Happy first day of Autumn! I am looking forward to if finally feeling like autumn at some point this week! We have individual pictures on Monday this week. Also, Scholastic Book orders are due by Friday. You can order online (see page on the right for details) or send in cash or checks made out to Scholastic Book Clubs. Every book purchased helps us to grow our classroom library as they donate books based on the amount purchased. This week’s learning goals are below:
Math- We are continuing to work with the concept of Volume this week and moving away from working with counting cubes and into using actual formulas (V=L*W*H or V=B*H)
Reading- This week we will be working with comparing and contrasting characters and how they react in certain situations. We will be using Venn Diagrams to help us organize our thoughts. Our story is about a class elections, so we will also be discussing what makes a good candidate.
Social Studies- We will be learning about Native Americans of the Plains region and reviewing for our first quiz covering lessons 1, 2, and 3 of chapter 2.
Writing/Grammar/Spelling- See the page on the right for this week’s spelling words. In grammar and in in writing we will be working on creating descriptive complete sentences that include a subject and a predicate.
One full week down! We had a great week last week getting back into the full swing of things in room D14. One habit we need to continue working on this week is putting our names on our work! I’ll never understand that one! Claim your work kiddos! Just a reminder that all kids need sneakers on Mondays and Wednesdays for gym. In addition, we go outside EVERY DAY for recess (unless it is raining) so please be prepared for the weather and to run off some steam!
Writing Learning Goals: This week we will be working on spicing up our writing with vivid sensory details. We will also be working on taking our sentences to the next level and making sure to entertain our readers.
Math Learning Goal: We will be studying the concept of volume this week. Volume is the amount of space within a 3D object. We will be focusing specifically on volume of rectangles and squares.
Reading Learning Goal: This week we will be reading a non fictions story about space camp. Our vocabulary words can be found on the vocab page to the right. Our skill focus will be identifying and using graphic features such as tables, photos, graphs, and diagrams.
Grammar Learning Goal: Our grammar learning goal for the week is to identify the different types of sentences.
Social Studies Learning Goal: We are beginning our study of Native Americans the week. We will be focusing on the Landbridge Theory as well as the lifestyle of the Eastern Woodlands Native Americans this week.
Welcome to the first full week of the 2019-2020 school year! Last week was AMAZING! I am one lucky teacher to have such a wonderful group of learners this year. We learned a lot about each other throughout the first week. On Friday we combined classes with all of the other 5th grade homerooms and competed in our first STEM challenge. Students were given a stack of newspaper and 3 feet of masking tape to create a structure that would support a basketball. Of the 5 groups that were in my room, 4 were successful and the 5th group was SO close! This week we will be jumping right in to our curriculum in all subject areas. See below for a breakdown of our weekly learning goals and some helpful videos.
Elementary #2 will be hosting our annual Back to School Night on Tuesday, September 10th from 7-8 PM. Please come on in see out classroom and admire my students work on their I Am poems and our collaborative effort to create a display for Patriot’s Day.
Reading Goals: This week we will begin our first story in our text book, “A Package for Ms. Jewels.” Our focus skill of the week will be identifying story elements such as characters, setting, and plot. Please see the short video below to review each of these elements.
Math Goals: This week we will be focusing on finding the area of rectangles. See the video below to assist your child with their Home Link assignments.
Writing Goals: We will be completing “Writing Boot Camp” this week reviewing types of writing, grammar rules, figurative language, and commonly mixed up words. Students will complete 5 “Missions” throughout the week and put together a resource booklet that they will be able to use for the remainder of the year to improve their writing. See the video below to review the MANY different types of figurative language.
Social Studies: We will be review geography skills this week and working to identify the 7 continents and 5 oceans. We will also make sure that we all know where in the world we actually live!
We will be taking our first Reading test on Friday as well as a quiz in Social Studies that covers the continents and oceans. If you have not already, please sign up for REMIND using the code below to get up to date reminders texted to you each week.
Welcome to 5th grade! I am super excited to start the 2019-2020 school year off with my new group of students. A little about me, this is my 18th year in education and 2nd full year here at Elementary #2. Prior to teaching here, I taught at Millville Public Schools and served as an administrator at both the Millville and Vineland Charter Schools. I have loved returning to my roots teaching and am happy to be doing that here in Middle Township. In addition to teaching, my husband and I are raising a large, very active family. I also try to incorporate many areas that I am passionate about (photography, art, writing, technology) into my class each year.
Each week I will post our weekly learning goals here on this blog on Sundays. This will give both students and families the opportunity to preview the concepts for the week. In addition, I will post helpful videos that students can reference throughout the week to assist with homework or studying. Students will have homework Monday-Thursday. Most nights that will consist of a Math Homelink and/or a grammar or spelling assignment. If your child does not complete classwork, they may be asked to complete it at home to ensure they do not fall behind.
