~Freaky Friday~

Happy Halloween!  I hope everyone enjoys all of the spooktacular activities this weekend with Halloween approaching.  

Weekly Quote

     I hope everyone enjoyed their Fall Break!  This was our last week we focused on Hakuna Matata.  Our first weekvwe focused on a little fun and sense of humor from our friends Timon and Pumba.  Then we shifted our focus onto becoming a leader in the classroom.  We also discussed that a little should be a good listener and have patience. Check back next week to see who made it into the Character of the Month Club by being our leaders in the classroom.

Monthly Theme

Here is a  hint to our new theme in the room for character traits!  This month we will focus on Never Giving Up!





     Some of my students were in their cubs gear this week, so we had a little fun taking pictures wishing them luck!  For all my cubs fans - I wanted to wish you luck this week...

         ~ Go CUBS Go ~

LANGUAGE ARTS

1^st Grade:  Caesar Cipher-Cryptographic Connections:  We started the week out with a quick review on some key terms we learned last week.  I was happy to see the children all remembered the terms deciphering and enciphering.  They were also all able to        remind me the proper way to shift our cipher wheels depending on if it would say a plus or a minus.  We used today to practice deciphering a few more words for extra practice. 

     On Tuesday, the students worked independently on a worksheet.  They had to pick one of our words from a previous worksheet and come up with a connection for it.  They then gave a brief explanation and drew a picture for their connection.  I introduced the children to labeling their pictures today and encouraged them to label all the parts.  We ended the day by looking out the window for some connections we see outside.  The children needed to write down four connections.  For our last connection we went outside so they could find their last connection.  They had to keep their connections a secret and we will use them in our next lesson.

2^nd Grade:  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane:  The kids and I were so EXCITED to begin our novel this week!  We began with a class discussion on our reflection we ended on last week.  “If a journey is to be miraculous, what events might occur on the journey?” – Many students responded with long, scary, and some type of danger.  Then we read chapter one as a class.  After reading the first chapter the students reflected a few notes from chapter one.  Then as a class we discussed some details and many students are already changing their predictions.  The children were surprised to find out that Edward was a rabbit made out of china!  

~ Cubbies ~

     On Tuesday, we began by reading chapter two together as a class.  Then the children completed a reading analyzer on their own – this will help them organize their thoughts from this chapter.  The children were asked to read chapters 3 & 4 for homework – to be completed by Monday.  I also sent them home with a paper to track any thoughts or questions they have to use as a reminder when they return to class for Monday.  They can use this paper to help them in our class discussion.  I also discussed with the children the importance of not working ahead of the group when they take the book home.  We will work through this together as a class and I don’t want anyone working ahead spoiling any parts of the story for the class.

3^rd Grade:  Legends and Tall Tales:  This week we began by reviewing what we know so far to help us define a myth, legend, and a tall tale.  We worked through a list together on the board to help us organize the characteristics to each of these genres.  This will help us better identify our reading materials as we continue through the unit this year.  Then they were asked to pick out a story and begin to read it.  Although they are not finished reading it I asked what their first guess was to what they were reading and right now we think it is a myth.  We will see if their thought changes when they finish their stories.

     On Tuesday, they came in and finished with their reading.  Then we analyzed the story to discover what genre we read.  As a hint the students were asked to go back and highlight any exaggerations in the story.  Our thoughts started to change to a tall tale when we started to mark all of the exaggeration we saw in the story.  We ended the day making a Venn diagram for a myth, legend and tall tale.  I was so excited to see this chart become easy to fill out and the descriptions to each one becoming easier.  We were also able to use the terms fiction and folktale properly as something they all have in common.  It was great seeing the properties to each becoming easier!

Go Cubs Go!

4^th Grade:  Change in One Person’s Life:  We have started a new lesson this week introducing biographies to the group and how they show change.  We started class out with a discussion on Genres.  We focused on Nonfiction and briefly discussed autobiography before a student answered a biography leading the discussion to our focus.  As a class,we came up with a list of components that we would expect to see in a biography.  Then I showed the children a collection of different picture book biographies.  We began reading Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein.

