LES Remote Learning Plan, Grade 5

Click here to see what Fifth Graders have been working on this week: Link to Updated Document

It was really great to see so many fifth graders in the Google Meets we had this week! I’m also really enjoying reading all the fiction stories and poetry you are submitting! It was fun to see animations, stop motion videos and photos of wildlife that you submitted too! These are strange times for school but that does not mean fifth graders are not hard at work discovering more about the world through exploration, science, books, and online platforms!

I will plan to meet with small groups again next week, Tuesday and Thursday between 11:00 and 12:00. Look for an email and a Google Classroom post about the time your group will meet. We will use the same nickname to log in as we did last week but I will send a reminder through Google Classroom.

Here are a few photos from when we were all together this spring! Miss you all!

Mr. S

 

The Most Important Thing

Dear Fifth Grade Families,

As we move toward more active remote learning, I want to make clear that I have a renewed perspective after speaking with so many of you on the phone. So many of you have started meaningful projects with students and created schedules that work for your lives in these times of unprecedented change. My job as the teacher of your children is to provide them with opportunities to learn. I will also provide them with materials to review and pursue so that they continue to stay engaged and connected with their learning.

This will not be an easy task for me or for families. One of the things I am able to do as a teacher is to differentiate instruction in order to challenge each child appropriately. I am experienced with differentiating in person but much less experienced doing so virtually. In class, I modify questions in discussions and comments to written work. I assign different material or modify expectations about how much will be accomplished. I create challenges and extensions and I make sure there are opportunities for review. I am good at doing those things when I am with students in person but I am not sure how well I will be able to do it remotely.

Therefore, some students may feel overwhelmed and others may feel like they are not being challenged enough. I am developing more open ended projects in order to allow students to do what they can and to rise as high as they can. However, I will not be there to guide, assist, and modify, so I ask you for your help. Please keep lines of communication open and let me know what you and your child need. Everyone’s access to academic time, electronically connected devices, the internet, and parent support is different. I want to acknowledge that this transition will be bumpy and know that everyone is making a good faith effort to do what they can.

It’s also my job to provide families with a meaningful home/school connection. I trust that parents and children are doing what they can while trying to support one another and their families. We all need to stay connected and keep our heads above water. I miss being in the classroom and seeing all the children each day, and I know they miss me and one another.

Very truly yours,

-Bill Stewart

Spelling Returning this week

I have posted a link for each of the students who participates in a spelling group in Google Classroom. Each of the four groups has its own list of words that are a continuation of the work we were doing in class before the school closure. Spelling should take roughly 10-20 minutes per day, M-F. I will update with a new list of words each week for each group.

The directions are part of the assignment in Google Classroom, but I will also put them on the blog in the space below:

 

If it works with your academic schedule, each day of the week your child should try to do a different activity to ensure that these words and the spelling principles they represent are mastered.  Parents can assist with the blind sort and the spelling pretest (Tue./Thu.) in particular, but all students will benefit from discussing and describing the categories of their spelling sorts and from brainstorming with others, so there are ample opportunities  for parents to lend a hand. The directions below are for the students to follow:
Monday: Sort the words into categories like the ones we did in class. Read each   word aloud during this activity.  Be ready to explain why the words are sorted in a particular way; What does the sort reveal about spelling in  general?  Sort the words a second time. (The sort may be written out.)
Tuesday: Do a blind or no peeking sort with a partner.  Lay down a word from
each category as a header and then have your partner read the rest of the words aloud.
You must indicate where each word goes without seeing it and spell each word out loud (or in writing).  If you make an error, put that word  back in the mix and try sorting and spelling it again.
Wednesday: Do a spelling Word Hunt,  looking for patterns in a familiar book or dictionary (no computer assist, please) that have the same pattern.  Alternately, Brainstorm to find rhyming words or other words that fit the pattern. Try to find about 2-5 more words for each category (about 10-12 total).  Variation: students may define and write the part of speech for 5 unfamiliar words, then use those words in sentences.
Thursday Do a written Pretest to prepare for Friday’s spelling test. As your partner calls out the words in a random order, you should write them in their categories.  Try any word you misspell a second or even a third time.
Friday Do a Spelling Test of 10 words, some from each category. Include words you have that you may have misspelled on the pretest or while doing sorts earlier in the week. You could take a photo of your spelling test or report the score to me via email.

Class Play ideas

I am including a link to a video I made about some of our class play work and one idea we had for developing a story into a play. We did a lot of work with John Porcino on this project and devoted class reading, writing and science time to the creation of a story.

I made the video as part of a National Geographic teacher program and I had to ensure no recognizable student faces were visible. That works for a class blog as well! I added a link to the video in Google Classroom, but this link should take everyone to Vimeo, where you can see the video in its entirety.

