Upcoming Events
Many events and festivals are coming up in December! Mark your calendars for:
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- UPWS Community Fair – Saturday, Dec 8, 1:00-4:00
- Community Solstice Spiral – Tues, Dec 18, 5:30-7:00
- Festival of Light – Thursday, Dec 20 (time TBD)
Conferences Follow-up
Thank you all for your candid and earnest conversations during Parent Teacher Conferences. I always leave conference days with such a feeling of gratitude for my partnership with you all.
I want to follow up on a few themes that came up during multiple conferences.
1. Many of you spoke to me about your child as a reader. Some expressed concern that their child does not read enough on their own, or does not enjoy reading. Here is an article I found on “How to Raise a Reader” by Commonsense Media. Here’s a quote from the article that I especially liked:
“Many parents think that as soon as their kids learn to read on their own, they no longer need to be read to. But kids still love it and benefit from it as they hear the rhythm of the language, learn correct pronunciation, and get to relax and just take it all in. Kids will get the idea that there’s something worthwhile in books and that there’s something special about time spent with a parent.”
2.I also recommend commonsensemedia.org for looking up the age appropriateness of books you might be considering getting for your child. You can search for a title and learn what age it is recommended for, as well as learn about how the book ranks when it comes to things like positive messages, positive role models and representations, educational value, violence, etc.
3.I know that the way I have been teaching long division is not the traditional way. Here’s a 1-minute video demonstrating Partial Quotients Division.
Morning Lesson
This week, we finished our first Ancient Civilizations block by telling one more story about ancient India and then learning about ancient Persia. The class learned a song in Hindi, which we practiced all week, danced to, and then were able to sing in a round today! Hearing the 5th graders sing so beautifully together was really a lovely gift to end our week on! In our Morning Movement, we did some jump roping, and then ended with a yoga Sun Salutation.
The children heard the Indian story of Indra and the Dragon, which they acted out the next day. They drew a picture from the story, and then silently had to put their pictures in chronological story order. These review activities really help me to see what content lives with them, after they have had a chance to sleep on it.
To introduce ancient Persia, I told them stories about Ahura Mazda, the god of Light, and his endless struggles against the evil spirit of darkness, Ahriman. They then heard the story of King Hushang and the discovery of fire, as well as the transition from being hunters to being herdsman. Finally, they heard the story of King Djemsid, who learns about agriculture from a dream in which Ahura Mazda stabs the earth with a golden dagger, teaching him about making a plow.
Teaching about these ancient civilizations is a way to help the 5th graders to appreciate the gifts of these different peoples, and bring awareness to the impact that they had on future generations. These rich stories also provide such a great motivation for the children to retell them imaginatively in writing.
Skills Classes
In Botany Skills this week, the children read more about trees and engaged in some hands-on science inquiry! They counted tree rings from stump samples in small groups, then were asked, “Can you tell which years the tree grew more? Less?” They inferred that the wider the space between one ring and the next, the more the tree grew that year. One group related that space to weather as well and suggested that the weather may have been warmer in the year when the tree grew more. They also learned vocabulary words “heartwood” and “cambium.” Finally, they used paper plates to create tree rings to show their own age. Next week, I will have them label certain rings with important events in their lives.
In Math Skills, the children learned a new game in their groups. In “The Factor Game,” partners take turns choosing a number, and then identifying all of the factors of that number. They add up the numbers and the factors, and compete to see who can get the most points. One small group also looked at the weather from last week and calculated the average high temperature. The whole class completed a “speed sheet” to help strengthen their mental math strategies.
In Language Arts Skills, we reviewed prepositions and learned conjunctions. The class listened for conjunctions in oral sentences, looked for them in written examples, and completed sentences with an appropriate conjunction.
I ‘m looking forward to beginning our Language Arts block next week!