     On Tuesday, we finished reading our story as a class and then discussed the ways we see change in the story.  Then we broke down the different word parts to biography as a class to work on the definition of a biography by using the word parts.  Next the students broke into two groups and started breaking apart words in the word family “bio.”  We will continue to work with this together next week.

MATH

1^st Grade:  It’s Heavy! – Heavier or Lighter:       We started the week finishing up our heavier or lighter centers from last week.  Then we took all the bags and made predictions together as a class - looking for the heaviest, lightest and about the same with all of our objects.  Each student took a turn picking out the item they thought was the heaviest and the lightest.  Then they each picked out two items they thought were about the same and we took turns weighing our predictions.

    
     On Thursday, we received a fax from our friends Imi and Zani needing our help.  They needed us to figure out how we would decide the winner of the weight game for the measurement fair.  As a class, we started to fill out our Think Deeply sheet to help us answer the question.  We will write our response to our friends in two weeks.  I will not meet with my 1^st grade math group next week because of early dismissal.

2^nd Grade:  Length – Marble Crash Test:  It’s Marble Crash Test time!  The kids were so excited because we finally began our marble crash test.  Today they came in and I showed them a brief example of how to conduct their experiment.  Then they worked with a partner and were off conducting their own tests.  Below you can see the pictures from their experiments this week.  On Thursday, they continued conducting their crash tests.  We will look at our results next week.

 

3^rd Grade:  Linear Measurement - Measuring Me:  This week we continued working on our Think Deeply question together.  After completing this assignment  – the kids shared some of their answers that they added onto our group response.  This allowed them to see other ideas they can add to their writing next time.  For our first attempt at writing, we had some great ideas – the students did a great job using their math terms and some even added pictures to explain their steps.

     On Thursday, I wanted the children to try the second Think Deeply question on their own.  We left our math message up for the students to utilize as a tool.  This time they spread out around the room and began to compare their different measurements from Measuring Me – and then they recorded their thoughts.  Then we came back together sharing our responses.  I wanted the kids to hear different samples of writing and assured them this is a process we will continue to work together until they are comfortable on their own.

 

4^th Grade:  The Shape of Things – You Either Have It…Or You Don’t:  This week we are working on summarizing our first lesson.  The children are being introduced to our first Think Deeply question.  A Think Deeply question is how we will end every lesson in our book.  As a class, we will fill out a Math Message Board together discussing what the question is asking and what we know to help us answer it.  Then they will write a response to the question.  To help them with their writing they will have many tools to utilize:  the Math Message Board will stay displayed, the math words will be on the word wall, they may use their glossary in their journals, or they can use their student journal pages to help them with their writing.  As you can see from the list above they have many resources to help in this step.   We also looked at what should be included in their answer and how it will be scored.

     On Tuesday, we began to walk through answering the first question together.  I helped by modeling step-by-step how to answer the question allowing them time to add to each area their own thoughts.  Then we looked at one more question and I asked them to try it on their own.  We will use this question to compare to a sample response our book has shared with us.  Then they will have an opportunity to grade theirs based on the samples we read.

IMPORTANT DATES:

October 28^th: Fall Parties

November 2^nd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 3^rd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 4^th:  No School

November 9^th:  Picture Retakes

November 16^th & 17^th:  Camp Goodfellow – Sloan

November 23^rd-25^th:  Thanksgiving Break – No School

~FALL BREAK FRIDAY~

Weekly Quote

Greetings!  This week we continued our discussion on being a leader in the classroom.  The focus this week was on why a leader needs to be a good listener.  This led a few of my groups to discuss the importance of not being a “bossy” leader. We also talked about different leaders in the building - coming up with the principal and their teachers.  However, I turned it back to them and told them I want them to think of ways to demonstrate being a leader in the classroom.  This will be our last week focusing on being a leader. 

