Welcome to 5th grade!

I am so excited about the new year! Fifth grade will be both challenging and fun! I am looking forward to meeting all my new students and their families.

I hope you will find this blog informative and helpful throughout the year. I will be sending home daily emails with information about the daily work done in class. 

This blog is a place to go to find support for math, science, and social studies. I will post links to sites with video tutorials, or additional worksheets to help with skill practice at home.

I will post additional information including grading rubrics on any major projects and assignments your student might be doing in class.

I will post pictures of work and projects completed in class. Since this is currently not a private site, I will never post pictures or names of students. I am working on adding the ability to have a place that is not considered public to be able to post photos of students, their work alongside their names.

Here's to a great year!

Mrs. LaDuke

Science Units

We are on the end of our Rocks and Minerals unit. Next week the students will be taking a rock identification test (Tuesday) and the Rocks and Minerals unit test (Wednesday).

Students are also doing a research project on the internet for rocks and minerals. They will create a powerpoint to demonstrate their information learned.

Objectives for this unit were:

Students will learn the difference between rocks and minerals

Student will learn the different types of rocks

Students will learn how each different type of rock is formed

January 24th the students will begin their Weathering and Erosion unit.

Unit Objectives:

Students will understand the processes of weathering and erosion

Students will understand how materials become soil

Students will identify weathering

Students will distinguish between weathering and erosion

Students will model erosion

We will be on this unit for about 2 weeks. Then we will begin the soil unit.

Soil Unit Objectives:

Students will list components of soil

Students will diagram soil layers

Students will relate components of soils to the growth of plants

Students will explain how plants control erosion

Students will investigate ways to provide mineral nutrients for plants to grow without soil

Students generally become very excited about rocks during and after this unit. We actually live in a great place to continue to investigate rocks. All of the National Parks here in Utah have lots of information on the geology of their park.

On The Utah Geologic Survey website, there is a ton of information and guides to Utah's geologic sites. There are "field trips" you can take, as well as information on places to collect rocks and fossils. There is also a walking tour of buildings in downtown Salt Lake, each using a different kind of rock.

Here is the link for those activities:

Virtual Geologic guides

http://geology.utah.gov/geo_guides/index.htm

Geosights:

http://geology.utah.gov/surveynotes/geosights/index.htm

Rock collecting sites:

http://geology.utah.gov/utahgeo/rockmineral/rockhounder.htm

Take some time to look around more on this site. I love it. It is a great place to find FREE and cool things to do with your kids in the summer months.

Have fun and happy rock hunting!

Poetry Unit

We have already started our poetry unit and the kids are so excited! They each received a new steno style notebook to write and collect their poems in.

We will be writing poems all through January and into most of February. We will begin publishing our poems at the end of February. Students will produce a bound poem book that will become part of their writing portfolio that they will share in the late spring with their families at our Authors' Tea.

Students will learn to write many different kinds of poems including alliteration poems, haikus, color poems, 5 senses poems, poems for two voices and cinquains.

GRADING:

Students are required to publish 3 of each kind of poem they are taught throughout the unit. Their points drop by 1 for each poem not written (out of a possible 72 points).

Students also receive points for different components of their completed poem book. These points combined will represent a grade for the work completed over the 2 months in class (a total of 107 points)

Separately, students will receive a grade based on rubrics for each for several of the required poems as well as on one selected poem of their choice.

Here is an example of a rubric that will be used for the various kinds of poems for grading at the end of the unit. This particular rubric is for their choice poem.

Poetry Rubric

ALL POEMS	Excellent!	Good	Satisfactory	Needs Work	Not Done
Each poem has a title	4 points all poems have a title	3 points 3 of 4 poems have a title	2 points 2 of 4 poems have a title	1 point 1 poem has a title	0
Each poem is neatly handwritten in pen or is typed	4 points all poems are either neatly handwritten or typed	3 points 3 of 4 poems are either neatly handwritten or typed	2 points 2 of 4 poems are either neatly handwritten or typed	1 point 1 poem is either neatly handwritten or typed	0
Each poem has a colorful illustration (either a border, picture, photo, etc…)	4 points all poems have a colorful illustration	3 points 3 of 4 poems have a colorful illustration	2 points 2 of 4 poems have a colorful illustration	1 point 1 poem has a colorful illustration	0
**Rough draft for each poem is present	**8 points all poems have a rough draft	**6 points 3 of 4 poems have a rough draft	**4 points 2 of 4 poems have a rough draft	**2 points 1 poem has a rough draft	0
Each poem has been peer edited	4 points all poems have been peer edited	3 points 3 of 4 poems have been peer edited	2 points 2 of 4 poems have been peer edited	1 point 1 poem has been peer edited	0
Each poem has been self-revised with 3 content changes (word choice, line break, etc…)	4 points all poems have been self-revised with three major content changes	3 points 3 of 4 poems have been self-revised with three major content changes or all 4 poems have been self-revised with at least 2 major content changes	2 points 2 of 4 poems have been self-revised with three major content changes or 3-4 poems have been revised with at least 1 content change	1 point 1 poem has been self-revised with three major content changes or 1-2 poems have been revised with at least 2 content changes.	0