National Geographic live stream events

National Geographics Explorer Classroom offers live streamed youtube science explorations at 2:00.

4/1 @ 2:00PM Eastern | Diego Pol: Dinosaur Discovery
4/2 @ 1:00PM Eastern | Terry Virts: Looking Back at Earth
4/2 @ 2:00PM Eastern | Estefania Roldan Nicolau: Life on the Edge
4/3 @ 2:00PM Eastern | Jeffrey Marlow: Most Extreme Microbes
4/6 @ 2:00PM Eastern | M Jackson: Thin Ice
4/7 @ 9:00AM Eastern | Nirupa Rao: Illustrating Nature
4/7 @ 2:00PM Eastern | Edward Hurme: Tracking Bats
4/8 @ 2:00PM Eastern | Asha Stuart: Documentary Photography
4/9 @ 2:00PM Eastern | Enric Sala: Pristine Seas
4/20 @ 11:00AM Eastern | Andrej Gajic: Protecting Sharks

+ more events coming soon!

Learn more about National Geographic Explorer Classroom at natgeoed.org/explorerclassroom

Please Note: Explorer Classroom events are live events hosted on YouTube. They are open to the public and recorded. Please share these terms with parents of students who will participate live on camera. If any parents or students prefer not to be on camera, please accommodate their wishes.

For registration purposes, we ask that students under 13, please have an adult register your household. The Services NGS provides are not intended for visits from children under the age of 13, or under the age of 16 in the case of children in the European Economic Area (EEA), and we do not knowingly permit children under these ages to register for any content, product or Service.

Spring Additions

Sadly, it seems increasingly likely that our school closure will mean that we will not have the chance to build a fifth grade play this year.

I will be posting lessons on Google Classroom in each subject area. There will be online and offline suggestions for each subject.  I encourage you all to visit the school website, which will have many resources for families as well as links to the pages created by Art, music, Physical Education, Library and Technology teachers.

My most recent email for families follows…

Dear Fifth Grade Families,
Next week we will be moving to more formal remote learning. The school webpage will have lots of useful links and will connect you with specialist teachers and their ideas and resources. My class blog will direct you to Google Classroom, where I will have most of the material I will present. In this email I am going to try to break things down by subject and give both on-line and off-line options for students.  The expectation is that we will move to a half day of school work for each student (3 to 3.5 hours). The times in parentheses are recommendations for each subject M-F. My goal is that students feel connected to one another, to teachers, and to the learning they are doing. I hope they feel like they have achieved something and are proud to share it. When and if they are ready, I will share what they have done with their peers.
I hope you are all doing well. It was good to talk with (almost) all of you in the past couple of days!
 
Yours truly,
 
Bill Stewart
 
Reading (40-60 minutes):
Off-line:
Read an independent book (30 minutes daily). Talk about it with someone at home or remotely.
 On-line:  Record your thoughts about the book you are reading on the shared student reading page.
-Do Lexia (20 minutes)
-Read a book on Epic! (could be part of 30 minutes of reading)
Read the NEWSELA article about cats. Take the quiz and respond to the writing prompt. Highlight unfamiliar words in red.
Writing (20-30 minutes daily)
On-line: There are 8 lessons in the writing prompts site. So far 6 students have submitted pieces to me for revision and edits. One has published. There are lots of good ideas here.
-work on the class play idea. (Google Classroom)
-write a narrative using the story starters in Google Classroom
Off-line: write a fiction story. Prompt: tell a creation myth about the endangered species that you wrote about and one of their interesting features or behaviors.
Math (30-40 minutes daily):
Off-line: Play Spend and Save with someone. I am attaching the directions. You will need playing cards (A-9, Ace= 1, no face cards unless you want Queens to represent zeroes) and coins. Scrap paper helps. You start with $100. Heads you spend, tails you save. Three cards make the amount. You choose the order of the digits.
Review basic facts with cards (2-people): try addition and multiplication, first to correctly say the sum or product gets the cards.  (adults and older siblings can slow themselves by having to write the solution or something similar)
Online:  Xtra Math, Symphony Math, Prodigy Math and/or Khan Academy
​Science (30 minutes): 
Off-line: take a walk and see what types of animal and plant life you can find. This is an exciting time of year for life sciences. Ponds are filled with eggs and amphibians calling out for mates. Birds are migrating and nesting. Plants are blooming (what are the first buds producing? Flowers or leaves?) Many animals have come out of hibernation. What signs can you see?  I saw moose and deer antlers that were just shed and lots of tracks. Keep your eyes peeled!  Share your observations with whoever you are with. Add to the signs of spring page.
On-line: signs of spring page, plant observation, Mystery Science videos and experiments, plus:
National Geographic has new streaming video feeds at 2:00 every weekday! Check them out here.
Social Studies (20-30 minutes):
Off-line: What can you find out about current events? The school closures and changes we are making in terms of physical distancing are unprecedented in the memory of almost everyone in this country.  What are people saying and doing? How have the changes affected you in positive ways? What has been the most challenging for you and your family? Keep a journal or let me know what is happening through email or Google Docs (share with me).
On-line: There are links in Google Classroom to world geography sites. We will be taking a deeper dive into World Geography in the coming weeks.
-Scholastic has made all of their pages available to students. We are in Week 2 of their offerings on-line
Choose your Own: Off-line or On-line (20-30 minutes):
Send me what you’ve been working on at home and I will try and share it with the rest of the fifth grade class. I have really enjoyed seeing your projects and would like to invite you to give one another positive feedback.  There is a document for feedback.
This is an opportunity to learn whatever you want and share it with the class. You could include a video of yourself learning to count in another language, how to juggle pins, learning to write in calligraphy, or training your pet to do a trick. The options are limitless!
The links are the first item in Google Classroom at the top of the Classwork page.

