I somehow forgot to updat.e the webpage yesterday. I guess I'm not back in the swing yet, but here I am.

We spent Monday getting ourselves organized for our student led conferences. Our evidence binders and reflections are all ready to share. We look forward to seeing you all in the next couple of weeks.

The only homework this week is word study and I-search readiness.

We are very busy ending our first trimester at BRMS. So busy, in fact, that Ms. Lamb has not updated the blog for a week! Today, both classes presented their ADAPT projects for Round One, Hunting and Gathering Societies. Everyone seems to understand how these societies operated in the geographic settings they were in.

Ms. Lamb's class got a good long double period to work on I-serach (with the computers). After vacation, Ms. Lamb will go over the presentation guidelines (now on the webpage) and everyone will practice. Presentations will start on December 1st.

Student Led conferences also begin on December 1st. As the name suggests, students will be leading these conferences and teachers will be able to give very specific feedback to students. Parents can get a good understanding of what goes on at school and what the fifth grade expectations are. We encourage you all to sign up for a time by contacting Ms. Lamb at cate.lamb@cesu.k12.vt.us.

We saw the play today. It was terrific. We have many great thespians on our team.

Remember, this week and next Ms. Lamb is giving time off from journal homework so everyone can get their I-search research done. We are looking for at least 45 notes.

Ms. Lamb's class got to move forward with their ADAPT projects today.

Ms. Lamb is in Fairlee today at a conference with Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Marting (and some other teachers.) Mrs. Gibson was in for Ms. Lamb. I hope everyone was kind and helpful.

Lit circles met today. Many groups were posting on the moodle.

In social studies, students chose an article from the latest Jr. Scholastic and wrote key points and did a small project. This will be used for reading evidence (comprehension) and current events.

Mrs. Clark's class worked on Adapt. Ms.Lamb's class won't get to it until Thursday. In writing we looked together at ther rubric. We then read our piece to a partner and looked at comments made on the moodle. All are working to get their piece the best it can be for report cards. This piece will be an evidence piece for meeting the standard in writing.

Ms. Lamb will be away tomorrow at a PBIS conference in Fairlee.

We are really rolling on our I-search now. Today we had a check in. We will not have journal homework this week. The aim is to get 45 notes taken by Friday.

We had word study today. This will be an evidence piece for the report card, so do your very best, especially with the sentence writing.

Tomorrow, we will work on polishing up our writing piece to match the rubric for writing. This will also be a report card evidence piece.

Speaking of report cards... the trimester ends on Friday November 19th. This means we are collecting evidence to see if students meet the standards. This evidence will be in a binder and presented to students and parents at student led conferneces in early December.

Today we all worked on computers. We finished our second draft and posted it on the moodle. This way Ms. Lamb can see the progress of our work and all of the comments from other writers.

Ms. Lamb's class got to work more on ADAPT in social studies.

Today both classes had literature circles. We met as a group, summarized the story, read our journal entries and commented on each other's views.

In social studies, both groups moved forward with ADAPT. We  started a read a loud of Amazon Diary, the story of a boy who meets up with the Yanomami of the Amazon Rainforest (who just happen to be a hunting/gathering society.)

Remember the party is this Friday. If you did not get your permission slip in, go talk to Mr. Hamilton.

Today Ms. Clark's class moved forward with ADAPT. There was a lot of intereseting questions floating around like...

"How do landforms affect our government?" or

"How do we use minerals for our clothing?"

In writing, we worked a little on keeping up with our lit. circle assignments. Then Ms. Lamb shared moodle comments on her "Crabby Day" writing piece....then showed some of her changes.

Students then worked in groups to make their pieces stronger. We tried the "praise, question, wish" model of feedback. Students began a second draft and will be posting to the moodle.

Today we had some computer lab time to finish and print our writing piece, update the moodle by responding to Ms. Lamb and uploading our writing piece and searching for our internet source for I-search.

We had library and a regular word study day for langauge arts.