What’s Coming up-Week of January 18-22, 2021

Hello Parents! Check out some things that are happening next week and some shots from this week! Have a great weekend! 🙂

Miscellaneous:

  • Early Release – Friday, January 15
  • Report cards will be sent home with students on Friday, January 22.
  • Please make sure your child comes to school with a jacket and outdoor clothing appropriate for the weather.

In Reader’s Workshop, we’ve been sharing some thinking that we’ve been having about our books with reading partners. This helps hold us accountable for finding and discovering more about characters and stories!

In math, we played “Spin to Win” to practice dividing whole numbers and unit fractions!

What’s Coming up-Week of January 11-15, 2021

Happy weekend, Parents! Our first week back was a success!

Actual photo of a student on Monday…

Although, I imagine students are pretty tired as we were getting back into the swing of things! We needed some reminders of our routines-including mask-wearing, positive attitudes, and general attentiveness, but we got there.  😉 Next week we’ll pick up our momentum and expectations as we continue with our learning. Check out what’s happening below!

 

Miscellaneous:

  • Jet’s Pizza Night ~ Thursday, January 14th
  • Early Release ~ Friday, January 15th.

Math: 

  • We will be assessing our work involving the division of whole numbers and unit fractions by midweek.

ELA:

  • We are focusing on themes and will begin forming book clubs for students to focus on theme work in small groups. 

Social Studies:

  • We are exploring our unit on Colonization and Settlement which examines early colonial regions.

Reader’s Workshop Challenge + Genre Review

Upon our return, we embarked on the Tower of Books Challenge, a
reading challenge for your child! Here’s how it works:
Your child’s goal is to read all of the books from a variety of genre categories. They will check off one of the boxes each time a book is read. After checking off a box, it’s time for him/her to add to… their Tower of Books! In this challenge, your child will read 20 books between now and the end of the year and they will get to try some different types of books they may not have read before, and all the while have fun keeping track of their reading! Happy stacking!

Practice Book Sort and Genre Study

 

 

What’s Coming up-Week of January 4-8, 2021

Parents,

Thank you for a great start to the year! I’ll admit that I am happy to close out 2020, but not the school year portion! It’s been a great year despite some things that were out of our control. Have a wonderful break and enjoy time with your family. I look forward to seeing everyone on our return to school on January 4th!

Cheers to the new year! 🙂

Matt

PS…See some shots from our day below!

Below are some things that we’ll focus on once we return:

Miscellaneous:

  • Welcome back ~ Monday January 4th.

Math: 

  • We will be continuing our unit involving multiplication and division of fractions.

ELA:

  • We will be transitioning in reader’s workshop and focusing on theme while working through book clubs. 

Social Studies:

We will continue our unit on Colonization and Settlement.

What’s Coming Up – Week of December 14-18

Hello Parents!I hope this week provided you some relief with our return to school! It is so great to have everyone back in the room and collaborating in person once again! Next week will be focused on wrapping up some units in preparation for our winter break. We’ll also be sprinkling in some fun activities to get us in the holiday spirit! On Friday, in lieu of a traditional party, we’ll have some fun and games and enjoy a holiday movie in the afternoon! Look for a permission email coming home soon!

Have a great weekend!

Mr. Cooley

Miscellaneous:

  • Georgetown Spirit Week:
    • Monday, December 14:  Cozy Holiday Socks and/or slippers
    • Tuesday, December 15:  Holiday Headgear: Holiday hats, headbands, hair and/or scarves
    • Wednesday, December 16:  Holiday Sweater Day -Ugly or Cute
    • Thursday, December 17:  Holiday Theme: Holiday Spirit Day- wear your red and green and white!
    • Friday, December 18: Holiday Theme: Long Winter’s Nap- Pajama Day- Holiday-themed if you have them!
  • We will be having a fun-filled day on Friday to celebrate the upcoming holiday. We will do fun activities in the morning and watch a movie in the afternoon. We are not asking for any donations.

Math: 

  • We will be wrapping up our multiplication of fractions learning with a test on Thursday, December 17th.

ELA:

  • We will be completing the writing of our narrative craft by publishing our memoirs throughout this week.
  • No reading log is due.

Social Studies:

  • We will conclude our unit called Three Worlds Meet which has examined the interaction between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in North America.