Move to Remote Learning

Hi Families of Fifth Graders!

As we move to more active remote learning, I encourage you to check the school Blog for recommended resources. There will be links to all sorts of useful sites, including to specialist blogs. I will continue to post material to Google Classroom. As of now, I have at least one page where students may share, add, and comment on material for each academic area. I am also curating links to student projects like stories, stop-motion video, animation, and sculpture. Keep sending material and I will keep posting it!

I hope all of you are doing well. It has been a strange spring! I want to remind everyone that, although we are practicing physical distancing, we need not be socially distant. Reach out to others and stay connected. Ms. Neal has a letter writing project that she wanted to share with everyone. I will share it in an email too.

Take care,

Mr. Stewart

P.S. I am a 9 on the Baby Yoda scale today… What’s around the corner???

LES is More, indeed

This has been an unsettling week with a great deal of uncertainty about the Corona Virus and Covid 19. Now that school has been cancelled for the next two weeks we have all had to make many shifts to adapt to the changes. The Friday Post has an excellent article by Ms. Liz (Cole), the school’s speech and language pathologist, who reminds us, as we talk with students about the school closure and the spread of the virus:

Help them feel in control. Kids (and adults!) are more distressed when we feel helpless, and more comfortable when we are taking action. The hygiene routines that slow the spread of the COVID-19 are the same habits that help keep us healthy all year round. If kids ask about face masks, explain that the experts at the CDC say they aren’t necessary for most people. If kids see people wearing face masks, explain that those people are being extra cautious.

  • Wash Your Hands. Make it a family routine before every meal and snack to wash hands. If you do it together, you can model for them how to use soap, rub your hands together and rinse. For a timer, try singing a song together while you scrub. 

  • Catch that Cough. When kids cough or sneeze, they tend to do it right into their hands — and then they use those hands to touch everything in sight! Instead, we can cough and sneeze into our elbow. 

Keep talking. Tell kids that you will continue to keep them updated as you learn more. You can say, “Even though we don’t have the answers to everything right now, know that once we know more, we’ll let you know too.”

In related classroom news, I learned that I must stay out of the classroom for at least the next several days and cannot feed the classroom fish during that time. I therefore had to release the brook trout into the Sawmill River in Montague. Thanks to Deb Fritz for filming the release and for her help with stocking the fish! She filmed me collecting the fish from the tank and then releasing them into the river.  I filmed a close up of the release and then Deb filmed a bit more at the end.

Normally the students play the biggest role in stocking out the fish and we are able to do it in late May or June. Usually we wear bathing suits and water shoes and the students get nearly as wet as the fish. Each fish gets an individual farewell and more time to acclimate to the stream water. Thanks to Deb, the students can at least see the stock out and know that they helped give the fish a good head start on their journey into the wild.

I am going to include a link to a video that I made earlier last week about the class play work we have been doing and the connections the students wanted to tell about ecology and the environment. That work has been put on hold until we return, of course.  I am hopeful that we will have the time to put something together, but we will have to remain flexible and do what makes most sense for the community at large.

I hope you and your extended families stay healthy, and that this experience sees our community continuing to support one another despite the increased focus on hygiene and social distancing.

Yours truly,

Bill Stewart

John Porcino: Artist in Residence

We have been working with John Porcino to build characters and share stories with a goal of preparing to build a play this spring!

Oh, yeah, and he is also teaching us how to juggle! Ta-da!!!