Can you believe it - Thursday was the end of the 1st Quarter!  Today starts Fall Break and the kids get to enjoy a 3 day weekend!  The school is continuing their quest in collecting bottle caps.  On Thursday I saw some classrooms with multiple bags filled by their doors!  Please continue to support this effort and send in those bottle caps with your children. 

This week is National Red Ribbon Week!  Each day will be a different theme the children can participate in as they pledge to be Drug Free.  Follow the Schedule below:

Monday:  Sign the Pledge

Tuesday: “YOLO” Wear Red today

Wednesday: “We’re Too Bright for Drugs” wear neon/bright clothes and sunglasses to show we are to bright to do drugs

Thursday:  “Elect to Be Drug Free”  Wear Red, White and Blue

LANGUAGE ARTS

1^st Grade:  Caesar Cipher – Cryptographic Connections:  On Monday, we started out with a brief reminder of how we use our cipher wheels.  Then we worked together to decipher the message - Letters are symbols that stand for spoken sounds.  We started out taking turns with each student giving me a letter one at a time.  As they became comfortable deciphering, I encouraged them to figure out the last part of the message on their own.  They were masters with their cipher wheels!

     On Tuesday, we had extra practice with our cipher wheels.  As a group, they deciphered a few more words.  They were also introduced to enciphering the words - now they got to take some words and turn them into a secret code.  This was a little tricky at first, but with a few more words to practice with they were understanding it better.   Next week, they will work on ciphering independently.  I think they are up for the challenge!

2^ND Grade:  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane:  On Monday, we finished with our predictions for our story.  We will revisit these throughout the story to see if our predictions were right and modify them as we have more information.  This will be ongoing throughout the story.  We then learned about another tool we will be using throughout the year – the vocabulary map.  We looked at one together as a class to define the word student.  Then they tried completing one with a partner for the word journey.

     On Tuesday, we looked at a few of the boxes in the vocabulary web as a class.  I showed them the dictionary and explained to them what they can find in it to help them with the web.  We were able to find three answers to our vocabulary word in the dictionary: the definition, the part of speech, and the origin to the word.  Then they took a few more minutes to complete the rest of the web with their partner.  We ended today with our first reflection to the following sentence “If a journey is to be miraculous, what are certain events that might occur during the journey.”  I explained to them that the reflection is similar to our predictions in I am not looking for one correct answer, but simply what this sentence means to them.  We are super excited because we are ready to begin our novel! 

3^rd Grade: Legends and Tall Tales:  On Monday, we reviewed the different genres we have looked at already and made a list of characteristics to each one.  Then I read a story about Johnny Appleseed.  After reading the story, we had a challenge to guess the genre of our book.  Our first thought was a biography; however after we looked back at a few pages we realized it was definitely fiction.  Now onto the challenge myth or legend???  As we looked at each one it turns out we had a new genre we were reading – a tall tale.  We focused on the exaggeration to help us discover our new genre.  We also discussed how all of our stories could be identified as a folktale – as they have all been handed down over a period of time.

     On Tuesday, we were up for a new challenge.  We picked out a new story to read and again worked on classifying it as a myth, legend, or tall tale.  We also began to fill out another retelling worksheet.  We will continue exploring tall tales next week.

4^th Grade: Changes in Vocabulary:  Welcome back 4^th graders!  This week we finished working with Greek and Latin roots.  We had a few more questions to review on our worksheet and then they had a challenge to work in groups and come up with 3 new words.  It was interesting to see the groups choose different approaches.  One group added more real words that were not included on their list above and the other group was trying to create 3 brand new words.