What’s Coming Up – Week of November 16-20, 2020

Hello parents,

I look forward to connecting with you next week during virtual conferences Please reference your confirmation emails from Calendly with information regarding the timing, Zoom link, etc. If you need anything before then, please reach out!

Miscellaneous

  • IMPORTANT THANKSGIVING BREAK UPDATE:
    • Please refer to Dr. VanderJagt’s email for more details. Thanksgiving Break is now ONE FULL WEEK- NOV. 21-29.
    • Light work, at-home packets will be sent Friday the 20th for work on Monday, 23rd-/Tuesday 24th.
  • Early Release: Friday, Nov. 13
  • Book Fair Nov. 16-20. Our preview day is 10:30-11:00 on Tuesday, Nov 17. Our shopping day is 10:30-11:00 on Thursday, Nov 19.
  • Fall Conferences will be held virtually this year. If you haven’t yet, please click here to sign up for a time on either Monday, Nov. 16, or Tuesday, Nov. 18. Please refer to the “Virtual Conferences” email that was sent by me!

The annual P.E. C.A.R.E.S food drive will continue until Nov. 18.  We will be keeping track of how many items each class brings in.  The class with the most items brought in by NOON on Nov. 18 will win a P.E. C.A.R.E.S t-shirt and a bowling trip to Hudsonville Lane. (If allowed this year)

This is a great opportunity for our students to care for their community, to teach our kids compassion and love for others.  Thanks for sharing in this service project with us at Georgetown.

What’s Coming Up – Week of November 9-13, 2020

Hey Parents,

Please find some information regarding our studies, as well as information about a PE CARES Food Drive below!  There will be some information coming early next week about a fundraising opportunity to help offset the cost of 5th-grade camp and celebration! Keep your eyes open! 🙂

Matt

Math

  • We are wrapping up Unit 2: Adding & Subtracting whole numbers & decimals. We will begin work on Unit 3: Multiplication and Division with Fractions 
  • We will continue to focus on mastering our multiplication and division math facts. Please practice these at home and utilize your child’s online access to MobyMax Fact Fluency homework.

ELA

  • We are continuing our writing unit on writing a personal narrative. 
  • At home reading logs are due every Monday morning.

Social Studies

We are continuing our unit called Three Worlds Meet which examines the interaction between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in North America.  

The annual P.E. C.A.R.E.S food drive will be starting on November 4. We are asking for your help by bringing in non-perishable food items for Love Inc. in Hudsonville.

Food items to consider are canned vegetables and fruits, pasta, rice, baked beans, black beans, kidney beans, peanut butter, tuna fish, etc. (please no ramen noodles, and please do not break apart packaged food)

The food drive will continue until Nov. 18.  We will be keeping track of how many items each class brings in.  The class with the most items brought in by NOON on Nov. 18 will win a P.E. C.A.R.E.S t-shirt and a bowling trip to Hudsonville Lane. (If allowed this year)

This is a great opportunity for our students to care for their community, to teach our kids compassion and love for others.  Thanks for sharing in this service project with us at Georgetown.

What’s Coming Up – Week of November 2-6, 2020

Miscellaneous

  • November 3rd – Picture Retake Day
  • Virtual Conferences
    • An email was sent regarding virtual conferences on Friday! Please check your inbox and sign up for a timeslot on the link provided!
  • Fall party! Check out some pictures below of our celebration!

Fall Celebration – We “broke out” of our class escape room by solving Halloween-themed puzzles and riddles! Though some were tough, all teams made it out in the nick of time! Fortunately, no one had to stay locked in school over the weekend!  We also played Halloween Bingo where instead of yelling, “Bingo!” when they had 5-in-a-row, students needed to “howl” like a werewolf, which was funnier than the actual game! Students also had to guess what 5 wrapped-up movie theatre candy boxes were by shaking them. The best guesses won the box to enjoy during our viewing of the movie, Wonder in the afternoon! We enjoyed the movie, ate a special snack mix made by Chef Cooley, and enjoyed some popcorn from the Eckerty family! What a fun day!

Messy Math – We’ve been looking at representing and modeling decimals in standard form, word form, expanded form, and expanded form using powers of 10.  So, we’ve created decimals using our desks as whiteboards!

