Building Communities

This past week we have been continuing to work on mastering classroom procedures and routines. Students created classroom jobs and wrote detailed descriptions of the jobs.  When children are included in the decision making process, they tend to take more ownership of their jobs.  We have also been practicing how to give feedback to each other to improve the quality of work.  Our motto is that feedback needs to be kind, helpful, and specific.  This year, we will use feedback to create multiple drafts and beautiful work.
We  have begun to work on our "powerful sentences" and "power writing" to improve writing fluency and content.  We have also started reading and responding to literature.  If you have not done so already, please make sure that your child brings a novel to school that is at their reading level. We are also beginning to look at the American constitution as a basis for creating our classroom constitution.  By analyzing our government, we will come up with a list of rights and responsibilities that we will use as our rules for the classroom.

First Week

I am very excited to have competed our first week of fifth grade. This week our focus has been on team building activities and getting to know each other.  We also have been going over the expectations of the classroom routines.  Next week we will be drafting our classroom constitution and creating the vision of what we want our year to be like.
Remember that we are setting up our portfolios right now, so please make sure that your child has a three inch, three-ringed binder.  Also be sure that your child has 3 spiral notebooks too.  It appears that we have enough tissue and paper towels for now so don't worry about bringing in those items if you have not done so already.  If you have any further questions or concerns feel free to contact me at-bill@innovationsacademy.org.