We took a vocabulary quiz today and the students aced it! Once students completed their quiz, they were given the opportunity to catch up on work that needed to be turned in. If students were all caught up, they were given a few choices for the rest of the period: some students worked on some math activities I had, some read quietly, and still others wrote.

We reviewed our homework and played a stem review game.  Since we hadn’t had a quiz lately, this served as a good way to remind students of all the many stems we’ve learned during the course of the year.

Students have also been unhappy with the level of starter these days, so I felt as though I had to step up my game. Ask your students the answer to today’s: HAHANDND.

There is a stems quiz tomorrow and reading logs are due.

Students learned their museum jobs today, but then we took a break from biographies and the museum.

We started by doing some simple synonym analogies. Some students were familiar with analogies already and some were seeing them for the first time. The goal is to get students familiar with the way of thinking required for analogies.

We did some practice reading passages where they were asked to read longer reading passages and answer some questions. The last of the three passages was If by Rudyard Kipling. Not all students made it that far and those who did found it to be more challenging than they’d expected.

No new work was introduced today. Students were given time to work on their compare/contrast paragraphs and their artifact explanations before they headed to the library for a combination Spanish/library lesson.

We also went over vocabulary homework.

Reminder: Make-up Picture Day is tomorrow.

We were very busy today. Students turned in their completed résumés. Students will learn their job assignments on Wednesday. Students also worked on their “Somebody wanted, but, so” summaries that were started on Friday. Once they finished those students worked in pairs to compare and contrast their biography subjects. Their goal was to write a paragraph explaining why these two very different individuals might belong in the same museum.

I also began fluency checks with students. They should be complete by tomorrow. I will send information home, but the average fifth grader should be reading between 127-156 words per minute. Students who do not meet that benchmark will have quick fluency homework which will help them meet those goals. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.