     On Tuesday, we watched a video about the book Frindle trying to explain why a dog is a dog and a pen is a pen.  In this case a pen is now a frindle!  The children enjoyed watching the video.  Afterwards, we came back together as a group and summarized our lesson on the changes in our language.  We talked about how borrowing from the Greek and Latin roots we can combine them to make new words.  Then we changed the conversation to how technology has changed our language.  Some ideas were as new systems come out a new name is given – one example they talked about were the different internet browsers.

MATH

1^st Grade:  It’s Heavy-Heavier or Lighter:  On Wednesday, we reviewed our worksheet from last week.  Then the students were introduced to the hanger balance scale.  The students were explained that the hanger would be our smaller version of a balance scale while we discuss weight.  We learned the proper way to attach the items to the scale and practiced using the scale together.  Then they were introduced to our experiment for this lesson.  As a class, we walked through a set of four bags recording our information together as a class. 

     On Thursday, the children were ready to conduct the experiment with a partner.  Before I set them free to explore, we reviewed the new terms predict and results.  Then they were off to the different stations around the room – each station had bags filled with different items to help explore the concept of weight.  At the station, the student would first make a prediction with the bags using the terms heavier, lighter, or about the same.  Then the children drew a picture to show the actual result.  The last step they had to do was record a sentence in two ways with their results.  They had a fun day working through the different stations.  We will review their results as a class next week.

2^nd Grade:  Length-Marble Crash Test:  We only met on Wednesday of this week because they were on a field trip on Thursday.  We finished our paper on measuring a blade of grass.  By the end, most of the children were catching on that their measurements should double when switching from the inch to half-inch.




    Dru and Teller have asked us to help them purchase a safe car.  We looked at a chart that displayed safety ratings from 5 vehicles.  From looking at the chart we concluded that 5 stars were excellent and 1 star was poor.  Some students were glad to see that the chart displayed no cars with a 1 star rating!  We had to use the data displayed to decide what car was the safest.  The chart tried to trick us with one car having a 5 star rating for the passenger, but only a 3 star rating for the driver.  After further evaluating the chart, the children all agreed to purchase the same car with a 4 star rating for both the driver and the passenger.   The kids are super excited because next week they will conduct their own marble crash test!

3^rd Grade:  Linear Measurement-Measuring Me:  This week we are learning about the last step in our lessons – the writing.  First, as a class we looked over some sample writings for the children to understand how their writing will be scored.  In their writing we will be looking for three areas to be covered - the math concept, their reasoning, and using math language in their writing.  I had the children practice scoring the samples so they get an idea of what they should include in their writing.  Then we introduced the math message board that we will complete as a class at the end of every lesson.  As a class, we will summarize the lesson with the question they are being asked to write about on the message board.  Then the math message will stay displayed on the board for them to utilize as a tool in their writing.  They were reminded about their math wall with important words and their glossary in their workbooks to utilize as tools for math language.

     On Thursday, we started to look at our first Think Deeply question.  Think deeply – is the name our math book calls their writing prompts.  The students took a few minutes to write down any questions they had from reading the question.  Then they used partner talk to discuss and try to clarify and of their questions.  Then as a class we started our math message board.  We will continue our writing next week.  We are taking our first question slow and working on it as a class, so they know what is expected throughout the year.  We will continue working with this step next week.

4^th Grade:  The Shape of Things-You Either Have It…Or You Don’t:  On Wednesday, we began by looking at a chart that helps explain the different names of a shape.  Then we quickly recalled some of the math attributes they should use in the definitions they were making.   For the rest of class the students finished their class definitions.

The Winner!

     On Thursday, we summarized our lesson with a video all about polygons.  After that it was onto Jeopardy!  We played a review game to summarize the lesson to make sure the children understand that shapes can go by more than one name and to see if they can identify the attributes to the shapes we discussed.  We played a game of three rounds - 1st Round: they identified the names of shapes, 2nd Round: they had to identify the shape or attribute by its definition, and the Final Round:  was a mini game of jeopardy on the computer!  And the winner is…

IMPORTANT DATES:

October 20^th: End of First Grading Period

October 21^st: Fall Recess- No School

October 24th-28th: Red Ribbon Week

October 28^th: Fall Parties & Report Available Online

November 2^nd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 3^rd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 4^th:  No School

~FALL FEST FRIDAY~

Weekly Quote

Another week has flown bye!  This week in class we focused on leadership.  What it means to be a leader and ways to be one in the classroom.  I have asked them to look around the room the next few weeks to see if they can identify who is a leader in the room.

