5th Grade: Second Quarterly Report

I love sharing these because I'm always amazed at the immense amount of learning that takes place when it's all child-led. And my nerdy, academic self gets so excited seeing it all detailed according to the required NYS "subjects." 


Second Quarterly Report
2015/2016

Helena Aviles
5th Grade

Hours of Instruction: 225 +
Helena has made satisfactory process in all subject areas.




​Math: 

• Life of Fred math books 4 and 5
• Began playing the advanced version of DragonBox, a game that teaches algebraic concepts. 
• Watched a kid’s intro to algebra on youtube that explained how algebra originated in Iraq
• Watched more MathAntics and BrainPop math videos, particularly on the subject of fractions

Social Studies:

• Geography of Asia based on a business trip to China that her dad took
• Sent Panda (stuffed animal) to China and looked at photos of Panda in various Chinese locations
• We made a large map of Asia and put it on the fridge and marked some of the cities Panda visited
• We read off the nations and capitals while locating them daily; Helena now is very familiar with the basics of Asian geography
• Made a humorous “scary” film while pointing to nations/capitals in Asia with a knife and threatening the viewer to learn their lessons well! 
• We watched some of the Netflix documentary mini-series Wild China and learned all about the geography and natural history of various regions of China along with the cultures of various people groups native to those regions.
• Learned all about the culture/lifestyle of the Puritans through listening to the classic The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. 
• Watched My Friend Martin, a kid’s movie on MLK; watched two other short videos on MLK
• Discussed civil rights issues in light of current events and politics

Science:

• Attended a choreo-physics performance at U Albany by Sinopoli modern dance company; pre-performance we watched Youtube videos and read wiki’s on physics concepts; learned about the physics of dance with concepts such as cat-righting reflex, vortex shedding, echoes, waves, force, and Newton’s laws. Went up on stage as a volunteer during the performance - in a theater full of high school and college kids - and answered question about force, to which the director replied, “That’s a perfect answer.”
• Explored electricity: 

    - book and kit of basic electric experiments and things to build
    - Redstone in Minecraft
    - Attended a Little Bits electronics maker’s workshop at the Gravity Tech Center  

• Continued to study botany and herbalism and Latin names of plants as well as their uses.
• Made herbal remedies and used them
• Read Ranger Rick magazine 
• Visited the Utica Zoo
• Watched a documentary on pandas in China
• Weekly Chemistry Club where she explored the periodic table of elements, solutions, and other basic chemistry concepts
• Studying ornithology in local birding club

English Language Arts

• Daily reading
• Read a graphic novel of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, amongst other books. We’re going to see a kid’s play of this at Proctor’s soon.
• Spelling and punctuation and grammar are attended to in real life scenarios; lots of practice as we edited her novel
• Learning cursive writing with iPad app
• Writing club at Yacon, with Jennifer Roy, local, award-winning children’s author and homeschooling parent; received excellent feedback on her writing skills! :) 
• Wrote several chapters in a novel she's creating; started other stories as well
• Took notes, made doodles, made crafty inventions/props, looked up names for characters and lots of other prep work for a novel she began writing
• We continued to discuss how the subject and verb must agree in number and how “there” and “here” are not subjects; special note of subject/verb agreement in sentences beginning with “here” or “there”
• Classic literature The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton Porter; The Witch of Blackbird Pond by E. G. Speare; A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle;  read or listened to audio of many other books as well, especially fantasy fiction genre such as Spirit Animals series
• Read portons of Writer to Writer to her by Newbery Honor author Gail Carson Levine, a book about the process of writing good fiction, developing characters and settings that are realistic and so on
• Talked about similes and metaphors and pointed them out in writing; talked about the difference between first person or third person writing

Health & PE

• Hiking
• Began taekwondo and fell in love; taking two weekly classes
• Yoga classes
• Talking about health continually
• Daily meditation practice
• Read and discussed an article on phytochemicals and the number of plant material our ancestors ate, which prompted a goal to eat many colorful fruits and veggies.
• Watched the documentary Hungry for Change on food production, food additives, and nutrition

Art & Music

• Choreo-Physics performance
• Keyboard/piano lessons at Yacon weekly
• Playful Performing Arts classes
• Took a multiple week music appreciation and theory class at Yacon
• Pottery classes 
• Taught herself IMovie software and made several short films

Spanish: Spanish games club weekly at Yacon, a variety of active games that allow for usage of basic Spanish vocabulary such as greetings, directions, prepositions, places, animals, actions and so on. 

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