Bridges Unit 3: Decimals

In Unit 3 we have been working on developing our sense of decimals. What do tenths, hundredths, thousandths mean? What does that look like? How do we write those words, say those words, show those as numbers, etc. We have done work adding, subtracting and comparing decimals and thinking about what happens to decimals as we multiply and divide by powers of ten. We will continue this work a we do some conversions of metric units of measurements in the upcoming week. We are also working on rounding with decimals. We will have our Unit 3 Post Assessment the week before winter break.

Games to practice decimal place value and rounding:

Decimal Place Value Scooter Game

Decimal Place Value Football Game

Decimal Place Value Pirates Game

Rounding Decimals Scooter Game

Rounding Decimals Shark Game

Ordering Decimals Balloon Pop

Early Colonies

In social studies we have been studying the early English colonies. Students worked in groups to learn about the founding, the geography, the economy and the government of six different colonies: Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, New York, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Then they created billboards and sales pitches to try to convince their peers to come to their colony. Ask your child about the qualities of their colony and their sales pitch!

Device Take Home

A set of purple papers came home on Friday about 5th graders bringing home their school issued Chromebooks. Hopefully, your student mentioned this to you.  Those papers are due back on Friday, December 6th.  There is the option to opt out of bringing it home, but then we still need the paper back stating such.  Thanks everyone!

Bridges Unit 3 Overview

Reading

This week we began working together on a shared reading unit.  We have been reading Newbery Award winning book Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. See more about the book here, Number the Stars. 

This shared reading experience is allowing the teachers to model how we want students to be responding to text.  We will model many ways to respond, what good responses look like, as well as making things a little more challenging as the year progresses. The kinds of assignments include making connections, analyzing characters, vocabulary, summarizing, , questioning, , visualizing and most importantly finding the theme of the story.  Check back for some examples of student work 

Writing

As the first quarter came to an end, so did our writing unit on Narratives. Students worked really, really hard on not just writing a story, but also revising a story.

After writing their first draft, students cut up the story into sections that could be paragraphs. Not all fifth graders write with paragraphs, so we worked on how to figure out when a new paragraph would start, and that we indent the first lines of paragraphs.

Once they'd cut it apart, they glued it into what we call a "Revision Booklet". The booklet allows students to make revisions/changes to the story with adequate space.  We had many lessons about how students could improve their writing including  writing better beginnings, using better words (including "Said is dead"), using dialogue, and using figurative language such as similes, metaphors or personification.

Here's an example of what a revision book looks like.

You will have a chance to see your child's revision booklet at conferences on the 21st. 

Once students were done revising, they met with a teacher to edit and refine before typing up their final drafts. Those will also be available for you at conferences.