The school is still continuing to have a contest in raising plastic bottle caps – please continue to support this effort!  It is exciting to walk around the school and see the bags overflowing by each class!  Tonight is also Fall Fest at the school from 5-7pm come on by for some family fun!

LANGUAGE ARTS

1^st Grade:  Caesar Cipher – Cryptographic Connections:  On Monday, we walked through each of the shields the children presented for their coat of arms project and filled out our rubirc.  It really helped them learn more about a rubric and help them understand connections further.  The children and I discussed creativity and were excited to see how each student tried to think of clever ways to illustrate their drawings without giving away what the connection.

On Tuesday, we started our new unit.  We are continuing our focus on symbols with our language and looking at secret messages.   We introduced this topic by looking at a message that was in code and asked the students what it meant.  After a few minutes we shared our ideas.  Then they were explained the message is in a code and asked for ideas we could decode it – one example they had was to turn the paper upside down and another student tried to read the message through the paper.  Then they were asked why people might not want someone to know their secret message.  The children learned the Caesar Cypher method has been used for thousands of years to not let their enemies know their secret plan!  At the end of class we built our own cipher wheels and learned how to use them.  Next week we will practice deciphering codes with our wheels!

2^nd Grade:  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane:  On Monday, some children needed a few extra minutes to finish up and turn in their practice analyzer from the prior week.   Then we went into a discussion on predictions.  The children knew it was a guess, but we focused on the phrase “educated guess” and using information we know or see to help guide us in our predictions.  I introduced them to the book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and explained they we will be exploring this book as our novel study in class.  I asked the children from just the cover what we could use to help us make our educated guesses – we came up with the picture on the cover and the title could be our clues.

On Tuesday, the children came in and we started a set of 7 questions we are making predictions before we open the book.  Using our two clues we came up with from the previous days we were able to work through the first 4 questions.  It was great to see them incorporate the words in the title into the predictions.  They were using their clues!  We will continue with our questions on Monday. 

There may be some days the book may be sent home and the children may be asked to read a chapter or two on their own please make sure this is being completed at home so they can participate in the discussion the following day.  I will send an email if they are asked to complete it at home so you are aware if it was assigned.  Thanks for your support!

3^rd Grade:  Myths and Legends – Grammar:  On Monday, we finished highlighting and identifying nouns in “Iduna and her Apples.”  As added practice, after reading it I allowed for a quick retell to see what we remembered from the week before!  We then turned our focus to nouns and answering the question - can a sentence have more than one noun in it?  Our answer was yes, but then the thought changed to no after we first identified the subject.  We looked further at our sentence and found another noun in it and had to figure out what its purpose was in our sentence.  At the end of class we introduced prepositions and identified the object of the preposition as our other noun.

On Tuesday, we looked at our list of prepositions further to help us identify them in a sentence.  I shared three fun videos with the children to help in this process.  The first video taught the song to help them memorize them and the second was a School House Rock video to help.   After the video we used some silly Halloween sentences to practice labeling the words and diagraming sentences.  They enjoyed working on the write board and taking on the teaching role to explain the sentence!

4^th Grade:  My groups did not meet this week because of the field trip to Camp Goodfellow.

