~FALL BREAK FRIDAY~
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| Weekly Quote |
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
1st 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!
2ND 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!
3rd 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.
4th Grade: Changes in Vocabulary: Welcome back 4th
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
1st 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.
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!
3rd 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.
4th 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
20th: End of First Grading Period
October
21st: Fall Recess- No School
October 24th-28th: Red Ribbon Week
October
28th: Fall Parties & Report Available Online
November
2nd: Early Dismissal –
Parent/Teacher Conference
November
3rd: Early Dismissal –
Parent/Teacher Conference
November
4th: No School
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