Happy Halloween!
This week we will work on Edgar Allan Poe, Poetry and our novels. We return to having vocabulary lists and students will write sentences with them this week, as they are homophones. I will condense the WW and SJ groups this week.
Week of Oct. 31
Focus on Homophones-words that sound alike but are spelled different. We will write sentences with these words this week. I am combining WW and SJ this week .
LN
billed/build
marry/merry
break/brake
choose/chews
loan/lone
allowed/aloud
cell/sell
flour/flower
SJ and WW
allowed/aloud
colonel/kernel
leased/least
altar/alter
ascent/assent
merry/marry
whether/weather
metal/medal
DC
click/clique
borough/burro/burrow
gilt/guilt
bard/barred
lichen/liken
very/vary
ascent/assent
colonel/kernal
Friday, October 28, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Week of Oct. 25
Hello! I trust you all had a restful and fun-filled mini-vacation! The first quarter is in the hopper and we are embarking on round 2. We still have much to accomplish and the time does just fly, so let's get busy!
Remember, awards ceremony is this Friday and reports cards go home too.
We will begin our Edgar Allen Poe and Poetry phase of the year this week. We will read a couple poems , a short story, and complete some writing assignments based on Poe. We will continue on our poetic journey with learning poetic terms, write some haiku, perhaps a sonnet and maybe a ballad, we'll perform some poetry and read and discuss many others. Much of the focus will be on learning figurative language (onomatopoeia, alliteration, simile and metaphor, personification, etc...)as well as mood and tone in writing. Next month, all classes will read Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse aloud in class and learn about the dust bowl and the depression.
We continue with phonics in class this week. We will focus on the -tion and -sion endings of words and the varies ways to pluralize words. We will word sort in class and play phonics games. I am also hoping to pay some attention to the -ar -ir and-er sounds within words. Many students are struggling with the diffERences;)
We will probably wrap up Secret Garden and have a unit test next week. This will cover the book, elements of a fairytale and tall tale and review some of the phonics we've focused on. Wee Free Men will probably finish next week and then, 5C will have a unit test the following week. Both tests will have a variety of question types: true and false, identify the quote, matching, essay etc... More on that when I write the test:)
No vocab this week. I will introduce poetry terms to know (spelling won't count, just definition) and phonics work in class. There will be a test on the poetry terms, so students should begin learning them.
I will send your child's grade home in their agenda this week, (I already have for two classes). Please check with them.
Remember, e-mail with any questions and thanks for the opportunity to teach your children.
Remember, awards ceremony is this Friday and reports cards go home too.
We will begin our Edgar Allen Poe and Poetry phase of the year this week. We will read a couple poems , a short story, and complete some writing assignments based on Poe. We will continue on our poetic journey with learning poetic terms, write some haiku, perhaps a sonnet and maybe a ballad, we'll perform some poetry and read and discuss many others. Much of the focus will be on learning figurative language (onomatopoeia, alliteration, simile and metaphor, personification, etc...)as well as mood and tone in writing. Next month, all classes will read Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse aloud in class and learn about the dust bowl and the depression.
We continue with phonics in class this week. We will focus on the -tion and -sion endings of words and the varies ways to pluralize words. We will word sort in class and play phonics games. I am also hoping to pay some attention to the -ar -ir and-er sounds within words. Many students are struggling with the diffERences;)
We will probably wrap up Secret Garden and have a unit test next week. This will cover the book, elements of a fairytale and tall tale and review some of the phonics we've focused on. Wee Free Men will probably finish next week and then, 5C will have a unit test the following week. Both tests will have a variety of question types: true and false, identify the quote, matching, essay etc... More on that when I write the test:)
No vocab this week. I will introduce poetry terms to know (spelling won't count, just definition) and phonics work in class. There will be a test on the poetry terms, so students should begin learning them.
I will send your child's grade home in their agenda this week, (I already have for two classes). Please check with them.
Remember, e-mail with any questions and thanks for the opportunity to teach your children.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Homework
5A and 5B should read the next chapter in Secret Garden for homework tonight and write a summary on it.
5C should finish reading chapter 7 in Wee Free Men and write a summary.
