Play Day Rocked!!!!!

Play Day was an absolute blast today!
Easily the best Play Day we've ever had at Beauclerc!

Check out these awesome looking Superstars! We came ready to win - even if we didn't!

Mrs. Wood got a great picture of her class! Too bad Mackenzie wasn't here today though!

Here's Mrs. Wood dancing during Play Day intermission. We got plenty of pictures of Mr. Sofferin dancing too....but they...uh....got lost...yeah....

Petra and Alyssa showing off their head wraps!

The first event the classes competed in was the potato sack race!

Next was the Dress Up Relay! That tie looks familiar!

Next was the Beach Ball Relay!

Jasmine, you're supposed to share the ball!

After intermission was the Balloon Pop Relay! The littlest kids were surprisingly good at popping the balloons!

Next we did the Jump Rope Relay - We had a bit of a slow start, but Alyssa helped us catch up with a total of 200 jumps!

After that was the Penguin Relay!

The last relay was the 3-Legged Relay!

Alexis and Cynthia, this probably would have been easier running instead of crawling!

Finally, the last event was Tug of War!

Mrs. Wood's class was awesome, but ultimately was defeated by Mrs. Hartless's Heroes!

Then it was our turn! As much as we've missed Drake, Derek, Kaleb, and Joshua, we've never missed them more than we did today! We could really have used their strength!

Although we didn't win everything, we had a blast the entire time, and I'm very PROUD to say that everyone in both Mrs. Wood's and Mr. Sofferin's class showed exceptional sportsmanship, which is really the most important thing!

Massive kudos to Coach Scott, Coach Dudjak, and D.J. Runs-A-Lot for putting on the best Play Day Beauclerc has ever seen!

Fifth Grade Dance is Coming Up!

Permission slips went home today for the Fifth Grade end of the year dance. This will be our best dance yet, as our own DJ Runs-A-Lot (Mr. Gonzalez) has volunteered to DJ! It's gonna be a blast, but we want EVERYONE to be able to attend and have a good time, so please note the following:

• The dance is on Friday, May 5th, from 6:30 to 8:30
  
• Permission slips are due by May 5th
• There is no cost for the dance, but the permission slip MUST be turned in and filled out completely in order for your child to attend
• For those of you who are new to Beauclerc, please be advised that this is not a formal "dance" with slow music like you'd expect in a middle school dance. It's just a bunch of kids jumping around having a good time.
  
• Students in extended day may not stay at the school to wait for the dance to begin, as extended day ends at 6:00 PM.
  
• School dress code will be enforced at the dance - This means no backless shoes, no spaghetti straps for the girls (or boys!), and no low-hanging pants.
  
• Students who misbehave will be removed from the dance
• All students MUST be picked up no later than 8:30

Click here to see some way cool pics from last year's Fifth Grade Dance!

duPont Field Trip & Report Cards

A permission slip went home today for a half-day field trip to duPont Middle School. The field trip will be a tour and orientation into the school. Most of our students do go to duPont in sixth grade. Even if your child will probably be going elsewhere, if there is even a chance that your child will attend duPont, it would be a good idea for your child to attend the field trip. There is no cost, so please make sure to get the permission slips in ASAP! Thanks!

Also, make sure to look for REPORT CARDS tomorrow!!

A final heads up - time flies in the final nine weeks, and a lot of our time is filled with other activities, as you will see on the list of upcoming events to the right. So, during this nine weeks, there will be far fewer grades than in previous card markings. As a result, each individual test/assessment grade will be worth a larger part of the grade for the nine weeks. For science, basically the entire fourth nine weeks grade will be based on the science fair project, and also on their weekly progress. We will go back to having weekly math quizzes this week, and will do a lot of one-off quizzes on the skills we are practicing. Their social studies grades will primarily consist of their participation in class activities and discussions, along with a written assessment.

Another One Bites the Dust!

Sigh! Yet another hard-working, reliable student has moved from Jacksonville and from room 70! Joshua and his family headed for North Carolina Thursday morning! As saddened as I am to lose such an awesome student, I hope Josh and his family have a wonderful time in their new home and their new school. It won't be the same without Josh. Meanwhile, we're now down to a 3:2 ratio of girls to boys after losing Drake, Derek, Kaleb, Lucas, and Josh. But we have a lot left to do this year, so we'll keep carrying on!

This coming week, we have a two exciting things happening on Friday - the second grade is putting on a wonderful play about Humpty Dumpty! And then it's Play Day! Play Day is always a blast - of course after losing all of our biggest and strongest boys, we might have a bit of trouble winning the Tug-of-War. But that won't stop us from having a positive attitude and trying our hardest!

Also this Monday after lunch we'll be choosing our parts for American Grandstand. I've made a Play List for the blog with most of the songs from Grandstand so that you can get an idea of which one you want to be in.

