and why that particular event would have been important enough to that character to document it with a selfie. Here are some of the results: 

We also made character word clouds with the traits describing the characters we chose! They turned out great and the kids really put a lot of thought into them! 

We ended the week talking about all of the things we are thankful for:

I hope everyone had a great weekend and stayed warm with all this wind! 

Our last TWO weeks!

Wow! It has been quite a couple of weeks! I haven't gotten a chance to post in a while but we have definitely been busy in 5th grade.

Over the last two weeks we have finished our studies on the empires of West Africa and have started new material in history, studying colonial America and the reasons behind that colonization.

In reading last week we worked on dictionary skills. This past week we began studying character development in Language Arts. We are analyzing characters from our reading group books and each student is putting together a project based on the character he/she chose. At the end of next week I will have some finished products to show!

For the past two Fridays we have had a question on the whiteboard for the students to answer. As with every week, I always enjoy the powerful insight that these students give me. These kiddos teach me so much each and every day.

A note to end on this week:

Picture a student gave me on Friday...They all know me so well :) 

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Spirit Week Excitement

We had a very busy and exciting week last week! It was red ribbon week at Check Elementary and each day we talked about what it means to be a bully free and drug free school. I am going to try to get other spirit week pictures up as soon as I can!

I have a couple notable pictures from Throwback Thursday :) These two students did a great job on their costumes!

Audrey Hepburn

Marty McFly :) 

We worked on multiple meaning words this week in Reading class and in history we began a web quest project on the ancient West African Empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. The students are getting to use Google Classroom for the first time and they are really enjoying it. 

Dictionary Dig! 

The 5th grade kiddos also had their first school dance on Friday and they had a ball! I have some pictures but I don't want to embarrass any of them :) 

 I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend and this fabulous weather! 

What we've been up to!

I'm a little late posting this week but here's what we were up to! 

We started out our week having some of our fantastic work displayed at the PTO meeting Tuesday night. I am so proud of how the work turned out! The kids enjoyed seeing all of their hard work on display! 

We talked about context clues in reading and played a context clues Bump! game in small groups to practice. 

What did Laquon do? :) 

In history we finished our Explorer book jacket projects! Here is a look at some of the work in progress.

We had Free Write Friday again this week! We have a lot of authors in the class. So many students are working on their own chapter books and sharing a chapter a week with the class! I look forward to hearing these stories each week. 

Here is a look at some recess fun!

This group of 5th graders really loves wooly worms! :) 

We closed out the week with something to think about:

I hope everyone had a great weekend!