What's Ahead for Our Final Week Together?

Today the kids and I mapped our final week together. It's coming quickly. Many of the kids have shared their mixed emotions with me while walking to lunch, talking in the classroom, or hanging out at carpool. They're excited to become 4th graders but sad to leave. Our last day will be a rough one. It's hard to spend two whole years together (more than 2,000 hours, if you can believe it)then say goodbye.

Here are our plans for making each day special:

Friday
We'll spend our morning finishing up our Expert Project boards. After lunch we'll have some writing workshop time to work on our final writing pieces of the year. Finally, we'll head out to Splash Day at 1:30.

Tuesday
We'll part of the morning sharing our Expert Projects. There will not be formal presentations. Rather, we'll have a small Share Fair in our room. We'll invite a few classes in and break into halves so that eleven of us will be presenting at a time while the other eleven have an opportunity to browse other projects. We will also have a good chunk of time set aside to wrap up those final writing pieces. In the afternoon we are going to study the list of texts we've read together over the past two years and think of ways to sort these and share the patterns that we see through graphs and tables. Afterward we will conduct a vote to see which texts were our very favorites so we can revisit these during the final few days of school.

Wednesday
We'll start the day by sharing our writing pieces with one another and possibly making one final visit to our Book Buddies in 1st grade. Around 10:00 we'll head out for our 5k walk through the neighborhood. I'm hoping to have the kids bring the school's palm pilots so they can capture pictures of various things we see as part of a scavenger hunt (think: find parallel lines, find an animal in the beginning stages of its life cycle, etc). When we get back we'll order a few pizzas for lunch. I've asked the kids to bring in $3 for this. We'll spend our afternoon writing letters to Skyler's dad thanking him for his correspondence these past few months from Afghanistan.

Thursday
We'll sing a few of our favorite songs, begin cleaning up the room, read a few of our favorite books together, create plans for our summer reading, attend the 5th grade graduation, and come back to our room for our class party.

Friday
Our final day together will be spent cleaning out our things, writing letters to the incoming 2nd graders, performing an appreciation for our departing 5th grade class, sharing a final book or two together, and saying goodbye.

Important Dates

As always there is a lot of things going on in these final two weeks of school. Here is a rundown.

Thursday, 5/26
Closing Picnic 6-8pm

Friday, 5/27
All materials for EPs are due in the classroom so we can work to complete these. The kids are publishing a final piece of writing that demonstrates all they can do as a departing third grade writer.We've spent between 8-10 hours on each of these projects in class. Any work left unfinished by the end of the day on Friday will be sent home to be completed over the long weekend.

Tuesday, 5/31
The kids will present their projects to one another as well as share them with one or two other classes here at CFI. I will then send them home so that they can present their projects to you. While I worked my way around the room helping those who needed it, this project is very much theirs. What you will see is a demonstration of where they are in terms of researching, writing, careful work, perseverence, etc. There will be a reflection sheet for you and your child to fill out and bring back in. The projects themselves can stay at home.

Wednesday, 6/1
We will walk our 5k. The cancellation of the district's annual walk/run really threw me for a loop. I had thought of having us incorporate a visit to CiCi's as part of our walk but after driving the route became concerned about crossing Clemson Rd as such a large group - not to mention the long walk through the Sandhills parking lot. So we're going to walk our 5k through the Summit neighborhoods. I'll have some pizzas delivered here to CFI to help us celebrate our walk. If anyone would like to join us please let me know.

Thursday, 6/2 and Friday, 6/3
These are both half-days. There will be a lot going on with 5th grade graduation as well as 5th grade appreciations. While in the classroom we'll be tying up any loose ends, cleaning and packing up, and reflecting back on our two years together. If anyone would like to stop in to say goodbye please do so before that final morning. I'd like for those final moments to be our own as we wish one another farewell for the summer and I send them off to another teacher (gulp!).

That's about all I can think of at this moment. If you have any questions let me know.

Expert Project Request

We have been hard at work on our Expert Projects. The kids are now either close to finishing up their research or have already moved on to using these facts to write the informational text that will appear on their project.

I expect that we'll all be ready to put together our project boards by the middle or end of next week. We plan to do this together at school. Would you please help your child get everything they will need this weekend (board, bottle of rubber cement, etc). They have been thinking about what they want their projects to look like and should have ideas as to what they will need.

I'd like the kids to bring all this in next Friday, 5/27. We will devote the morning to putting our boards together. Since this is generally a step in the EP process that happens at home I think they'll really enjoy working alongside one another.

Testing, Testing, Testing

We finished up PASS testing this morning. Each of the kids completed the reading test on Monday, the math test on Wednesday, and either the science or social studies test this morning. I've been very impressed by everyone's ability to take their time and provide carfully selected answers. This can be a challenge as the minutes, or even hours, tick by and exhaustion and boredom sets in. We stopped a few times to silently stretch and walk around the room to keep our minds fresh.

Thanks to the families who sent in breakfast snacks and juice to help us get ready each morning. Making this week feel fun and special (in a non-threatening way) goes a long way in helping the kids to remain positive and focus on a 50+ item test.

No Homework: May 9 - 13

I am not assigning any homework this week other than to read each night. There is a chance we may work on something in class that might be sent home to be completed but nothing that I am anticipating at this point.

The "States of Matter" experiment presentations went really well last week. Thanks for helping to make these a success!

Saluda Shoals Cancellation

I just wanted to pass along that I've decided to cancel the end-of-loop class picnic at Saluda Shoals. Given that the date the park offered us is at the beginning of a holiday weekend there was going to be a scheduling conflict for some families. Originally I had thought we could offer it as a "stop by if you can" type of outing. I've since become concerned that some of the kids are going to feel left out or that some families may have previous plans spoiled. We'll plan to have a celebration here in the classroom during the final week of school.

Homework: May 2-6

1. Read each night
2. Conduct your "States of Matter" experiment and come in ready to share the results with us on Thursday (#s 1-11) or Friday (#s 12-22). Bring your proposal back in to give me the day you present. You can share illustrations, photos, data, etc. How and what you offer is up to you on this one.

States of Matter Explorations

Here are some pictures from our explorations with ice. The kids were scattered around the front of the building to see what they could find out about melting. Among other things, we observed that some surfaces are hotter than others (especially metal), some colors of paint seem to be warmer than others, and ice melts faster when surrounded by water rather than surrounded by air.