Normal Schedule, Here We Come!

As you can see from the title of our class posting on Friday, we are all very excited for what tomorrow has in store for us - a normal schedule!! Not only was I feeling that last week was very hectic, but from the title 5C chose for our posting on Friday, the students were evidently feeling the same thing - that we had a very busy and disrupted week. Hopefully the fog will not be a factor this week and MISIC testing is behind us until spring, so bring on the normal schedule!

In the little bit of regular class time we had this week, we pressed on in all subject areas. In reading class, students continued to work on building their "Read to Self" stamina and were introduced to "Read with Someone". We are also continuing to work on making connections while we read. In writing, students continued working on writing their stories, paying close attention to their voice as a writer. In math, we took our unit 1 test and finished up odds and ends with the unit. This week, students will be bringing home "Unit 1 Notes to Parents". This will include a little note from me about how your student is doing in math and their mid-quarter grade. We will begin working on unit 2 in math tomorrow. In social studies, students spent time learning about Dr. Norman Borlaug and are also continuing a unit on Patriotism. In science, students are still working with erosion and from what I hear from 5C students and Mrs. Halverson, it sounds like science class gets pretty messy some days! 

Our field trip on Friday was a great learning experience for all of us. Despite the weather, we made the best of our day and huddled under each others umbrellas to try and stay dry. The day was very informative and a nice change to get out of the classroom for a day of learning. I hope some of you saw the video clip of all Crestwood Elementary 5th graders singing the Norman Borlaug rap on the news Friday night. For those of you who missed it, I happened to check You Tube this evening to see if by chance someone posted it to the site, and I found it!! I tried to include the video below, so hopefully it works! Check it out!

Don't forget, Friday is our Book-It kick-off jamboree! I am excited to have our 5C families join us for an afternoon of books and breadsticks!

Crammed and Crazy

After a crammed and crazy week, here are the thoughts of some of 5C students about our week of school...

We went to the Norman Borlaug farm. We saw scorpions. - Chaise

We saw Charlotte (Dr. Borlaug's sister) at the farm. - Spencer

Our week was just like the title of this post! We saw a tarantula. - Cameron

We held insects at the Borlaug farm. - Austin

We visited the Borlaug farm and it was fun. We saw a dog named Rusty. - Jordan

Totally insane week. Mrs. Kuhn cannot spell today. - Katie

Hissing cockroaches are cool! - Dawson

We had MISIC this week. We had fun at the Borlaug farm. - Haley S.

We had a math test this week. - Alexis

We got to be on TV at the Norman Borlaug farm for singing the rap. When we were eating lunch a dog came on our bus - Haley M.

It was a fun Friday! - Dalton

It was the best Friday in the whole wide world! - Nathan

We learned about Norman Borlaug at the farm. - Lilly

We didn't have to eat the lasagna for lunch. - Abbey

We got to view the inside of Norman Borlaug's house. We got to see a replica of Dr. Borlaug's congressional medal of honor. - Trevor

We saw Norman Borlaug's childhood bedroom. - Mathew 

Mrs. Kuhn is the best teacher ever, and she rocks. - All of 5C

Here is a link for the "Norman Borlaug Rap" we sang at the farm today that was recorded for TV!! :)

http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/Borlaug_Rap160.mp3

Get Your Umbrellas Ready

Well, we are halfway through another crazy week and I am happy to say that the craziness is coming to an end! We take our final MISIC test tomorrow and then our schedule can return to normal! I am VERY ready for things to return to normal and I think the students are, too. We were discussing our schedule for the day this morning and several students commented that they thought the days feel long when we have different schedules than normal, although a few thought that the days feel shorter! Either way, we are ready for normalcy!! 

I hope you all had a chance to read the note that came home with 5C students on Monday. If you haven't, please make sure you read it before Friday, as there is some information about our field trip that 5C students and families need to know. As the letter stated, we are going rain or shine! I'm not sure if anyone has seen a weather report for Friday, but the last time I checked it showed high temperatures in the 60s and a 70% chance of rain. So.... please make sure your student is dressed for the weather. As the title of this post suggests - bring an umbrella!! 