5C should finish reading chapter 7 in Wee Free Men and write a summary.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Week of Oct. 17
Hello! Last week was a little crazy with the typed final draft of the fairytale and the project assignments both due! What was I thinking? Anyways, most of us survived it :) The projects look great and the revised fairytales are much improved. The fairytale, edited rough draft and the story map will be added to your child's MAPP binder.
Please check with your student to make sure they handed in all assignments that were due. If you still aren't sure, please e-mail me at: lberner@neusecharterschool.org and ask. I am missing many assignments. I understand it was a lot at once. Please double check.
Due was:
1. fairytale: story map, edited version and revised version (3 documents)
2. Book Report Project: Review of book, poem, some artistic representation of book (3 items)
Next Book Report is an auto/biography! The Bookmobile will be on campus this Tuesday and the Book fair continues also.
No spelling words this week, we will work on vocabulary in class.
Teacher Workday this Friday and the following Monday, no school for students!
Report cards go home next week. Awards ceremony next week.
If your student has missed a lot of school or just hasn't been doing their work, be sure they are caught up with assignments. As I tell children all the time: Some credit is better than no credit. I will generate a list of missed assignments and write who is missing what in their agendas this week. Homework cannot be made up, but I will allow partial credit for most other assignments.
The chip reward party is coming up. We will host a popcorn/movie day! If your child has been suspended, he or she cannot participate, regardless of how many chips they have. Students who have lost too many chips or have been suspended, will be given work to do and supervised in either my, Mr. King's or Mrs. Dohner's room. Congratulations to the overwhelming majority of 5th grade students for a terrific semester of good behavior!
This week: we will continue to work on phonics and vocabulary; finish up Secret Garden and continue Wee Free Men; begin looking at Edgar Allen Poe and Poetry and maybe do some acting....many surprises in store! Thanks for all your continued support!
Please check with your student to make sure they handed in all assignments that were due. If you still aren't sure, please e-mail me at: lberner@neusecharterschool.org and ask. I am missing many assignments. I understand it was a lot at once. Please double check.
Due was:
1. fairytale: story map, edited version and revised version (3 documents)
2. Book Report Project: Review of book, poem, some artistic representation of book (3 items)
Next Book Report is an auto/biography! The Bookmobile will be on campus this Tuesday and the Book fair continues also.
No spelling words this week, we will work on vocabulary in class.
Teacher Workday this Friday and the following Monday, no school for students!
Report cards go home next week. Awards ceremony next week.
If your student has missed a lot of school or just hasn't been doing their work, be sure they are caught up with assignments. As I tell children all the time: Some credit is better than no credit. I will generate a list of missed assignments and write who is missing what in their agendas this week. Homework cannot be made up, but I will allow partial credit for most other assignments.
The chip reward party is coming up. We will host a popcorn/movie day! If your child has been suspended, he or she cannot participate, regardless of how many chips they have. Students who have lost too many chips or have been suspended, will be given work to do and supervised in either my, Mr. King's or Mrs. Dohner's room. Congratulations to the overwhelming majority of 5th grade students for a terrific semester of good behavior!
This week: we will continue to work on phonics and vocabulary; finish up Secret Garden and continue Wee Free Men; begin looking at Edgar Allen Poe and Poetry and maybe do some acting....many surprises in store! Thanks for all your continued support!
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Week of Oct. 10
I spent the weekend in Boone and leaves are already changing into brilliant colors! We are graced with one beautiful state. If you can get out west in the next couple of weeks, go! You will not be disappointed.
This week will be a little different. We are winding down the quarter already (time flies when you're having fun!) and book projects are due this Friday. Also, a completed and edited fairytale is due Wednesday. I have worked frantically this weekend to edit them. Please do not be alarmed by the red marks. The whole reason I had students type them was for ease of editing. Most of them look worse than they really are:)
There will be no homework this week, except these two assignments and a spelling test on Friday (more on that in a minute. Of course, i encourage students to continue to read.
We will be listening to our books on audio with renewed urgency this week, as Mrs. Berner wants to move on to Poe and Poetry!
