Day Three

Hello,

We jumped into the first few pages of the fifth grade Math in Focus books.  It wasn't too tough...place value.  I did a little algebra with the early finishers. 

We did some review on the parts of a paragraph.  From the looks of the homework, we'll need a lot more work on this.  Margins, indentation, topic sentence, supporting details and conclusion are the biggies to know.

I introduced some atom/molecule stuff but I wasn't overly pleased with my presentation.  I was scientifically accurate, but probably need to be a little more kid-friendly.  They'll get it, but it may take a few lessons to wrap their heads around.  We didn't get to my planned experiment so we'll tackle that in the morning. 

My fifth grade team decided on how we are going to group.  It looks like most of our homeroom will stay with me.  We are going to take the students with the most advanced skills and send them to Mrs. Palopoli's room.  Mrs. Palopoli will only keep her most advanced and then evenly distribute the rest of her kids into the other three classrooms.  For our class, it basically means that if your child had me for math last year, they will now have Mrs. Palopoli.  If they had Mrs. Viola or Mrs. Smith, they now will stay with me.  There may be some exceptions.  We will be giving the end of fourth grade test tomorrow to give us another data point before making decisions.  Please contact me with any questions.

I used the NOVA Elements app in class today.  It has a good interactive periodic table.  This should be a fun and educational unit.

I have a basketball tutoring session at five, so I'm going to run.  Thanks for reading.

Mr. Shea