Special Schedule:
Monday- Gym
Tuesday- Music
Wednesday- Gym
Thursday- Art and Health
Friday- Library
I will be incorporating many elements of resiliency into our classroom. We have a Zen Zone set up to help students when they are feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, or just need a minute of mindfulness. We will also be incorporating breathing strategies and different techniques to help us gain and maintain focus. 5th grade is a big year! It’s the last year of elementary school. I feel it is my job to not only make this year a great one for those elementary memory books, but also to help your child prepare for middle school. In saying that, the resiliency strategies we will be using are life-long tools to help students learn to cope and succeed. I am looking forward to sharing more about this with you all at Back to School Night on September 10th!
Keep in touch throughout the year!!!!! Communication between home and school is crucial for success! Please feel free to email me at sinonec@middletwp.k12.nj.us and don’t forget to sign up for Remind to get “text” messages about important upcoming dates and assignments. See the image below for directions:
Wow! One week into October already?! Where has the time gone? We are learning so much! Last week was a major test week. I already apologized to the kids that I will try to stagger better in the future! We completed our first math unit, social studies chapter, and our 3rd Reading story! This week we will be catching our breath and easing into our next units of study.
Reading: This week we will be reading, “Double Dutch.” Our target skill is sequencing important events. This is actually two skills in one. The first is picking out the important events in a story and the second is putting them in the correct order. See below for a link to help your child practice this at home.
Writing: We will be researching about legends this week to help us have a better understanding about the elements we need to be sure to include in our first major writing piece of the year.
Math: This week we will begin working with expanded form and place value. The video below will help you help your student make sense of this better.
Social Studies: We are wrapping up our unit on Native Americans by creating totem poles this week. This video helps to explain why they were used and their importance to the culture.
We had and AMAZING first week! I loved getting to know all of my new students. Nothing is more scary, for students and teachers, than the first day. So many unknown elements await us as we walk through those doors! I must say this may have been my favorite first week so far! As promised in last week’s blog post, I will post our learning goals and resources to assist both students and families in better understanding them each week. I am equally excited to meet all of families of my students this Tuesday night, September 11th from 7-8 at Back to School Night.
Writing: This week students will be working on identifying the key elements of a fictional narrative and using them to author their first graded writing piece of the year. Take a peek at the short video below to review the required elements of characters, plot, and resolution.
Reading: We will also be working on story elements in our whole group story this week, “A Package from Ms. Jewls.” Students will be learning about characters, setting, and plot. We will also be completing our beginning of the year STAR testing for both Math and Reading during our reading time. Students will be bench-marked using the Fountas and Pinnell system during guided reading. This will allow me to better adjust my teachings to meet all students’ needs.
Math: In math this week, we will be working to calculate the area of rectangles.
Spelling and Grammar: Please click on the spelling words link on the side to have access to this week’s words. In grammar, we are working on identifying subjects and predicates to help us determine if sentences are complete or fragments.
Social Studies: We will begin our first unit of study exploring the adaptations Native Americans used to survive in their environments. We will begin with the Woodland tribes and move into the Plains tribes this week. I apologize, but I could not find a video resource for this!
Wow! Summer flew by this year! I can’t wait to meet all of my new students and hear about their adventures. I want to take this post to introduce myself to my new students and their families.
My name is Carrie Sinone. This is my 18th year of teaching and my second year here at Middle Twp. Elementary #2. I am a graduate of Stockton State College (now Stockton University) with my BA in Elementary Education and Psychology and a MA in Instructional Technology. I totally believe that we are all life-long learners and that we never stop gaining new information. This summer I decided to take classes and worked towards earning my Real Estate License.
My husband and I have 5 kiddos ranging in age from 11-21. I coach our youngest two daughter’s travel soccer team as well as manage our town’s lacrosse league. We are a very active family, so I understand the struggle to complete assignments! I strive to make sure that all families feel supported. Each week I will update this blog with our weekly goals as well as with helpful videos to ensure that you have assistance in completing homework. Homework will usually be short and a review of the day’s concepts. I will only assign homework on Monday- Thursdays. If it seems that your child is struggling to complete the assignments, please make sure to contact me so that we can be proactive in developing a plan for them to feel more successful. I am looking forward to a successful year for all!
Here we are! Missing our oldest! It’s very hard to get 5 kids together at once!
