Behind the Scenes with 5M

Our week flew by! We were busy working with our learning partners to challenge our thinking, we started collecting ideas for our personal narrative, we began our chemistry unit, and we got to lead another CLAYMO lesson. It was nice to have the early release on Friday after such a packed week.

We worked with our learning partners to develop prompts and questions we can use anytime during reading to help push our thinking deeper.  It was nice to work together to create this resource because through discussing our ideas, we were able to come up with really useful prompts and questions to challenge our thinking. We now have a resource to use whenever we are writing or talking about our reading.  

The first step in writing our personal narrative is collecting a whole bunch of possible story ideas. We took a couple days to make some lists based on a couple collecting strategies to help us brainstorm some stories. Next week we will choose a couple to try them out for our narrative. We are being pushed to write a narrative that follows what we know about published stories - the characters are developed, there is a main problem that the character has to work through, and that problem gets resolved by the end of the story.  

We could not wait for this chemistry unit to begin! The first concepts we explored were creating and separating mixtures. We made a mixture of gravel and water, a mixture of powder and water, and a mixture of kosher salt and water.  Then had to experiment with how to successfully separate the materials from the water.  We ended up having to use a small screen for the gravel and a coffee filter for the powder. We are in the process of discovering how to separate the salt from the water. We are loving this unit!  

The focus of our CLAYMO lesson this week was being kind and helpful around the school. We each led our group to develop a poster that will give examples of ways we can be kind and helpful in specific areas of the school like the classroom, the hallway, the bathroom, and the playground. We really got to work as a team to create these posters.  Soon they will be hung around the school as a reminder to all of us of how to be kind and helpful all the time.  

We hope you have a great weekend! Next week is conference week!

Reporters - 5M