What’s Coming Up – Week of October 26-30, 2020

Miscellaneous

  • Early Release: Friday, October 23rd
  • No school on Monday, October 26th

Fall Party:

This year for our Fall Celebrations we are looking forward to having parties in our classrooms, much like years past.  This year will be slightly different, in a couple of ways.

  1. Parents and volunteers will not be able to attend.  (We will miss you!)
  2. While we will have some snacks, I will be providing some allergy safe and prepackaged options.
  3. Games, crafts, and snacks need to be sent in 24 hours in advance (or more).

Like previous years, we will be welcoming your children to wear costumes, if they wish.  One change this year is that children will be able to wear their costumes to school and wear them the whole day.  The intent behind this is to limit children gathering in the restrooms to change, and limit the number of children needing assistance from teachers and staff to get into their costumes.  We invite you to send your children in a costume that includes no weapons or gore, and easily allows your child to participate in regular school routines and procedures.  There will not be any masks other than COVID-19-related facemasks allowed. There will not be time given to dress or apply makeup as in years past.

Please consider the questions below when deciding on a costume:

  • Can they take it off themselves to use the bathroom?
  • Can they fit in their seat at their desk?
  • Can they go down the slide or sit in the swings?

We ask that you save bulky, inflatable, or extravagant costumes for home use, and dress in a fun and simple costume for the school day.  Fall or pumpkin t-shirts are a great alternative as well.

My plan is to weave in festive activities and embrace the fun throughout the day.  We are thrilled at the opportunity to celebrate with your children and look forward to creating another fun and memorable school event for them.

Math

  • We are continuing our work on Unit 2: Adding & Subtracting whole numbers & decimals.  
  • We will continue to focus on mastering our multiplication and division math facts. Please practice these at home and utilize your child’s online access to MobyMax Fact Fluency homework.

Photos below show us practicing different forms of numbers-standard form, word form, expanded form, and expanded form using powers of 10.  It’s been a lot of work getting a solid foundation of decimals underneath before we tackle more complex work like adding and subtracting decimals!

ELA

  • We are beginning our writing unit to create a narrative craft.  This entails creating personal narratives and or memoirs).
  • At home reading logs are due every Monday morning.

Social Studies

  • We are continuing our unit called Three Worlds Meet which examines the interaction between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in North America. 

What’s Coming Up – Week of October 19-23, 2020

Miscellaneous:

Habits + Attitudes = Habitudes

Self-awareness is the ability to accurately recognize one’s emotions and thoughts and their influence on behavior. This includes accurately assessing one’s strengths and limitations and possessing a well-grounded sense of confidence and optimism. While there are a lot of facets to self-awareness, we specifically learned about the discipline of recognizing personal strengths using the metaphor of the Golden Buddha.

Habitudes are images that form leadership habits and attitudes, and the image of the Golden Buddha represents your student’s ability to recognize their personal strengths to gain self-awareness.

Recognizing strengths is the ability to identify or acknowledge the existence of one’s own positive qualities and gifts in order to develop confidence and optimism. The golden buddha was hidden beneath a concrete facade, and people did not see the true value of the statue until they looked within. In the same way, students must look inside themselves to recognize their strengths in order to become self-aware and see their true value.

Through this lesson, we challenged your child to think through some difficult questions—How can you help someone else find the “gold” inside? What are some things you can do this week to encourage someone who does not see their gifts?

This year for our Fall Celebrations we are looking forward to having parties in our classrooms, much like years past.  This year will be slightly different, in a couple of ways.

  1. Parents and volunteers will not be able to attend.  (We will miss you!)
  2. While we will have some snacks, I will be providing some allergy safe and prepackaged options.
  3. Games, crafts, and snacks need to be sent in 24 hours in advance (or more).

Like previous years, we will be welcoming your children to wear costumes, if they wish.  One change this year is that children will be able to wear their costumes to school and wear them the whole day.  The intent behind this is to limit children gathering in the restrooms to change, and limit the number of children needing assistance from teachers and staff to get into their costumes.  We invite you to send your children in a costume that includes no weapons or gore, and easily allows your child to participate in regular school routines and procedures.  There will not be any masks other than COVID-19-related facemasks allowed. There will not be time given to dress or apply makeup as in years past.

Please consider the questions below when deciding on a costume:

  • Can they take it off themselves to use the bathroom?
  • Can they fit in their seat at their desk?
  • Can they go down the slide or sit in the swings?

