End of Year Events

Pioneer Project

All wagons made it to Fort Choice where the next trail decision had to be made. Three wagons chose to take the safer but longer route, Long Trail. One risk taking wagon train chose Massacre Canyon Trail, which Gracie questioned..."Why would you take a trail called Massacre Canyon Trail, massacre literally means an abundance of death!"  They immediately regretted that decision when Native Americans attacked their wagon train which lead to death and loss, and to follow that there was an avalanche!  

Coming up, wagon trains should make it to Paradise where student's will make the final but major decision of the Pioneer Project. Let's hope no one dies...:( 

Here are some great Challenge Projects we've gotten in. 

Pioneer Project

This week student wagon train members have gone through a lot of hardships. Broken limbs, falling in a fire, snake bites, pioneers wondering off, and equipment failures.  Student wagons had to decide this week to go shorter Burial Grounds Trail which crosses sacred Native American lands, or to go the Cheyenne River Trail which is much longer but has water and grasses for the animals. All of our wagons chose the longer, less dangerous trail. Here are a couple of examples from this week's work.

Math Review Folders 2

This week we added information on Fractions to our Math Review Folder. We've learned soooo much about fractions this year including ordering, comparing, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Here are some quick pics of this week's work.

We also added information on Coordinate Graphs, Mean-Median-Mode-Range, as well as hundreds charts to show percents,-decimals-fractions. 

Reading

Students are doing book groups starting this week. The books we are reading all relate to Westward Expansion. Ask your child about which book they are reading and to tell you about what they've read so far. 

With only a guide book to show them the way, the Todd family sets out from their Arkansas home on a two thousand mile trek to claim unchartered Oregon Territory. Crossing rough terrain and encountering hostile people, the Todds show their true pioneering spirit. But as winter draws near, will the Todds have the strength to complete their journey? And if they make it, will Oregon fulfill their dreams?

Set in the late nineteenth century and told from young Anna's point of view, Sarah, Plain and Tall tells the story of how Sarah Elisabeth Wheaton comes from Maine to the prairie to answer Papa's advertisement for a wife and mother. Before Sarah arrives, Anna and her younger brother, Caleb, wait and wonder. Will Sarah be nice? Will she sing? Will she stay?

It isn′t easy being a pioneer in the state of Washington in 1899, but it′s particularly hard when you are the only girl ever born in the new settlement. With seven older brothers and a love of adventure, May Amelia Jackson just can′t seem to abide her family′s insistence that she behave like a Proper Young Lady. She′s sure she could do better if only there were at least one other girl living along the banks of the Nasel River. And now that Mama′s going to have a baby, maybe there′s hope.

Thirteen-year-old Hattie Campbell records the details of her family's harrowing migration to Oregon in a covered wagon and describes the many challenges, both joyful and tragic, that mark the journey.

In this fast-paced, courageous, and inspiring story, readers adventure with Charlotte Parkhurst as she first finds work as a stable hand, becomes a famous stage-coach driver (performing brave feats and outwitting bandits), finds love as a woman but later resumes her identity as a man after the loss of a baby and the tragic death of her husband, and ultimately settles out west on the farm she'd dreamed of having since childhood. It wasn't until after her death that anyone discovered she was a woman.

Annie Rising Fawn, a young Cherokee girl living in Georgia in 1838, and a slave girl, Righteous Cry, undertake a dangerous journey to escape the brutal Indian Removal of 1838. 

Caroline and Jess struggle to get along with their prim grandmother, who has come to their prairie home to help take care of them while their father recovers from an accident.

Fourteen-year-old Francis Tucket is heading west on the Oregon Trail with his family by wagon train. When he receives a rifle for his birthday, he is thrilled that he is being treated like an adult. But Francis lags behind to practice shooting and is captured by Pawnees. It will take wild horses, hostile tribes, and a mysterious one-armed mountain man named Mr. Grimes to help Francis become the man who will be called Mr. Tucket.

Caddie Woodlawn is a real adventurer. She'd rather hunt than sew and plow than bake, and tries to beat her brother's dares every chance she gets. Caddie is friends with Indians, who scare most of the neighbors -- neighbors who, like her mother and sisters, don't understand her at all. 

 The last thing Logan West wants is to move away from his grandparents and comfortable home in St. Louis to the wilds of Kansas. Convinced that his father want him to be like "every other boy in the West," Logan is intent on following his own path, which leads him to many adventures- including a new job and an unexpected truth about his father.

Writing Projects TO BE DONE AT HOME

Dear Families,

You are invited to attend our Westward Expansion presentations on Tuesday, May 23rd, at 8:15 a.m. in the Randall cafeteria. We hope you will be able to attend!

