September · Week 1 · Day 3 · School day 3

Day 3: Is Air Something?

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✂️ Play with your child: Syllable Splitters

The day, step by step

1. 10–15 min Morning meeting SL.5.1

   1. Greet everyone and do a quick stretch.
   2. Calendar: What day of the week will it be 10 days from today?
   3. Question of the day: Is air something or nothing? How could we prove it?
   4. Fluency warm-up: partners read 6 V/CV words from yesterday in under 30 seconds.

2. 15–20 min Word study RF.5.3a

   1. Write cabin. Try the open split first: ca-bin sounds like cay-bin. Is that a word we know? No.
   2. Flex: move the consonant into the first syllable, cab-in. Now the vowel is short and the word makes sense.
   3. Practice with lemon, river, planet, never and visit. Say each split both ways and choose the real word (lem-on, riv-er, plan-et, nev-er, vis-it).
   4. Students write a sentence with two flex words, such as We read in the cabin by the river.

   Flexing means trying a long vowel first, then a short vowel.

3. 35–45 min Reading workshop RL.5.3

   Frindle by Andrew Clements (or similar)

   1. Teach: conflict is the problem a character faces. It can be between two characters.
   2. Read aloud chapter 3, where Nick tries to stall Mrs. Granger with a question about where words come from.
   3. Ask: What does Nick want? What does Mrs. Granger want? Where do they clash?
   4. Students fill in a conflict frame: Nick wants ___, but ___.
   5. Share 3 responses and discuss which detail from the text supports each one.

4. 50–60 min Math 5.NBT.1

   1. Write 4,000 and 400. Ask: What part of 4,000 is 400? (1/10)
   2. Rule: a digit is worth 1/10 of what it would be worth in the place to its left.
   3. Show 8,800: the 8 in the hundreds place (800) is 1/10 of the 8 in the thousands place (8,000).
   4. Practice: What is 1/10 of 90,000? (9,000) 1/10 of 500? (50) 1/10 of 2,000,000? (200,000)
   5. Exit ticket: In 33,000, is the left 3 worth 10 times or 1/10 as much as the right 3? (10 times)

   Math center: partners quiz each other with x 10 and 1/10 cards.

5. 30–40 min Science 5-PS1-1

   1. Crumple a dry paper towel and push it into the bottom of a clear cup so it stays put.
   2. Predict: If I turn the cup upside down and push it straight down into the water, will the towel get wet?
   3. Push the cup straight down to the bottom of the bowl, hold for 10 seconds, then lift it straight up. The towel stays dry.
   4. Explain: the cup was full of air. The air took up space and kept the water out, so air is matter.
   5. Repeat, but tilt the cup underwater. Bubbles escape and water rushes in. Students write what happened and why.

6. 30–40 min Writing W.5.3a

   1. Look back at your idea list from Day 1 and pick one small moment from the summer.
   2. Model zooming in: instead of my whole trip to the lake, write about the 5 minutes I jumped off the dock.
   3. Students write the first 5 to 7 sentences of their small moment.
   4. Partners read their beginnings and name one detail they want to know more about.

7. 25–30 min Centers and independent practice

   1. Flex word game: draw a card, say both splits and choose the real word.
   2. Air test replay: repeat the cup test and record what happens when you tilt the cup.
   3. Reading nook: 15 minutes, then log your pages.

   Device time (15 min): play Syllable Splitters (split long words into syllables).

   Today’s game: Syllable Splitters

8. 5–10 min Closing circle SL.5.1

   1. What was your evidence that air takes up space?
   2. Describe the conflict in Frindle in one sentence.
   3. What is 1/10 of 7,000?

Short day? Keep the cup experiment and the 1/10 lesson.