Class Inca Projects

How about these simply stunning Inca projects that the students made? What a fantastic job they did.

Grade 5 at New Searles in the News

From yesterday's Nashua Telegraph here.

Students collect canned goods for food pantry

Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009

Courtesy photo The fifth grade class from New Searles Elementary School incorporated its "Harvest Party" theme into a successful canned food drive to help out the Nashua Lutheran Church food pantry. In the front row, from left, are Julia Primeau, Alysssa Gillin, Carson Dowling and Marissa Daley. In the back row, from left, are Tenley Mazerolle, Vincent Annicchiarico, Evan Guay, Joshua Varney, James Monis and Kyliea Dacosta.

NASHUA – The fifth-grade class from New Searles Elementary School incorporated its “Harvest Party” theme into a successful canned food drive to help out the Nashua Lutheran Church food pantry.

The students were given the challenge to see which class could collect the most food items in one week. They collected more than 200 food items, with Mrs. Cornwall’s class winning bragging rights as being the class that collected the most. Mr. Hansen’s and Mr. Souter’s class were not far behind.

The Nashua Lutheran Church was very happy to receive the items to support their food pantry that is open to the public once a month.

Partial-Quotients Division Algorithm

We are learning (or relearning) the Partial-Quotients Division Algorithm in math. This may be as new to parents as it was to some students. If you want to see how it is used you can view online examples at the Everyday Math website. If you go to this webpage you can find examples and animations of how to use this algorithm. If you want to see animations and explanations first click on the button for the Handbook Animations. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page under division and you can click on a few examples that you can view.

A Special Guest Reader

Nashua Mayor Donnalee Lozeau visited our class today and read "Jack and the Beanstalk" to the class.

More "So Much Depends Upon..." Poems (Part 3)

With 27 students in my fifth grade class, there are bound to be lots of poems!

"So Much Depends Upon..." Poetry Part 2

Here are some more of the my student's Animoto poems based on "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams.

"So Much Depends Upon..." Writing a Simple Poem

This week we have again used a poem by William Carlos Williams as inspiration for writing our own poetry. Here is a summary and background information on how I used the poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" last year with my class to produce "digital poetry" using the Animoto website. Here is the first batch of poems written by my students this year. It is interesting to observe as my students start moving away from the familiarity of completing schoolwork with "right answers" to being willing to undertake the challenge of letting themselves be creative with schoolwork that doesn't have "right answers" but instead allows for a more creative expression with words. I do wish that the Animoto website had a better selection of songs to choose from, but some of these song choices match the poems pretty well.