Teacher Plans

November 22nd - 24th

Review

We had another delightful, warm week with each other, a week in which we more than achieved all the plan goals described in last week's plan: we wrote space poetry and edited and checked the work, we wrote paragraphs and took notes on the subject of Telescopes, we started, Windsinger with the dramatic and shocking opening to the story happening on Friday. Wiss, wiss, wiss! -ask the students what that means!

We read, The Universe by Seymour Simon and answered short-answer questions about what we had read. The work with the Planet's project continued, culminating with the 'dress-rehearsals' of the Planet presentations on Friday. You'll be hearing the Planet songs during Thanksgiving – I'll be posting them on Wednesday. (You parents can all thank me later! :)) The Explorer vehicles were to be seen chugging up and down the slopes of the recess field. Some of the vehicles now have two engines and are comfortably dealing with forty-five degree slopes of sand and gravel. Some even trawled across a giant puddle deep enough to bury the engines under their clammy embrace!

Friday was a particular treat: I got to have my class for the whole day for one of the few times this year. What a treat! To actually have the time to really teach!

Language

This short week, the language goals look like this:

One continued focus issue this week is reading for understanding: how to read and collect required information. The students will be highlighting text and extracting 'compressed' information in the form of notes in whole class and personal training exercises. We will be reading one more short section from the Science text together: 'Comets and meteors'. We will complete note-taking and paragraph writing practice on this selection.
This week the students complete the designing and writing of the Planet brochures, described below, as well as making final group presentations about their Planets, on Monday.
On Wednesday, I'm going to start the next section of our writing experience: stories from our own life. We're going to tell campfire stories to each other and start a discussion on what aspects of a story are important to include, which parts can be left out.
We continue with our musical exploration of great songs. This week we work more on 'Mad World', 'Beat it' and 'Eleanor Rigby', as well as writing and recording original songs as part of the Space Project. There seems to be an out break of techno/rap approaches to this task: so far four groups have been attracted to this style. Prepare your ears for a techno 'treat' when the project appears here on the site very soon!
We had an excellent 'Reading Buddies' session with Ms. Bonano last week. This week, we continue working with the buddies on Reader's Theater exercises based on that old second-grade staple, Henry and Mudge. When the fifth-grade students heard that they would be re-reading this material, many of them let out delighted and nostalgic gasps remembering their first experiences with these charming books.

Project

Space - the Infinite Frontier!!

This week the students will be working in groups of five or six, as well as in a whole-class group.

We have constructed a list of all the questions the students want to answer about the subject.

We will be developing our understanding of the creation of the Universe, the nature of Gravity, and the 'life cycle' of stars through whole class lessons and through sections from the excellent PBS series, The Expanding Universe.

The students will work together on developing their understanding of the Planets through a group project that may culminate in a 'Space Convention'. The group project concludes this week.

The project has the following components:

· 'The Universe', by Seymour Simon - reading, searching for answers to topical questions.
· Make two travel brochures for selected Planets - this aspect of the project has specific details that need to be included in the brochure.
· Make a 'robot explorer', or a 'Space Home' for a selected planet using Knex/ Lego.
· Write, record and perform a planet song.
· Make a PowerPoint/drama about selected planets.

In addition, we will also be completing activities after the whole-class explorations.

These are:

Survival on the moon - using a NASA activity we will discover how many of the students have what it takes to become an astronaut!
How Far apart are the Planets from each other? - using a NASA exercise, the students will get an idea about the relative distances of the planets from one another.
Jovian and Pluvian - artwork based on plausible, if fictional, life forms!
Einstein's famous gravity demonstration!
How the Universe began - ideas and two stories that provide evidence: Red shift, the mysterious four degrees, Edwin Hubble, and the Bell laboratories!
How Stars are born - Gravity versus Energy dance!
The Village in Space!
Fictional Diary of an Astronaut.
Watching sections from the PBS documentary series, 'The Universe', including:
- Life and Death of Stars
- Beyond the Big Bang
- Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Tune back in here next Sunday for the next thrilling plan!!

Homework

Homework will return on Monday, November 29th.

Hurray!

Students will normally receive their homework jobs for the whole week each Friday, although this week will be different.

Look for it in the student's backpack.

Each project will be up on the 'Homework' page here at the site each Friday evening.

Check out the 'News’ page for the 'Parent's Guide to Homework', as well as other delicious treats for the start of the year!

See you back here next week!

Michael J Allen