MATH

1^st Grade:  It’s Heavy:  Heavier or Lighter:  On Wednesday, we started off with a brief reminder of the fax we are investigating for our friends.  As the children explained what they remembered I introduced our new math vocabulary: weight, heavier, lighter and about the same.  I will continue to encourage them to use these new terms throughout the unit.  We had so much fun using our animal friends Imi and Zani sent us to practice with a seesaw.  Each student took turns coming up showing me different ways to display about the same, heavier and lighter with our animal friends.  Then they were up for the challenge!  After a brief discussion on if the gorilla or hippo was heavier and we concluded as a class the hippo.  The hippo was placed on the seesaw and just like our story Just a Little Bit more the children had to help the hippo lift up on the seesaw.  It was a great team effort!  They reviewed the lesson with a worksheet they completed on their own.

On Thursday, we had to brainstorm some ideas that Imi and Zani could use as a seesaw, but to downsize it for the measuring fair.  The kids talked about having using a board and turning over our recycling bin.  That was a great idea, but I asked them to think of a way we could make it even smaller for them.  We then came up with using a ruler as our board for the seesaw.  Then the students worked on another set of worksheets on weight – this time introducing the term about the same.  There also was a twist in this sheet as all the objects were a present, but had different designs so they had to think about the pictures a little more with this project.  We will continue experimenting with weight next week!

2^nd Grade:  Length:  Marble Crash Test:  On Wednesday, we reviewed over our Prickly Practice –Half Inch measuring sheet.  We took a few minutes to discuss if a measurement is between two marks how to decide to round it up or down.  This part I could see made it a little trickier for them.  They practiced this with the rounding skill added in on a new worksheet. 

On Thursday, we went over the worksheet as a class.  Some students were still struggling with rounding to the nearest tally mark.  To help work through it students would come up and show the class how they reached their measurement.  Everyone ended up getting a turn to come up and if a student still disagreed with the answer they would come up and we would let them figure it out with the class.  This took a little extra time, but was allowing them to fix their learning while adding in the rounding.  As a special note this week, this group worked hard the entire week and I am super proud of how they stayed on task the entire time.  They were all ROCKSTARS this week and thinking like great mathematicians!

3^rd Grade:  Linear Measurement:  Measuring Me:  On Wednesday, the students continued the investigation phase of incredible me.  They broke off into their groups again and finished through their worksheet.  It was great to see them coming up with better estimates as they worked through the sheet.  At the end of the investigation – it flipped around the game and gave them an estimate and they had to guess a body part to measure they thought fit the measurement given.  It was great to see them think what about what they learned so far to complete this new task!

On Thursday, we came back together as a class to share what we learned in our investigation.  This is how our math book will work throughout the year: the children will be introduced to a topic, work through an investigation to explore the new material, come back together as a class to discuss what we learned and then end with summarizing the lesson on their own.  In our class discussion we talked about figuring out a good measuring bench mark to use as a tool to help in making an estimate.  This will help them as we continue to work with measurements in this chapter.

  Please remember a few students still need to turn in their Hunt for Capacity paper.  As these are completed please send them back in.  If possible please send in the bottles you used so the class can use them to study capacity at a later time.

4^th Grade:  The Shape of Things:  You Either Have it or You Don’t:  On Wednesday, we continued examining shapes one at a time and defining their math attributes.  They looked closely at parallelograms and rectangles and described each of their attributes. We were able to revisit a statement made on our introduction day that all squares are rectangles.  We then flipped the statement around and I asked the students if all rectangles are squares.  This made some of them say a square is not a rectangle so we looked closely at the defintions and safely concluded that all squares are a special rectangle, but not all rectangles are a square.  It was great to revisit this statement a student made earlier and help them clarify their understanding of the two terms. 

On Thursday, we continued through or exploration of shapes and defined a rhombi, square, and trapezoid.  At the end of the day the students worked through their notes and started to make their own definition for each shape in their student journals.  We will continue with our student definitions next week.

IMPORTANT DATES:

October 14^th: Fall Fest 5-7pm

October 20^th: End of First Grading Period

October 21^st: Fall Recess- No School

October 28^th: Fall Parties

November 2^nd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 3^rd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 4^th:  No School