Grade 5 -- Social Studies -- Weekly Windup
March 2, 2018: This week we finished our colonial settlement simulation. We began a journal that tells the story of the life of the new settlers based upon what happened in the game. Next week we delve into the successes and failures of real early English settlements.
February 23, 2018: This short week we continued our game. We also presented our current event projects which were very interesting! Next week we conclude our game and begin to write a journal about our experiences. At home, students should be practicing levels over and over again on Dance Mat Typing (link at the bottom of my webpage). We will do another typing speed test—I’m already seeing improvement and looking forward to the speeds and accuracy reflecting it!
February 16, 2018: This week we continued to play the simulation. Students discussed our big questions: describe what life was like for the new settlers and what factors effected the success of a colony? On Valentine’s Day we learned about the history of chocolate starting with the ancient civilization, the Mayans. Thursday we wrote a summary and opinion about the current event article students selected. Graded papers were sent home Friday, included the current event summary. Current event projects and the president word search are due next Thursday. The game will continue next week, except on Thursday when we will present our current event projects.
February 9, 2018: This week some of our colonies expanded to get more land! We also did trading with the ‘Native Americans’. Ask about the (simulation) game! On Friday, we also read one choice of two very interesting articles on the Olympics in our student news magazine from Scholastic: ‘Golden Goals’ or ‘A Tale of Two Koreas’. Next week the game continues, with hostilities beginning! We will take a break on Thursday to write about the Current Event articles students bring in. We also have a quiz on the second set of 12 vocabulary words on Thursday.
February 2. 2016: Well, six more weeks of winter if you believe Punxsutawney Phil. With a snow day and a delay, our game is progressing slowly. But with the all-important selection of colony location, we will be off and running next week. This week we learned about the climate and natural resources of the northern, middle, and southern colonial regions. Students used this information to select the location of their colony. Also, because this game requires teamwork, we looked at specific personal qualities and job requirements of coordinating the effort. Every student has at least one job. Completed work is going home on Friday. Missing work can still be completed and turned in for wealth unit points in the game and credit in Infinite Campus. Next week we really get into our settlements with farming, fishing, hunting and feeding our colonies. We will likely begin to expand our colonies also.
January 26, 2018: This week we set sail and arrived in the new world! Some colonies experienced disasters, while other colonies sailed right through. We read “Why Settlers Came”, and “A Long and Difficult Journey” for more wealth units in our game. Next week we land and begin our settlements. There will be more readings to help support the colonies with wealth units. Students should be practicing on Dance Mat Typing to improve their typing speed for more wealth units, also.
January 19, 2019: This week we finished presentations and the Age of Exploration unit. I sent home the letter to Senator Formica. Please mail them if you wish. I would love to hear if you get a response! The rubric for the letter must be signed by a parent and returned to school. Next week we will be sharing our current events and beginning to load our ships to sail to the ‘new world’.
January 12, 2018: This past week and a half has been busy. Some students were finishing their letter to Senator Formica about Columbus Day. Students finished working on their own inquiry research and project about the Age of Discovery. We also played the Geo Bee from National Geographic. Congratulations to Marshall for his perfect score and best wishes as he heads on to the school competition next Friday. We are back to current events. Students brought in their self-selected article and wrote a summary and opinion about it. Another interesting thing we did was to test our typing speed using 10fastfingers.com. During our next unit we will play a simulation game and I have decided to allow students to earn points by working on their typing skills. Next week is a short week. We will tie up the exploration unit and be introduced to the simulation called Age of Discovery which includes students traveling to the Americas to settle.
December 15, 2017: This week we have been busy in the Media Center. Students are doing an amazing job with Noodletools.com. They should have several notecards at this point and almost be ready to write. This week we learned about logging on and using ebooks via the Media Center webpage. Students are required to have notecards on two sources completed in class. Next week we write our letters!