The second part of the note talked about Book-It, the reading program sponsored by Pizza Hut. We have having our kick-off jamboree on Friday, October 2 from 2:45-3:15. We've invited only one guest per student because we simply don't have space in our classroom for more. There will be more events throughout the year where our families will be encouraged to join us. 

Check out our new wordle that I posted to our blog this morning. Kids...please tell your families what a wordle is and how we created it. I will explain more about our wordle in my post on Friday. Have a great evening and I'll see you all tomorrow for yet another crazy day!

Classroom Wish List

Every year I have parents ask if there are any items that I need in our classroom. So, if you are at all interested in donating items to our classroom, here are some suggested items:

• crayons, colored pencils, markers
• scissors
• Clorox Wipes
• Glue sticks/glue bottles/rubber cement
• Hand sanitizer - pump bottles
• Books (old or new) for our classroom library
• Large erasers or small pencil top erasers
• Wide ruled notebooks
• 2 pocket folders

Thank you in advance! We are not picky - if you have any of these items taking up space around your house and you want to get rid of them, we'll take them! Thanks!!

Fantastic Week

Wow! What a busy week. Our week was full of changes to our schedule between our early dismissal on Wednesday, bus evacuation drills and MISIC testing. And, just as I predicted, the change in our schedule threw a few students for a loop and we had a few "off" moments of chatty behavior, but overall we had a fantastic week! Here is our weekly update about what we did in school last week.

This week in reading, students worked on increasing their stamina in "Read to Self" and they also worked on making connections while reading. In writing, Mrs. Sorenson introduced the writing trait of voice and students began working on writing stories. In social studies, students have been working on parallel timelines and are still studying erosion in science. This week during word study, we studied the sound of "long e" and the different letter combinations or spelling patters that make that sound. In math, we learned about square numbers, square roots, factor strings and prime factorization.

In addition, we also started our MISIC testing on Thursday. So far, we have taken our tests for math and language. Tomorrow we will take our science test and on Thursday we will take our final test in reading. 5C students have been doing an outstanding job of taking their time and doing their best on these tests. They have also done a super job of being respectful when they finish and others are still testing. This was awesome to see, 5C! Thanks for being so thoughtful of your classmates!

You also may have noticed our class "Wordle" that I posted to our blog. A wordle is a tool used to generate "word clouds" from a text that you provide. The clouds give prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text. So, on Friday, I asked 5C students to reflect on the school year so far and how they are feeling about 5th grade. Some students wrote a single word, some students wrote a sentence and some students wrote multiple sentences. As you can see from our wordle, most of us are feeling pretty "awesome" about 5th grade and that is "awesome" to hear!

Have a great rest of the weekend! I'm looking forward to another awesome week of school!

Fun Friday!

Here are the thoughts and comments from 5C students about our week of school...

We are learning about mentoring. - Haley S.

Mr. Sickles started Guidance class with us today. - Dawson

There have been many injuries during this week. - Trevor

Many people want to be mentors. - Spencer

We are doing parallel timelines during social studies. - Alexis

We learned the "Big Booty" game in literacy. - Katie

We played a soccer game in P.E. - Austin

We were asked to be munchkins in the high school musical the "Wizard of Oz". - Haley M.

The teachers rock! - Jordan

We played zip-zap-zop in literacy. - Mathew

I think I broke my finger at recess. - Chaise

We learned about square roots. - Lilly

We had a fun science experiment. - Nathan

We were VERY noisy in science and social studies class today. - Cameron

Yesterday at lunch a grape popped in Josh's face. - Haley M.

We started MISIC. - 5C

Tomorrow is my mom's birthday. - Dalton - HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DALTON'S MOM!!!

As always - Mrs. Kuhn rocks - from all of 5C

TERRIFIC TUESDAY!!

Wow! What a fantastic day! I just wanted to put a quick post on our blog to let our families and friends know what an awesome day we had! We received complements from both Mrs. Sorenson and Mrs. Halverson that we were the "best we have ever been" today! Math class was fabulous as well. So 5C...give yourselves a large pat on the back! You proved to me once again today what fantastic young adults you all are! Thanks for being such great learners! I'm looking forward to tomorrow...let's have another super day!!