Well, we are making them. It seems that somethings always go slower when you want it the most. The students do have their own blogs now, but the are still in the process of setting them up. It seems that careful typing of address into blog rolls and getting widgets activated takes longer than one would think. Hopefully we will have them going this week.
How did we get to October? If we were back home I would mention the changing leaves or the weather changing to get a little cooler (warmer for you southern hemisphere people). But, living in Singapore which is just above the equator we don’t have seasons, we have sunny and hot, and sunny and hot, that is it.
Last week in class we began to use Google Docs as a way to write and plan together on one page. We quickly learned that 22 of us using Explorer would crash the system. We had to adjust and retry. Thank you Google Chrome.
What we were doing was creating a set of learning ideas that we would like to share with the world. Each student was writing about what they feel we should share and how the best way to present it would be. This is a step towards the students having their own individual blogs hopefully sometime in the next 2 weeks. One of the examples we have come up with is showing how our writing leads got better through revision and addition of details.
We also have been doing out best to be readers of blogs so that when we lauch ours we have a pretty solid idea of what we want it to look like and what it should be sharing. We look forward to having those up soon and would appreciate any support and comments you may have.
As we wrap up our second unit of study I started to think , how can we better show what we actually know? It is very easy to hand out papers for students to reveiw and do problems as practice, and there is a place for that. Alternativly though, the students could be teachers, and they could not only practice questions but more importantly they could talk through their thinking as they explain to the world how to solve some math problems. Now as the teacher I wanted to to have some targetted skills. I asked them to share how you solve the following:
– Addition and Subtraction with decimals
– Multiplication with decimals
– Lattice multiplication
– Showing expanded notation
– Measures of central tendency (Mode, Median, Range, Min, Max)
– Word Problems
All students worked in pairs and created a catelogue of answers. In reality I can could post every video they made but that is not quite sensible. So this time I selected quiet randomly and have Saaya and Mia to share with you this time. If we made mistakes, allow us to have them, as we are learning to and part of learning is builing on mistakes and improving from them.
In RLA (Reading Language Arts) we have been talking a lot about the skills of good readers. One of the ones we have been really focused on is the fact that good readers THINK about what they are reading. They don’t just read it and forget it but htey take the time to really inderstand the text. One strategy that we are using is post-it notes. We like to have them handy and as we are reading we tear them off, write down any thoughts, questions, connections, predictions that we have at that partictular moment in the book. We then put it right there onto the page. This allows us to remember just what we were thinking when we were reading and gives us the opportunity to be more effective at sharing our thoughts about books and reading. Today Ishan is going to share some of his post – it notes.
We have begun to use our new foss kit on Landforms. This is a first time for me as my previous school did models and design as well as mixtures and solutions. The students were very engaged as they debated how to best represent our intermediate school as an overhead view. Take a look at them working so hard.
Look at Mr. Symes, he went and made a whole page for exam review for the year. Instead of starting from scratch, here is the link. It will also be on the links portion of the blog.
Hey gang,
As we started to look at other student’s work in class today relating to blogs I thought it would be a good idea to take a more detailed look.
Go to the following link (blogs) and then on the right select the student who has the matching student number as yourself.
So, tonight you are going to be exploring other students blogs. You are going to be looking at the following criteria:
1. The written content. How are they writing? It is fluent? Does the writer know the audience? Do they provide detail where appropriate?
Write a paragraph explaining what they do well as a writer. Then write a paragraph explaining where you feel they need to improve.
2. Topics: Writers and publishers have to choose a topic to write about. What do you think about the topic the student you are reading has done? How do you think they are selecting the topic? Write a paragraph to explain.
3. Presentation. What do you think of the visual presentation of the blog? What do you like? What would you change? Write a paragraph explaining.
There you go. We will talk more about blogs in the morning.
We began some science exploration today and the students were right into it. we are looking at the scientific method. They were asked 2 key questions. Of the 5 provided tape samples, which was strongest and which was stickiest? They worked in pairs to observe the 5 tapes and then as a class we developed a procedure to follow for our experiment. They are really into it and are having some intesting results. We took the time to talk about why they are not yet getting the exact same results and what additional varaibles may be contributing to the difference. I got all excited to share a photostream of their learning, grabbed the camea, took some shots, uploaded it and … nothing. Seems flickr knows I have new photos (twice) but somehow can not put them in the recent feed to the RSS photo file is not working.
Here are a few shots of the kids working, the rest are on the photostream found by clicking the more photo button on the side.
There you have it, the children have made it a day and a half. They are all here and happy, a good sign. So far we have put some time into getting to know eachother. I already know who the listeners and non-listeners are based on them asking me if I am married, have kids etc as I did a whole intro on this…Ahh the first day, a big blur for the fifth graders.
We have started our first math assessment and all the students worked so hard on it. They were very dilligent and ready to show their stuff.
But it is not all work, here they are getting to know Mrs. Bucknall’s students.
Welcome to Mr. Howitt’s 5th Grade
2011/2012
I would like to offer a very warm welcome to the new school year here at SAS.
Many of you are probably very interested in “Who’s my teacher?!”, just as I am equally interested in “Who are my kids?!”.
Like some of the students I am new to Singapore American School this year, although I have been to Singapore many, many times before for vacation.
I am originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Home of a big mall, and the Edmonton Oilers Hockey team. I studied at the University of Alberta and never thought I would leave home. Why would you ever leave beautiful snow?
But, In 2003 my wife Lynsey and I moved to Shanghai where we taught at Shanghai American School (SAS). We were going for 2 years for an adventure, we stayed eight years. During my time there I spent six years teaching fifth grade and then the last two years were in seventh grade math. While at SAS I had the great privilege to be working with a very talented group of students and staff and I look forward to more of the same at my new SAS!
Over the years Lynsey and I added to our family, we first brought Orange and White home. They are our Shanghai street cats who are interestingly colored orange and white. In 2008 we had our first son, Benjamin who will start preschool this year at SAS. 2010 we had Luke right before Christmas. At that point I joked to Lynsey we should change the cats names to R2D2 and C3PO, as we already had Obi-Won (Ben) and Luke, she did not agree. (Star Wars reference).
And now here I am, in the beautiful tropics, with the blue sky, sunshine and ready to have a terrific year with you all.
Mr. H's 5th Grade Blog 