December 8, 2017: We began this week in the media center to work on a common assured research experience. Everyone 5th grader here at ELMS has this research experience so that all students know how to utilize Noodletools.com to cite sources and create notecards. This week we focused reading and taking notes using World Book Encyclopedia Online. For each paragraph students decided whether the information was relevant to the agreed upon focus questions regarding whether we should have Columbus Day or not. Next week we continue our focused research in the media center with the goal of writing a letter to Senator Formica the following week.
December 1, 2017: This week we worked on our inquiry projects. Students are answering their own questions about the age of exploration. Mini lessons included: working cooperatively (some are working in a group for this assignment, others are not), using Sweet Search effectively (skipping the ads that come up first), using topic and key words for a search (with quotation marks as appropriate), taking notes from text as bulleted facts (not sentences), and listing a source in our notes. Phew, that was a lot!! Next week we will put together our research in some way that the students select to show off their answers.
November 17: This week we began learning about some explorers, including their personal traits and motivations. Next week we will use a mentor text to develop questions to research in class after vacation about the age of Exploration. We will also see a video on the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.
November 10, 2017: This week we used ipads and played an age of exploration simulation game to begin recognizing strengths and weaknesses of various explorers, motivations, obstacles, and accomplishments. We also wrote our summary about our current event article. We reviewed the 5 branches of the military and had a panel of veterans come in to speak in observance of Veterans Day on Friday. Next week we share our projects on Thursday about our self-selected current events and will learn more about explorers, their motivations obstacles and accomplishments. We will not learn about every explorer. Students will begin an in-class research the following week to learn about the explorer or aspect of life at the times that interests them personally.
November 3, 2017: This short week we learned about some of the risks taken (imagine sea monsters!) and the characteristics of explorers. We also prepared for Student Led Conferences. Each student had a chance to get work that was missing to get it done and turned in for a grade. We went over our notebooks page by page to be sure we all had everything. Next week we begin looking at various explorers with an eye toward future research. Students should select, bring and bring in their first current event article is due Thursday (as well as HW#3) and we will write about it during class.
October 27, 2017: After creating a web about facts and questions about artifacts, we labeled a map with several European countries, organized our notebook with tabs, studied what history is using timelines, concluded Vikings with a new artifact discovery. We also began examining life at the time of early European exploration: Maya, Aztec, Inca, and Europe. Next week is Halloween—watch out for sea monsters!
October 20, 2017: To begin exploration, since it has just been Columbus Day, we read about the discovery of artifacts of the Santa Maria and completed our own artifacts. We finally put tabs in our notebooks to make finding our opening activity (Daily Geo) easy to find. We began to understand what history is by looking at timelines. We ended the week learning about Vikings and Viking artifacts. Next week we will web what we learned about artifacts to display with our ‘artifacts’, work on identifying the countries in Europe and life in the Americas and Europe during the age of exploration.
October 13, 2017: This week we looked carefully at all the components of the written part of the homework assignment: text features, vocabulary, identifying topic, main idea, and supporting details, and creating good questions about our text. Next week it is time to begin exploration!
October 5, 2017: Students became experts at longitude and latitude by playing Geo Battleship. We also went to the Media Center to learn about the nonfiction section and to select our first book to read for homework. Next week we learn about the assignment that goes with the nonfiction reading.
September 29, 2017: This week we learned about writing succinct summaries. We tried to keep them under $2.00 (10 cents a word). Students saw a model of the project they will create with their current event articles they select. Next week it is battleship (longitude and latitude)!
September 22, 2017: We practiced and studied the continents and oceans and took a quiz (all in class) this week. We began to look at text features of the atlases in our classroom (for example: each continent has a guide word at the top along with a color ‘tab’. Next week we will begin to get ready for our current event projects this year reviewing 5Ws and H and writing summaries.
September 15, 2017: This week was busy! We began by learning about September 11, created an ‘artifact’ (Ms. Hyland broke it) and tried to reconstruct a classmates’ ‘artifact’ just like an archeologist does. We also learned about cardinal and ordinal directions and created a compass rose. Next week we learn to identify the continents and oceans and begin looking at an atlas.