Finally, yesterday I issued a challenge to all of my students - After teaching them the Scott Flansburg method of quick, mental addition, I challenged the kids to try to beat me in an addition race. It's simple - 25 3-digit addition problems. All in your head. Scores based on speed, with a 10-second penalty for any incorrect answers. Any student who can beat me next week will win $1,000 in Bonus Money! So get practicing this weekend, and let me know on Monday if you'd like to take the challenge!

Practice Mental Addition

A good way to practice your mental math skills is on the computer since you don't have to deal with writing. If you know how to use the number keypad, it's a lot faster to type the answers than write them.

You can practice with some of the addition quizzes on Math Fact Cafe. They only have problems up to 2 three-digit numbers, but it'll improve your speed and accuracy to practice with these smaller problems.

Unleashing the "Human Calculator" in Your Children!

A big focus of our math that we're doing for the last two months of school will be on methods for fast, efficient, MENTAL computations in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. A lot of the strategies we will be working with are just building upon what we've done all year, but some will be new strategies that I've saved because kids tend to be better able to learn mental math strategies at this point in the year after several months of building up critical thinking skills.

The strategy I introduced today was a method for adding multi-digit, multi-addend problems (for example, adding four three-digit numbers) very quickly, completely in their heads, without the use of paper or pencils. After just a very short session this morning, MANY of the kids in the class were computing these kinds of problems literally in just a few seconds! Not all of the kids are that secure yet, but we will be working more on these kinds of problems to get them more secure.

Parents, take a moment sometime tonight or over the course of the next few days to have your child show you how quickly they can add. See if they can solve a multi-digit, multi-addend problem in their heads faster than you can on paper! If they can't yet, they should take some time to practice using the method that we practiced today. You can get practice problems using the worksheet websites in the list of links to the right.

Getting Ready for Middle School

Can you believe there's only 42 days left of fifth grade??? It's crazy how quickly time has been moving lately! We have just over 8 weeks left of school. And considering that the last two weeks will be filled with field trips, parties, picnics, and American Grandstand, we really only have about 7 weeks of actual learning time. Of course, it REALLY comes down to even less than that since we have Play Day, assemblies, chorus performances, art fair, and all sorts of other things going on during that same time!

So the moral of the story is WE HAVE VERY LITTLE TIME LEFT TO GET YOUR KIDS READY FOR SIXTH GRADE!!!! These last several weeks will be a crucial time for getting the kids ready for middle school. I will shifting gears in math and focusing specifically on what they'll need to know when they walk in the door in August.

I already have a pretty good idea of which kids will be placed in advanced math classes based on this year's math grades. With those kids, I will be introducing them to a whole lot of pre-algreba skills, including exponents, single and multi-step equations, order of operations, and so forth. We have touched on most of the skills already, but we will go into a bit more depth over the next few weeks. For the rest of the class, and also with the advanced-class-bound students, we will be turning our attention back to computations - mainly dealing with multiplication, division, and fractions.

The focus will be on finding short cuts and being able to fluently solve multi-digit problems mentally rather than on paper. As I am well aware that there are many middle school teachers who are still teaching out of out-dated math books, I will also re-introduce the kids to the standard, traditional algorithms. But I will make sure the kids understand HOW and WHY the algorithms work and what the relationship is between those algorithms and clustering. This way when students get into a more "traditional" math environment, they'll have an edge up because they'll understand what's REALLY going on with the numbers when they long divide.

In social studies we will be exploring the events that led up to the Civil War. We're actually quite a bit behind in our social studies, but the timing couldn't be better with the latest "Confederate History Month" controversy! We'll be digging deep to try to understand the motivations for the abolitionist movement, the formation of the Confederacy, and the decision to go to war.

Finally, in science we will be concentrating on our science fair projects. Just as a reminder - all writing, tables, and graphs on the display boards, aside from headings and titles, are required to be TYPED. We will be using a large portion of our time on Fridays to type the reports, make tables, and design graphs. No student has an excuse to not have their project typed.

We've got loads of fun stuff happening over the next several weeks, and nobody wants to be left out of anything! So let's make sure everyone is working hard every single day from here on out!

Update on End of the Year Party

Parents - you can ignore my previous post. The party will go on as originally planned - on Friday, June 4th. You'll definitely want to take the day off of work to be there for the celebration! There will be special awards and goodies handed out to the kids. We'll have a big end-of-the-year feast (no idea what will be on the menu just yet - we're open to ideas)! And we'll check out our class's Fifth Grade Video Year Book, projected onto a big screen! Best of all, I've reserved the Multi-Purpose Room so that we can bring both classes together for the celebration!

More details will be posted and sent home as we get closer to the end of the year. After all, we still have a ton of stuff to do before we get to June 4th. I just wanted to give you all a heads up so you can get off of work if you need to! I hope to see you all there!!

IMPORTANT NOTE!

Parents,

I previously listed our end of the year party as June 4th. However, this date may have to be changed - If you need to take off of work to join us, please do not do so until the date is confirmed. I'll have an update shortly.


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