These presentations will be based on the research and writing that students have done in school, but the presentation will need to be done at home. There are many many choices for how students can present, it is very open ended to allow students to use their own talents and preferences when deciding how to present. The requirement is that the student presents their information in a visually appealing way. Here are some things that students could do, but these are only possibilities, students can come up with other great ideas.

Non Digital	Digital
Poster Diorama Triorama Quadrama Board game Brochure Picture Book Interview Advertisement Reenactment Scrapbook Display	Google slideshow Prezi PowToon Glogster Video Scratch Stop Motion Jeopardy game Other

If your child doesn’t know what one of those formats is, don’t chose that one!  The presentation needs to be relevant to the topic. If your student studied clothing, for example, their visual presentation should be on clothing. If your student studied Lewis and Clark, their visual should be about Lewis and Clark. At school the students are preparing all the research they should need in their paper, they simply need to transfer it to another format for presentation purposes. Students should also be prepared to convey this information to people observing their presentation. They should be able to clearly verbalize and share what they know and have learned!  We’ve talked with the students about the value of making the presentation interactive.  While this is not a requirement, it engages the audience and is a way students can go beyond expectations.

We are requesting that all visuals be brought to school on Wednesday, May 17th, so that we can make sure we are organized and ready to present!

Thank you for your support,

Mrs. Shorette,  Ms. Sugar, Mrs. Hamel and Ms. Leah

Pioneer Project

This week has been a slurry of action on the Hacker Trail. Wagon trains started out early this week and right away ran into trouble because they didn't bring enough water and firewood. Many delay points were accrued, and some groups lost Energy Factors.  Both EFs and delay points can hold the wagon trains back on the trail. But students worked hard on Diary Entry 1, family portraits and Trail Decision 1. Ask your child about what happened when their wagon train got to Prairie Wells, and which decision they made to get water and move along. 

 



Wagons made headway along the trail. Here is the map showing how far each wagon train has gone. Ask your child which train is their train, and how they did on the assignments to help their wagon train move forward, as well as discuss challenge projects they could do at home to help. (see Google Classroom for list).

Math Review Folders

This week Ms. Leah has been doing our yearly review with the students. With the upcoming MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) assessment coming up May 1st, we feel like it's a great time to go back over all of the concepts we've covered in math this year. The students are building a review folder that they will be able to take with them from grade five to use when doing homework next year. Here are some pics of the things that got done this week: 

Along with the folder students have done review sheets and games to help them practice concepts. Look for those to come home in this week's Friday Folder. 

Movin' On

Math- Dividing Decimals

This week we learned how to divide decimals using a representation of base-ten blocks. Here is the anchor chart the students can use as a reference.

Math

I've added to the last math post as we have gone along, check it out....
http://sugar16-17.blogspot.com/2017/03/math-multiplying-decimals.html

Let the fun begin!!

Today the PIONEER PROJECT began!  This is going to be a month long unit that simulates the westward expansion of the US via the wagon train experience. Today students found out about the project, saw their wagon train members, and chose their pioneer identities.  Ask your child who he/she is, how many children they have and more information they discovered about their character today.  This week will also include learning more about Manifest Destiny (the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable), travel by wagon, and pioneer life. Next week they will begin to apply this new knowledge by making supply lists, writing diary entries and making trail decisions. This project will include much writing, much luck and chance (just like on the trail), and other projects students will complete both at school and at home. The points they earn doing this work will allow their wagon train to move along the trail, hopefully arriving safely in Hacker's Valley in the end. Keep an eye out here on the blog for more information. 

Reading

We have recently been doing some shorter shared reads around informational and persuasive texts. We usually spend 4 days on the shared reads. On day one, we read and discuss the text together. On days two and three we answer text based questions using an interactive notebook page, and on day four we reread the text with a partner to focus on fluency. Some of the standards we are addressing through these shared reads are

• R.I.5.7 Drawing information from multiple sources and demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question or solve a problem efficiently.
• R.I.5.8 Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text, identifying which reasons and evidence support which point(s).

Here are a few examples of those notebook pages: 

Math- Multiplying Decimals UPDATE

We are working on the 5th grade standard 5.7 Numbers in Base Ten: I can add, subtract, multiply and divide decimals to the hundredths.  I can use concrete models or drawings to explain the method used.

First we related decimals to money, and how the powers of ten help us to multiply and divide decimals.

We then "played" with our old friends the base ten blocks in class building numbers like 1.93, one whole, nine tenths, three hundredths.

We also used them to model adding and subtracting of decimals. 

Then we started on multiplying them. Here is a video I recently found that was really well done.  The teacher does a great job of explaining a brilliant way to model concretely how to multiply decimals. 

Here is the link to that video.  Watch it, it might blow your mind the way it does ours! 

Using area model to multiply decimals.

Thursday, March 23: More multiplication today

Here is some work students did together as a formative assessment of their learning. 

This week will be the beginning of dividing decimals!!