It's THAT Time of Year Again!

It's that time of year again.  BACK TO SCHOOL.  This blog is a way for the kids and parents of The Vielleux Crew to communicate throughout the year.  We'll show you what we're doing in class and I will post documents and other items that the kids might need here.  This blog will evolve and change through the year, but it should always be useful and interesting.


The first thing I would recommend is reading through the Vielleux Crew Handbook, which will help parents and students understand how things work in fifth grade.  The last page should be filled out and returned to me as soon as possible.


A popular question is:  What does my child need on the first day of school?  Comfortable clothes (dressed for the weather), shoes, a snack and a lunch or lunch money.  We do have a snack time every day.  Fifth graders eat lunch at 12:45-- by that time we're ravenous-- and so we stop around 10 to have a snack and refuel our brains.

Exciting New Science Unit Beginning

This past week marked the beginning of our Interdependence in Ecosystems unit.  Part of this unit requires us to examine part of a food chain closely, and to do this we are studying decomposers... more specifically RED WORMS. In fact we have a thousand of them arriving early next week.


To learn about them, we spent some time on a webquest using a website about Herman the worm!  http://urbanext.illinois.edu/worms/anatomy/index.html  WHAT FUN!

We are really hoping to start a worm farm composting system in the school cafeteria.  We shall see how well fifth grade teachers are at worm babysitting over the summer though...


We began the week by learning about the source of energy for any food chain-- producers.  Producers are organisms that can make their own food.  We learned that plants are producers and get their energy from the sun.

Calendar Starting to Fill?

Please mark your calendar for the following important fifth grade dates:

Fifth Grade Calendar

Proud Mommy Moment

So sorry!  Just had to share!

How does oral history change through the generations?

Students have been noticing that the stories they have heard about the Revolutionary time period are often inaccurate, or that sometimes different sources report different information.  We discussed today how oral history played a part in this variety.

Four students went out into the hall, and the students left in the classroom were told a story.  This story was then shared with one of the students in the hall.  This was our first student story. 

The person who came in from the hall first, called the next person in and said:

And then the third...

And the last...

But the real story was this: 

The Plight of Roger Newman

Roger Newman and his wife lived a nightmare last evening. It all started after

leaving a dinner party, when the Newman’s Porche

a wet surface into a retaining wall near a country crossroads on Highway 246.

Brenda Newman, although seat-belted, hit her head and lost consciousness.

skidded onQuickly

evaluating his options, Roger decided to walk to a gas station about two miles back.

What else could he do? It was 1:15 A.M. and his wife needed immediate care!

Ten

minutes into his walk, Roger saw a pick-up truck with three suspicious-looking

youths. They stopped and assessed Newman’s predicament. Seeing the headlights

of an approaching car, the boys quickly took Newman’s wallet (containing $175),

credit cards, wedding ring, and watch, despite pleas from Newman about his injured

wife up the road a quarter mile.

As the truck sped off, the on-coming car, driven by one of Roger’s co-workers,

Angela Rogers, stopped, was assessed of the situation, and drove Roger to his car.

Delicately removing Brenda and placing her in the back seat, the two then pursued

the truck for several miles but were never able to catch up.

From the Angels of Mercy Hospital the next day, Newman reported the incident

to the police, who told him there was little hope of recovering the stolen items.

On the other hand, Brenda Newman regained consciousness by early morning and

enjoyed a hearty breakfast of oatmeal, toast, and cranberry juice.

 

What are the kids doing who aren't in Band? Writing!

Non band students are getting some extra writing practice these days, and two Vielleux Crew students need to be recognized for their superb essays.  Congratulations to Kylee and Odin for their fantastic writing pieces.  Please read below.  I just had to scan them in, because the handwriting effort helped the writing be meaningful!  I could tell as a reader how much they really loved being Vermonters. 

Mr. Eastman takes over while Mrs. Vielleux is at a PBIS Conference

Who said having a substitute is terrible?  It had to be someone who never had Mr. Eastman.  Ever since his first appearance this year, the kids have been begging for Mr. Eastman to return.  I will be attending the PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) Conference during March 15-17.

An equally exciting piece of news is that Vielleux Crew students will be going to Havover High school next week to participate in their challenge course.  Please remind your kids to wear comfortable athletic clothing and sneakers.

Please mark your calendars for the annual Field Day prep meeting.  The meeting will be held the Thursday before April vacation at 6:30 pm in the library.  If you can't make it to the meeting but would like to be included on the email list, please let me know.

Wasn't there a movie about this?

Ok, so THEATER GROUP has started, and I will say that the kids in the Vielleux Crew are pretty DRAMATIC this year, but who knew they could dance too...

HACTC student to Illustrate our Stories

Students from the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center will be illustration our stories using a 2D flash animation.   Here are some photos from the first meeting of author and illustrator.

And, just for fun, here's a great shot of Brennan using his book as evidence for a reading log!

Welcome the NEW YEAR!

Today we welcomed in the New Year by discussing what a resolution is.  Together we made academic, social and personal resolutions and tonight for homework students should be finishing up a first draft of these.  This draft might be "all she wrote" since we have a new and exciting collaboration coming up with the HACTC (Hartford Area Career and Technology Center).  For this collaboration to work, students are going to need to write narrative stories.

Also, you will notice that "STUDY MATH FACTS" appears on the homework sheet all week.  We are beginning what I consider to be the most important unit of fifth grade in mathematics.  It includes multiplication, division and fractions.  Parents will notice that division looks different to begin with...  Be watching for instructional videos to appear in the blog.  These videos will help you to understand why we teach division a little differently to start off.

Our new Social Studies Unit is "Colonial America."  Kids will be learning about life in the colonies, and will begin to research a particular topic of interest and present his or her findings to the class.

And last, but not least, we have a student teacher for the next 7 weeks.  Mrs. Barlow is her name and she comes to us from Brigham Young University.  Her husband is a medical student from Dartmouth.  After working with us, she will continue to work with DBS students in the first grade.