We ask that you save bulky, inflatable, or extravagant costumes for home use, and dress in a fun and simple costume for the school day.  Fall or pumpkin t-shirts are a great alternative as well.

My plan is to weave in festive activities and embrace the fun throughout the day.  We are thrilled at the opportunity to celebrate with your children and look forward to creating another fun and memorable school event for them.

S.O.A.R. Kickoff!

This week, we launched our PBIS OUTSTANDING TICKETS. Students went on a TOP SECRET MISSION to find two SOAR agents! The scavenger hunt ended back in our classroom with students needing to find an Outstanding taped underneath a table. When individuals or the whole class earns an Outstanding ticket for excellent behavior or SOARing in some way, everyone benefits! We’ll celebrate when we reach a total of 20 Outstandings!

Writer’s Workshop: Making Some Revision Decisions!

I writing, we’ve been working on a lot of pre-writing skills, including writing some stellar sentences! We’ve used the DRAFT mnemonic device to build a skillset to help us as writers. This week, we’ve tried some digital workshop strategies and utilized Google Classroom to collaborate and share our work!

 

What’s Coming Up – Week of October 12-16, 2020

Math

  • We are assessing our work on Unit 1: Addition & Subtraction with Fractions. Once complete, we’ll begin our next unit on adding & subtracting whole numbers & decimals. 
  • We will continue to focus on mastering our multiplication and division math facts. Please practice these at home and utilize your child’s online access to MobyMax Fact Fluency homework.

ELA

  • We’re working on building on our foundation of establishing strong independent reading habits and diving deeper into our stories. 

Social Studies

  • With Columbus Day on Monday, we are beginning our unit called Three Worlds Meet which examines 
    the interaction between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in North America.

Miscellaneous

Fall Party

This year for our Fall Celebrations we are looking forward to having parties in our classrooms, much like years past.  This year will be slightly different, in a couple of ways.

  1. Parents and volunteers will not be able to attend.  (We will miss you!)
  2. While we will have some snacks, I will be providing some allergy safe and prepackaged options. 
  3. Games, crafts, and snacks need to be sent in 24 hours in advance (or more). 

Like previous years, we will be welcoming your children to wearcostumes, if they wish.  One change this year is that children will be able to wear their costumes to school and wear them the whole day.  The intent behind this is to limit children gathering in the restrooms to change, and limit the number of children needing assistance from teachers and staff to get into their costumes.  We invite you to send your children in a costume that includes no weapons or gore, and easily allows your child to participate in regular school routines and procedures.  There will not be any masks other than COVID-19-related facemasks allowed. There will not be time given to dress or apply makeup as in years past. 

Please consider the questions below when deciding on a costume:

  • Can they take it off themselves to use the bathroom?  
  • Can they fit in their seat at their desk? 
  • Can they go down the slide or sit in the swings?  

We ask that you save bulky, inflatable, or extravagant costumes for home use, and dress in a fun and simple costume for the school day.  Fall or pumpkin t-shirts are a great alternative as well. 

My plan is to weave in festive activities and embrace the fun throughout the day.  We are thrilled at the opportunity to celebrate with your children and look forward to creating another fun and memorable school event for them. 

Habits + Positive Attitudes = Habitudes

This week we began Habitudes which examines social-emotional learning.  This visuals-based curriculum provides an image to focus on along with a brief lesson, activity, and class discussion time.  This week, we launched with The Iceberg. The image of an iceberg represents your leadership. The 10% above the water is your skill. The 90% below the water is your character. It’s what’s below the surface that sinks the ship. The Iceberg teaches ethical responsibility. This week, your student learned about responsible decision making, which is a core competency of Social and Emotional Learning. We’ll try to do one Habitudes lesson per week. Read more here: Parent Letter – The Iceberg

Book “Commitment Day”

In our Reader’s Workshop, we’re getting deeper with our books. This meant that we have to make a commitment to a novel in order to apply what we’re learning to grade-level appropriate books. This week, your child “committed” to a book much like student-athletes might commit to school on a signing day. Check out some students committing to a book below and ask your child what they chose and why!

Safety Teams 3 & 4 Help Keep Kids at Georgetown Safe!

Walkathon Celebration of Pizza (not pictured) and Ice Cream!