The Great Math Debate

Info I found.

http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=siteSearch

http://postgazette.com/neigh_city/20021024math1024P3.asp

http://www.nctm.org/news/ext_articles/2003-10_milwaukee.htm

States Debate

One of our Social Studies' benchmarks is locating/identifying the 50 states. While teaching this over the course of a few years, I have often wondered about the "usefulness" of this skill. What are the thoughts out there? Is it important for kids to know the location of the 50 states given a blank map, or is it more important for them to know where to look to find the answers?

Text Structure Texts

I'm looking for ideas... what texts are you using to teach text structure, e.g. cause/effect, main idea/details, chronological?

Voyageur Field Trip

Field Trip Idea: Last spring our fifth grade classes at Princeton had the opportunity to take a trip down the Fox River in a voyageur canoe. The trip was led by two reenactors that did a nice job of making history come to life! The time period was early American history at the time of the fur trade. The students learned French songs to sing as they traveled down the Fox. They also saw Father Marquette's cross and visited a Native American tepee along the way. If this sounds like something of interest to you let me know and I'll get you some contact information.

handwriting

It seems that cursive handwriting is becoming something that we do not need to spend lots of time teaching.

5th Grade Hotlist

To control the sites my students cruise through, I've developed a hotlist of pre-approved sites. These are sites I use throughout the year and update as needed. I've also linked it to the school's web site so that kids could access it from home or the public library if they want more time on a particular site:

http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/list5thgradsa.html

By clicking on the "Filamentality" icon at the bottom, you can get in and make a hotlist of your own.

The Cursive Debate

Here are some interesting discussions.

http://web2.unt.edu/news/story.cfm?story=10067 http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/cursive.html http://www.kimberlyswygert.com/archives/001469.html