Wednesday, September 4th, 2019

Welcome to 5th grade and welcome to my class!  Today was the first day of school for the elementary students and finally, after a lot of preparation, the day came at last.  It was a nice to once again have a room full of smiling faces and students who are ready to learn.  

Before I continue, I want to write a little about the purpose of this blog.  I know, from my many years of teaching experience, that parents want communication.  Parents want to know what is going on in their child's classroom.  I too am a parent so I completely understand.  That is one reason I started this.  

This blog, ideally, is updated on a daily basis and its purpose is to give the reader a summary of the day in Mr. Miller's 5th grade class.  It is also a great tool for students to use to stay up-to-date if they happen to be absent on that particular day.

Some entries will be longer and some short.  I will do my best to include electronic copies of student work, if available, and for downloading.  I will also be taking pictures and posting them as well.  

It is my policy to not take pictures that include the faces of students, even if parents have given permission.  I prefer to show only hands and I try also to not show any identifiers such as names on a paper.  In this day and age, it is far better to err on the side of caution while maintaining a balance of being informative.

The students came in this morning and we began with math class.  Since today was the first day of school, it was more centered on going over expectations and procedures.  Then they got the chance to get to know me by writing down questions on note cards.  I will be answering them over the next several days as time permits. 

Students then watched a brief video about how everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, can be a "math person."

We then did an activity called "Feel the Power."  We as a class agreed to commit ourselves to being a community of lifelong learners and to help each other.  We then each signed the poster to keep as a reminder.

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Here is the poster. I covered up the student names for privacy.

Afterwards, we did a quick but challenging activity called "Four 4's."  The object is to use only the number 4, four times, to arrive at the numbers 0-20.  Any operation can be used, multiple times, in any combination.  Before starting though, I gave a brief overview of square roots, factorials (!), and the use of parentheses to group operations.  

I did start them off by doing zero.  How can I get zero by using four 4's?  We came up with 44-44, (4+4)-(4+4), (4-4)+(4-4), etc.  ​

I can't post the slide with the answers since not all classes were able to get to this activity today.  

After that was specials.  For today, we all went to the Performing Arts Center to hear teachers share about the different offerings for the performing arts specials.  

After specials was social studies.  I went over the Post Cards for Peace activity and gave an introduction.  

Once students returned for lunch, we went into our literacy block.  The literacy block will consist of reading and writing.  I start out with a read aloud of a chapter book.  This is to get students into the reader mindset and they are invited to allow themselves to be transported into the story.

Following that was writing and it was my chance to allow the students to start sharing about themselves.

To complete the day, we had what I refer to as "Tech Time."  This is when the students got out their Chromebooks to see if they could first log on, and then to join each of my Google Classroom classes.