Happy Thursday! I am so glad to be back at school learning with your children!

As we continued our study of fiction today, we thought about how the point of view of the narrator makes a huge impact on the story. Would the Harry Potter series be the same if told from the perspective of Voldemort? How about Cinderella told through the view of the Prince? Point of view is crucial to a story! 

We talked about how the best readers will often imagine how characters outside of the narrator may tell the story differently. Or, if a story is told in third person, what the characters are thinking outside of their dialogue and actions.

After the lesson, the kids thought about their independent reading books and the point of view of the narrators in their texts. They wrote reading responses to show their understanding. 

Please ask your children about the lesson from their point of view…pun intended!

PS. I think we can all agree that I am not the best symmetrical artist- but the kids enjoyed my anchor chart regardless! 

Today I introduced our thinking Journals to use at home for reading responses. Most weeks I will assign 3 reading responses to be due the following week.  This means that your child should be reading for at least 20 minutes, three times a week at home. In addition, they should be using their thinking journals to respond to what they have read.

We talked about the expectations for responses, put rubrics in our journals and looked at a few examples together. As we delve further into our fiction unit we will practice the different strategies to use when responding to a text.

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At this point in fifth grade, I expect students to respond by using at least  one of our strategies. Next quarter I will expect them to use two and as each quarter progresses, the expectation will grow. This will allow them the time to practice the different strategies before 6th grade where they will be expected to use multiple strategies throughout the entire year.

When reading responses are assigned they will be written in assignment notebooks daily! 🙂 They have TWO responses due on Monday. 

It’s Word Work Wednesday! Each week we will dedicate our Wednesday class session to developing our spelling, grammar and understanding of the English Language.

Today’s focus was on capitalization. Over the years, your children learned many different rules related to capitalization. As early as kindergarten, they learned that their name must begin with a capital letter, and so must the word “I” and the first word of a sentence. These are the “basics.” As they continued through elementary school, other rules were added to the mix, and they did their best to remember and use them. In today’s lesson, we reviewed the rules for capital letters and made a promise to one another to always try to apply those rules in any piece of writing we produce. We looked at a sample of writing that used correct capitalization, rather than incorrect, and noticed how often capital letters are used in writing. 

I shared with the class that there are so many rules, that even as an adult, and ELA teacher, I often have to look up the rules while I’m writing! For this reason, I’ve given them a cheat sheet to keep in their ELA binders to reference while writing.

When you make an inference, you go BEYOND the author’s words to understand what is not said in the text. 

I’ve taught ELA for 13 years (crazy!) and over and over again I see that our kiddos struggle with going beyond the literal meaning of the text. In my opinion, It is actually the best and most fun part about reading- what does the author want us to think and/or feel without directly saying it? It’s like solving a puzzle. To master this skill, you have to first understand how to make an inference! 

Using our amazing mentor text, The Liberation of Gabriel King, we focused on making inferences today. We specifically focused on making inferences connected to character traits. We talked about connecting our schema (our background knowledge/ mental filing cabinets) to text evidence to form inferences. Our discussion included the need to directly quote from the text to really support our thinking. 

Afterward, the kids practiced this skill in their own books. We ended class by sharing out our ideas and thoughts. The kiddos did a great job and will continue developing these skills throughout this unit and beyond. 

Reading Workshop is in full swing! Our first reading unit is focused on fiction. We have started mini lessons and practicing new skills in our reading binders. Reading homework in the thinking journal will be assigned later this week. 

Each mini lesson will be connected to one of our ten priority standards for this unit. Each student will work on these ten standards throughout the course of the quarter, monitoring their progress toward mastery – of course at their own pace and using differentiated text. 

I’m excited to watch their growth this quarter! 

Did you know your brain is like a muscle? This week we learned a new word: neuroplasticity– the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury. In other words, your brain is capable of anything and grows through challenge, failure and struggle. The harder we work it, the stronger it will get. 

Why does this matter in 5th grade? This year I will do my absolute best to challenge your kids every single day. I will encourage them to take risks, fail, and be vulnerable as they try new things. This is going to be really hard for your kiddos. They will feel frustrated, and maybe even want to give up. If this happens, I’ve accomplished my goal. Not because I’m an evil teacher who wants to make your kids cry, but because I want to prepare your child to embrace failure and hardship with a growth mindset and willingness to persevere through the tough stuff. And don’t worry, I’ll be there if the tears start flowing! 

We spent the week digging deeper into what it means to have a growth mindset. We watched videos, discussed the importance of failure and perseverance and thought about what to do and/or say when we are feeling fixed in 5th grade. Each child came up with a personal mantra that we hung up as a constant reminder to “stick with it,” even when times are tough. Please ask your child which mantra they chose and why! 

Shabbat Shalom!

Gev. Kimmel