Vocab will be much different for the next couple weeks. With the exception of the DC group, students will not be writing sentences. I want students to become more aware of the patterns in spelling and so I will be reviewing phonics, on vocab tests and in class.
Remember: Book Fair starts this week!
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: DC
Must use in sentences and know meanings of prefixes.
Prefixes: in: meaning: not
insincere
informal
infrequent
inhuman
prefix: un: meaning opposite of or not
uneasy
unknown
untidy
unaware
prefix: dis meaning not or opposite of
disbelief
disconnect
discourage
disorder
mis: meaning bad or badly
misspell
misfortune
mischief
misleading
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: SJ
Must know spellings and rules only, no sentences
oy/oi ou/ow
voyage drowsy
poison southern
appoint thousand
employ coward
annoy allow
Long e
needle
season
compete
feature
fifteen
Exceptions:
pleasant
steady
healthy
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: WW
Must know spellings and rules for sorting, no sentences
Long Vowels (say my name, say my name)
a/ai o u, ui e,ea, ee i
shake joke June disease knife
chain chose juice sweep strife
faint slope smooth beast
blame foam suit steam
taste whole beetle
these
Exceptions
great
been
build
guilty
dread
juice
thread
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: LN
Must know spellings and rules only, no sentences
Beginning blends: wh, tw,qu
which
when
what
where
twelve
tweezers
twist
quick
quarter
question
Ending blends: nt, nk, sh, ft
stunt
frequent
thank
blank
drink
crush
smash
drift
swift
This week will be a little different. We are winding down the quarter already (time flies when you're having fun!) and book projects are due this Friday. Also, a completed and edited fairytale is due Wednesday. I have worked frantically this weekend to edit them. Please do not be alarmed by the red marks. The whole reason I had students type them was for ease of editing. Most of them look worse than they really are:)
There will be no homework this week, except these two assignments and a spelling test on Friday (more on that in a minute. Of course, i encourage students to continue to read.
We will be listening to our books on audio with renewed urgency this week, as Mrs. Berner wants to move on to Poe and Poetry!
Vocab will be much different for the next couple weeks. With the exception of the DC group, students will not be writing sentences. I want students to become more aware of the patterns in spelling and so I will be reviewing phonics, on vocab tests and in class.
Remember: Book Fair starts this week!
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: DC
Must use in sentences and know meanings of prefixes.
Prefixes: in: meaning: not
insincere
informal
infrequent
inhuman
prefix: un: meaning opposite of or not
uneasy
unknown
untidy
unaware
prefix: dis meaning not or opposite of
disbelief
disconnect
discourage
disorder
mis: meaning bad or badly
misspell
misfortune
mischief
misleading
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: SJ
Must know spellings and rules only, no sentences
oy/oi ou/ow
voyage drowsy
poison southern
appoint thousand
employ coward
annoy allow
Long e
needle
season
compete
feature
fifteen
Exceptions:
pleasant
steady
healthy
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: WW
Must know spellings and rules for sorting, no sentences
Long Vowels (say my name, say my name)
a/ai o u, ui e,ea, ee i
shake joke June disease knife
chain chose juice sweep strife
faint slope smooth beast
blame foam suit steam
taste whole beetle
these
Exceptions
great
been
build
guilty
dread
juice
thread
Vocabulary Week of Oct. 10
Group: LN
Must know spellings and rules only, no sentences
Beginning blends: wh, tw,qu
which
when
what
where
twelve
tweezers
twist
quick
quarter
question
Ending blends: nt, nk, sh, ft
stunt
frequent
thank
blank
drink
crush
smash
drift
swift
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Homework tonight
Tonight's homework is to type the fairy tale in Times New Roman and bring it to class, either on a flash-drive (I can print it) or typed. Students do not need to do the reading summary tonight (unless they don't type). Thanks.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Week of Oct. 3
Hello Families!
We will begin a new adventure in vocabulary this week and I wanted to share the program with you and explain what’s going on. Last week, I assessed 5th grade students for phoneme awareness in order to gauge each child’s awareness of word structure and spelling patterns. It was an eye-opening activity, to say the least. It appears that, even if a student has a very well developed vocabulary, their understanding of spelling and phonics rules are sorely lacking. So, I am going to have an intensive couple weeks of workshops and centers to remind students of these rules. By the 5th grade, students should be focusing on roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes), but we cannot move into more advanced vocabulary ideas until we have the basics down pat. I am hoping to be up to speed in a few weeks, in order to continue building higher level concepts.
I am using several programs to aid my speed course in phonics. Words Their Way was the initial assessment. Students will be placed into spelling/vocabulary groups based on their scores in my initial investigation. The groups are: Letter Name (LN), Within Word (WW), Syllable Junction (SJ) and Derivational Constancy (DC). I will write your students group in their agenda this week, please look for it. As they master the concepts, they will be placed in the next highest group. My goal is to have all students working in either SJ or DC by the end the month. 5C should all be working in DC.
We will not have spelling/vocabulary words this week, but that does not mean we won’t be working on vocabulary! Instead of a test on Friday, we will work on centers in the classroom, have phonics instruction in class and peer-edit our Fairytales in an effort to spot some of the simpler errors we all are making in writing. I encourage you to work with your student on this. Some of the websites I have found that include games, sorting and other various activities are:
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/sv/books/content/wordsort/
http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/family.cfm
http://www.spellingcity.com/spelling-games-vocabulary-games.html
Please encourage your student to visit these sites for extra practice.
This week, we continue reading Secret Garden and Wee Free Men.
Some of these words/sounds may seem simple, but classroom assessment indicates many students do not have these skills mastered. It shouldn’t take long to grasp these concepts, but they must be firmly understood in order to move forward with higher level vocabulary. Spelling and understanding word structure is imperative for fluency and comprehension in reading.
I also encourage you to visit my blog for updates and ideas; the link is on Neuse Charter’s website.
Also, please come by and support me as I join other staff members in a spirited game of volleyball against the NCS Cougars this Thursday at 4:30. It should be a lot of fun to watch teachers embarrass themselves Hope to see you then!
We will begin a new adventure in vocabulary this week and I wanted to share the program with you and explain what’s going on. Last week, I assessed 5th grade students for phoneme awareness in order to gauge each child’s awareness of word structure and spelling patterns. It was an eye-opening activity, to say the least. It appears that, even if a student has a very well developed vocabulary, their understanding of spelling and phonics rules are sorely lacking. So, I am going to have an intensive couple weeks of workshops and centers to remind students of these rules. By the 5th grade, students should be focusing on roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes), but we cannot move into more advanced vocabulary ideas until we have the basics down pat. I am hoping to be up to speed in a few weeks, in order to continue building higher level concepts.
I am using several programs to aid my speed course in phonics. Words Their Way was the initial assessment. Students will be placed into spelling/vocabulary groups based on their scores in my initial investigation. The groups are: Letter Name (LN), Within Word (WW), Syllable Junction (SJ) and Derivational Constancy (DC). I will write your students group in their agenda this week, please look for it. As they master the concepts, they will be placed in the next highest group. My goal is to have all students working in either SJ or DC by the end the month. 5C should all be working in DC.
We will not have spelling/vocabulary words this week, but that does not mean we won’t be working on vocabulary! Instead of a test on Friday, we will work on centers in the classroom, have phonics instruction in class and peer-edit our Fairytales in an effort to spot some of the simpler errors we all are making in writing. I encourage you to work with your student on this. Some of the websites I have found that include games, sorting and other various activities are:
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/sv/books/content/wordsort/
http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/family.cfm
http://www.spellingcity.com/spelling-games-vocabulary-games.html
Please encourage your student to visit these sites for extra practice.
This week, we continue reading Secret Garden and Wee Free Men.
Some of these words/sounds may seem simple, but classroom assessment indicates many students do not have these skills mastered. It shouldn’t take long to grasp these concepts, but they must be firmly understood in order to move forward with higher level vocabulary. Spelling and understanding word structure is imperative for fluency and comprehension in reading.
I also encourage you to visit my blog for updates and ideas; the link is on Neuse Charter’s website.
Also, please come by and support me as I join other staff members in a spirited game of volleyball against the NCS Cougars this Thursday at 4:30. It should be a lot of fun to watch teachers embarrass themselves Hope to see you then!
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