What We've Been Up to (In Pictures)

September was a blur and I regret to say that I neglected both Life in First Grade and Life in Fifth Grade. And while we are on the subject, I've full on abandoned my lifestyle/fashion blog. It's my weekly goal to get back in a blogging routine and I'm proud to say I've finally found my camera charger and I'm ready to go! :)

Here's what we've been up to in 5th grade, which I've learned in a whole lot different than first in some ways and almost exactly the same in others. :)  :)
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We've been learning about cause and effect. I used this same graphic organizer in first grade, but at this age, the kids were able to not only create an illustration, but structure a sentence using a conjunction or cause and effect key word. I was so impressed with how well they did on this and how much it helped! Next week, we are going to take our cause and effect sentence and create a story with it. 

This chart was not my creation! It was a pinterest find, but the link was dead. If you are the owner, please let me know so I can give you credit! It served as a great helper chart when we were discussing the fact that you write the cause or the effect first as long as you use the correct clue word.

We've also been busy learning about fact and opinion. This was my first time teaching this skill and we had so much fun with it! 

We took a passage and identified each sentence as a fact or an opinion.

Next, we created our own facts and opinions based on what color card you got. 

Isn't this little opinion the sweetest?? I just love my sweet kids!

In other random news, we are getting much more organized on how we complete centers! Since we stay at the same center each day instead of rotating every 15 minutes like we did in first, I've given the kids choices on what they can do and what they can do afterwards. This has worked out really well!

A friend told me how she used bookmarks to guide her students, so I decided to try it and it has worked out fabulously! All I have to do now is call a group to go get their bookmark and they can find their center. Simple and effective!

I would LOVE to hear from you if you're teaching the new Scott Foresman Reading Street (the 2013 common core edition). On the weekly selection test, there are 6 words that contain the "Word Analysis" skill of the week, which we briefly cover on Tuesday. These words really throw the kids for a loop because they aren't familiar with them. I don't understand the reasoning behind this if the kids have never been introduced to the word, so I created a chart to help them with this part. We did a foldable activity that I'll share later! :)