Thursday, November 19, 2015

Thankfulness Project

Before you begin this assignment, please read all of the directions below.

1. In your Google Drive, make a new document.

2. Copy and paste the list of your classmates names into this document.

3. For each person, write a sentence or two saying something you appreciate about that person. Be kind, be sincere, and be specific. You must use the person's name in your sentence.

4. When you finish, re-read everything you wrote. Make corrections, as needed.

5. Name your document. Then, share your document with me: hlong@gillispie.org.

Here is the list of your classmates:

Amelia
Celeste
Colin
Cyrus
Deanne Paola
Gabrielle
Jack
Justin
Max
Maxwell
Natalia
Nicola
Raj
Rex

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Adding Mixed Numbers with Khan Academy

Check out this video from Khan Academy on how to add mixed numbers.

Then, complete pages 109-112 in your workbook. You may work on your own or with a partner. When you finish, try one of the practice activities for this skill in Khan Academy.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Prime Factorization with Khan Academy

Check out this video from Khan Academy on how to write ANY number as the product of primes! Bonus: Refresher on prime vs. not prime and introduction to exponents.


Friday, October 9, 2015

Learning Dialogue with Mr. Seahorse!

In fifth grade, students include dialogue in their writing. Eric Carle's Mr. Seahorse provides some examples of how to correctly punctuate different sentence types within dialogue. Take a look!


The first sentence shows how to punctuate a statement:

"It's time for me to lay my eggs," she said.

Notice that the sentence ends with comma, instead of a period, which is placed inside the quotation marks. Also, the next word is not capitalized.



The next bit of dialogue is a question:

"Can I help?" asked Mr. Seahorse.

Notice that the question mark goes inside the quotation marks and the following word is NOT capitalized.



Next up is an exclamation:

"Oh, yes. Thank you!" said Mrs. Seahorse.

It has an exclamation point inside the quotation marks, and it is followed by a lower case letter.



The final example is the trickiest one!  This is a type of dialogue where the description of who ssaid it interrupts the dialogue:

I'll take good care of our eggs," said Mr. Seahorse, "I promise."

Notice that there is a comma after the first part of the statement and a comma after the name of the person who spoke. This is also how you introduce a bit of dialogue.

For example:

Mrs. Long said, "Check back here if you need an example of how to punctuate dialogue."

Transition Words

One of the goals for fifth grade writing is to include transition words in our writing. Here is a list of helpful words to get you started!


Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Fast Fact Practice

Do you have a NEED for SPEED?

Test your speed and accuracy on your multiplication facts with this game:

Tug Team Multiplication

Leave me a message in the comments to tell me what you think of it!

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Looking for a good book?

You've asked your friends, you've searched the classroom library, you've even wandered the aisles of your favorite book store and you still can't find anything to read?

Try one of these websites, suggested by Gillispie's own Ms. Cathy Blake!  My favorite is the second one, because the titles were selected by students.

American Library Association Summer Reading Lists
ala.org/alsc/compubs/booklists/summerreadinglist

Center for Teaching and Learning: Kids Recommend
http://c-t-l.org/kids-recommend/

Great Schools: Parent Picks for Summer Reading
http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/parent-picks-third-fourth-fifth-grade/

If you look at one these lists and find a new book to try, leave a comment to let me know.