I have ordered most of the supplies that we will need for the year. I am asking that each family send in a box of pencils, 4 book socks, a set of inexpensive headphones, 4-6 tennis balls for our chairs, a box of tissues, and hand sanitizer. Please sign up to receive class updates via Remind. The instructions are in the image below.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Happy 100th Day of School! Happy 4 day school week! We have a lot to celebrate this week! First and foremost I want to thank all of the families who ordered books from our Scholastic Book order in January. Thanks to your orders, we were able to choose over 20 books for our classroom library for FREE! Not only that, but due to the large order EVERY student in our class got a FREE book from Scholastic books to keep!
We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day at the end of the day with a brief celebration. Thank you to our room mom for setting that up! On Thursday we will be celebrating our 100th day of school. We will have fun reviewing 100 things we’ve learned this year! Please see below for our weekly learning goals and helpful videos.
Language Arts: This week we will be wrapping up our lesson on sequencing and summarizing. We will have a test on Wednesday covering those skills as well as our weekly vocabulary words and the active and passive voice for verbs.
Math: We started Unit 5 last week. We will be continuing working with fractions this week. Specifically, we will be adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers with unlike denominators.
Writing: We will be going for gold with figurative language this week! Check out the link below to see what we’ll be up to!
Science: We are learning about matter this week. We conducted our first investigation last week and will be conducting our second one this week. The kids are LOVING science and I am loving seeing them excited about learning!
E-A-G-L-E-S! Fly Eagles Fly! All chants I am hearing as I work on this post! What an exciting weekend! We started it off sharing our Eagles pride Friday.
We also attended a showing of the Middle Twp Step Team’s African American History Month performance last Thursday. We are incredibly proud of our very on Gabrielle!
This week we will be starting the third marking period. We will also be starting Science for the year. I’m not sure who is more excited, the kids or me! Take a peak below for our weekly learning goals and some helpful videos.
Language Arts: This week we will be reading a Biography and working on sequencing and summarizing. We will have a test on drawing conclusions and vocabulary on Tuesday.
Math: We will be taking our Unit 4 test on Monday and our Cumulative Test on Tuesday. Wednesday starts Unit 5- adding and subtracting fractions. Before we add and subtract, however, we will work on finding common denominators.
Science: We will begin working with the concept of matter this week.
This week we are saying good bye to our first month together and welcoming in February. We have had a great time over the last two short weeks getting to know each other and learning new things each day! I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of our favorite new things! Each day, we learn a new way to greet each other. So far we know how to say hello in Spanish (hola), French (bonjour), German (hallo and gutan tag), Russian (zdorovo), Welsh (s’mae), Italian (ciao), and Chinese (ni hao). The kids are super excited each day to learn our greeting of the day!
We have also completed our first classroom challenge! Each week students earn a chance to complete a classwide classroom challenge if we are able to keep all the letters of CHALLENGE displayed all week. To keep our letters, we must follow class and school rules and work together as a team. Challenge task #1 was to create a list of random acts of kindness that and record them on a book mark. Students worked in pairs and came up with some wonderful ideas that I hope to see enacted!
This particular classroom challenge fit in perfectly with our read aloud. We started reading/listening to Wonder, by R. J. Palacio, last week. Students are learning about not judging others by their appearance, the WONDERful gifts that we all possess and can share with the world, and choosing to be kind. In the book the main character, Auggie, has many unusual facial features. He is often judged based on his appearance rather than who he truly is. Throughout the book, he teaches his friends and many adults too to not judge a book by its cover. This book has a very special meaning for me. My son also has many special abilities and is often judged based on them. I love teaching my students about acceptance and being judgement free. In the book, Auggie’s teacher begins each month by introduce a new precept, or life rule. We will be incorporating this concept into our class as well. For February, our precept will be “When given the choice to be right or be kind, choose kind.”
Weekly Lesson Topics:
Language Arts: This week we will be ready about Molly Pitcher and learning about using details from the text to draw conclusions and make generalizations. Please visit the spelling and vocabulary pages to the right to review this week’s words and definitions. Below is a short video about drawing conclusions:
Math: We will be wrapping up Unit 4 this week and testing next Monday. This week we will cover adding and subtracting decimals and money using algorithms that we already know. For those of us that learned math “the old way”, I have embedded a few videos to help you understand the Everyday Math way:
Science: I am super excited to start science for the year! I love science experiments! We will begin the actual science curriculum next Monday. Before we start experimenting however, we will spend Thursday and Friday of this week learning about science safety and creating safety posters. To that end, please enjoy this fun science safety video!
Important dates:
Feb. 1- trip to PAC for Step Team Black History Month presentation
Happy first day of Autumn! I am looking forward to if finally feeling like autumn at some point this week! We have individual pictures on Monday this week. Also, Scholastic Book orders are due by Friday. You can order online (see page on the right for details) or send in cash or checks made out to Scholastic Book Clubs. Every book purchased helps us to grow our classroom library as they donate books based on the amount purchased. This week’s learning goals are below:
