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! 

Our short week full of learning

We had one less day this week but that didn't stop our learning! This week we worked on grammar in Language Arts. We learned about verbs and nouns! We watched Schoolhouse Rock to help introduce us to the topic! I told the kiddos that Schoolhouse Rock was something I watched in school at their age too! They got a kick out of that. 

The kids worked on comic strips using at least 10 verbs! Here are some of the results! 

In history we began working on our European Explorer book covers. The students have been tasked with taking on the role of graphic designer for a book cover of a biography on a European Explorer. This project requires research (using our Chromebooks!) and creativity! I am looking forward to seeing the results! I did not get a chance to get any pictures of the researchers in action though, but maybe that means we were just so involved in the project :) 


Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the beautiful weather! Go Hokies!