Welcome to a new year!
I hope you all had a very relaxing and fun winter break! I wanted to update you on what we will
be doing in January. For the next
3 weeks we will be doing an interdisciplinary unit on sustainable living. This unit will focus in the content
areas of literacy and science.
Students will be doing research on a topic of their choice that has to
do with sustainable living. The
end product will be a 3-minute video that each student will be producing in
class. All of our 5th
grade classes at Lake Elmo will be participating in this unit. We are very excited about taking on
this new challenge, as this is the first year we have tried teaching this
unit. We are collaborating with
many other schools throughout MN and there is even one school in Norway that is
also working on this same unit.
Wayne Feller (technology integrationist for our district) has been
instrumental in helping us to develop this unit and will continue to support us
throughout the unit. If you get a
chance, ask your child about the three guests we learned about this week (we
did video conferencing with 3 individuals who are doing some amazing work in
the area of sustainable living).
For the next 3 weeks we will NOT be doing spelling lists/tests in order
to accommodate our schedule.
In math we have just started unit 7, which focuses on
multiplication and division of 2 digit numbers, 3 digit numbers and
decimals. This unit often is quite
an eye opener for many students.
Learning how to multiply and divide (especially decimals) can be very
challenging. This would be a great
time to have your child practice some of their basic multiplication and
division facts at home. Students
are grouped into 3 or 4 different groups in math so that they can be
appropriately challenged. Please
check their planners daily to see what their assignment is. Unfortunately I cannot show each
students individual plan for math assignments in Skyward, so the planner is a
great tool to be able to see what their daily math assignment is.
As the calendar has turned to 2016, I look forward to
continuing the fun and learning in our classroom. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact
me. My contact information is
available on my school webpage, which can be accessed at the Lake Elmo school
website or by copying and pasting the following web address:
- Ben Halley
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