Announcements
Makers Guild day of crafting at Urban Prairie: Saturday, November 17, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm.
All are welcome at any level of skill, all materials will be provided. We will be working on silk dying, doll making, and much more. All finished products will be sold at the UPWS Community Fair to raise money for the school!
The goal of this day is to crank out finished products. If your attendance (and productivity) is reliant on childcare being provided please contact Sophie Huckabay at sophie.huckabay@urbanprairie.org.
Drop in for a couple hours or stay for the whole time!
Parent Teacher Conferences
I’m looking forward to seeing you all next week for conferences. Conferences will be 30 minutes long, with 10 minutes between conferences.
Morning Lesson
During Morning Lesson this week, the 5th graders drafted summaries of The Ramayana. Just as I found it hard to tell the story in just a few days, the class found it incredibly difficult to write about the story in just a few pages! Many children wrote long compositions, which we then edited in partners and rewrote in their Morning Lesson books. It was good to see the children grappling with which parts of the story to include in their compositions, and which to leave out to make space for other descriptions and details.
In addition to their attention to the main events and key details of their writing, the 5th graders also edited their writing with peers and made suggestions for adding more descriptive details, as well as dialogue. The 5th graders are getting more experience placing quotation marks where they go, as well as using dialogue to move their writing forward. I helped them to edit for spelling and punctuation. Now their writing is ready to go in their Morning Lesson books! In the stories this week, the class learned about Manu and the Fish, as well as the climate of India and the gods Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Protector, and Shiva the Destroyer. The week after next, we will wrap up our study of India and learn about ancient Persia.
Skills Classes
In Botany skills class, the children learned more about trees. We looked at our tree sketches from last week, and also utilized an Experience Box from the Field Museum. In the box were samples of roots, seeds, cross sections of tree trunks, leaves from different trees (broad leaves and needles), a pine cone, and a book about trees. I posed the question “What makes a tree a tree?” to the class, and they answered in partners. They came up with: woody, trunks, taller than other plants, bark, etc. They seemed to especially enjoy counting the rings in the tree trunk samples.
In Language Arts skills class, we continued our study of Prepositions. I gave a preposition to partner groups to act out in a game of Charades, and they completed a list of sentences with prepositions that fit.
In Math skills, the class completed another speed sheet and took a math quiz to help me gauge their progress. They worked in small groups to complete long division problems and work with decimals.
Festival of Thanks
Today we celebrated the Festival of Thanks with a lovely shared meal and afternoon Assembly. The 5th graders ate a lunch of soup, fruit salad, and cornbread with their color teams. I loved seeing the 5th graders at beautifully decorated tables, eating with children from other grades. This is always one of my favorite things that we do at Urban Prairie. Everyone had contributed to the meal in some way, which made it all the more special and delicious!
After recess, we participated in the assembly. Thank you to all of those parents who came to watch! I am very proud of the 5th graders. We practiced a lot, and they had a lot of input on how we performed the verses “The Plants” and “The Food Plants.” They sounded and looked great!
Have a wonderful weekend and Thanksgiving holiday.