Busy times in Room 23

Today we have two new guest bloggers to tell about the hectic final days of fifth grade.  We had a police officer come in for DARE graduation.  He brought the dog officer, Officer Gilboy, and his dog, Ari.  Ari was able to sniff out drugs hidden in the cafeteria.  Officer Mucciarone had us write a report about what we learned in DARE this year.  He picked the best essay from each class and gave the winners a prize.  He also gave us DARE graduation certificates that showed that we graduated DARE, and he also gave us t-shirts. 

Mrs. Duke, the reading specialist from Remington Middle School, came to Parmenter.  She gave us book ideas for summer reading.  She also told us about the expectations for middle school.  We are expected to read two just right books over the summer.  We should take notes and will give a book talk on one of them in the fall.  All of the information about summer reading, including forms to fill out, is available on the middle school web page. 

We visited Remington Middle School on Friday.  The band, strings, and chorus performed for us.  The strings played a really scary song!  It was called Rosin Eating Zombies from Outer Space.  Mr. Peri and Mr. Wilderman talked about middle school expectations, including the dress code.  They tried their best to make us ready for middle school.  Then we met our sixth grade buddies.  They showed us around the school and let us open their lockers so it would be easier for us in middle school.  We got to meet a lot of teachers.  The Spanish teacher, Mrs. Hayes, used to teach at Parmenter School, and knew a lot of the incoming sixth graders. 

Today we had our last time seeing kindergarten buddies.  We had ice cream and had a little party.  The kindergarten buddies have learned a lot since September.  Some of the activities that we did with them were:  tapping out words, blending sounds together, retelling stories, and brainstorming charts for writing.  The coolest thing about working with them was knowing that they couldn’t read in September, and now they can!  They looked sad to see us go.  Hopefully, we’ll see them again sometime. 

In science, we are making magazines about different biomes.  We are researching the climate, animals that live there, and the plants that live there, as well as other interesting facts.  It is really fun because at the end we will put all of the articles into a magazine.  We can also make games, such as word searches, crossword puzzles, and matching. 

In social studies we are creating a three branches of government project.  We brought in a branch and made a bunch of flashcards based on facts about the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government.  Now we are tying the flashcards onto the branch to make a mobile of the 3 branches of government. 

In reading we are working in literature circles to read Tiger Rising, Ruby Holler, Tale of Despereaux, Pleasing the Ghost, and Things Hoped For.

In math we are reviewing a lot of concepts with games and manipulatives.  Our class has solved 80,000 problems on IXL this year.  Our goal is to reach 100,000 problems by the end of the school year!

In writing we are finishing up personal essays.   We each chose a thesis statement, supported with three reasons, and we developed three seed stories to support each reason.    After taking the essays through the writing process, we went to the lab to publish them.  We are finishing the year by creating a free choice project.  Many of us are making up our own creative story.  Some are using fairytales, and fracturing them to make them unique.  Some are using the Chris Van Allsburg story, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, to create unusual mysteries.   Some are developing seed stories that they began earlier in the year. At the end of the year we will have an author’s party to share stories with each other.