~ HOPE YOU'RE WEARING GREEN FRIDAY! ~

Hello!  Another week has come and gone...I still cannot believe how fast this school year is going.  This week the children have the option to complete a packet for the month of March - for a chance to pick a prize from our prize box.  The first page is a list of quotes from Walt Disney - they are to try and match the quote with the trait it could describe from the word bank included.  I am excited to see them complete this page to see what they have learned from us working with character traits this school year.  The rest of the packet included some Star Wars fun for them to complete.

 There is no rush for them to complete it, as they have til the end of the month to turn it in.  However, we have already had some completed packets turned in this week!  I was also excited to see some students participate that don’t always try the challenge question - that was my ultimate goal to mix-it up and give others a chance to try too.

I wanted to highlight these three this week, as they celebrated Girl Scout Week.  It was fun seeing them share the different shirts each day.

CogAT Update:

We are finishing up CogAT testing this week,  so the informational packets will be ready to go home after spring break.  You will be able to see how your child did on the CogAT using the resource cogat.com.  We need to wait until end of the year NWEA scores before making all final decisions.   Using the results from CogAT plus end of year NWEA will determine your child's eligibility into HA for next year.  Remember, it's not necessary to do well on both assessments.  They may qualify through one pathway or the other.

Kindergarten CogAT Packets:

All kindergarten students will receive their CogAT packets in their Thursday folders today.  Those who qualified through CogAT will need to return their permission slips.  We will begin the week after we return from Spring Break.  End of the year NWEA scores will be used to qualify students at the beginning of first grade.  It is very typical for many of your high readers to enter at that time.

IMPORTANT EVENTS

March 13th - March 24th:  CogAT Full Test for 2nd Grade

March 17th: End of 3rd Quarter

March 24th:  Report Cards Available Online

March 27th - March 31st: Spring Break - No School

LANGUAGE ARTS

1ST GRADE:  CONNECTING WORDS AND NUMBERS - TEXT TALK:   We started this week by finishing up our Emoticon Exercise.  I shared a few more samples with them and used my cellphone to show how they work in a text message.  Then we used the end of Monday and some of Tuesday to look at a video of the book CDB! by William Steig. This was a fun exercise for us to wrap up our lesson on Text Talk.  Each page displayed a message with acronyms and with the help of the pictures we worked through the story together.  We ended class on Tuesday, by decoding our next secret message.  I was happy that with the title of No Spaces - they were able to figure this message out without any hints!  We will start our next lesson next week.

2ND GRADE:  THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX: We began this week with our last introduction sheet for our new story.  We compared ourselves to Wesley from the story Weslandia using a VENN diagram.  This was opening us up to the idea of a character who was different from us.   Then, using the format of the VENN diagram they looked for traits they had in common with Wesley even if he was different from us we found ways we were alike too.  Then we listened to chapters 1 & 2.  

On Tuesday, they came in and we listened to chapters 3-5.  Then for the remainder of class they had time to work through their questions on the story.  It was great seeing them look back for context clues or use the dictionary as they worked through the questions.  

Reading:  They were asked to read Chapters 6-9 before class on Monday.

3RD GRADE:  THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN - PROSE OR POETRY?:   Due to IREAD, we only met on Tuesday.

We finished working with our poetry version of our poem by listening to an audio tape of it, Then we had just enough time to introduce the prose - I read them a story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

We will discuss the story next week.

4TH GRADE:  MAPPING CHANGE IN MYSTERY STORIES:  This week we started out with a brief discussion on the question we ended with last week.  How did their person influence them to change?  It was such a great discussion! Hearing them share their dreams they want to achieve and realize they can began to work towards them.  From sharing this past year with them, I know they have the ability to reach any of their goals and look forward to visiting their bakery one day, purchasing the latest technology they created, seeing them change the world in politics, or reading of the discoveries they made in the field of medicine whether for people or animals.

Then we spent the week being introduced to our new topic - a mystery.  I shared a poem with them giving them the opportunity to guess our new genre focus.  On Tuesday, we began to read a short mystery together as a class.  While I read the mystery, they began to fill out a paper on the main character while hearing the clues in the story.  It was great seeing some of them track the characters for our guilty suspect.  We will finish the story next week.

MATH

1ST GRADE:  INCHING ALONG - MEASURING WITH INCHES:  We ended our lesson this week by beginning our Think Deeply question.  Imi and Zani were measuring a stick, but again have different answers this time because they used different sized ants.  It was our job using 4 words from a word bank to explain to them what we learned about inches - as a unit of measurement everyone is familiar with as a measurement.  

Determined to Complete their Think Deeply question - even though the challenge was hard at times. The smile shows the pride in their work!

After they completed their response, we worked on two Think Beyond activities.  First, they were introduced to a yard stick.  They then measured around the room finding different objects that were 1 yard.  Our second activity, they worked together to see how many yards long our classroom measured. They measured about 11 yards one way and 10 and a half the other distance.  We had a few minutes left - the challenge who could stretch their name out on the board to measure one yard.  

We had two students succeed on their first attempt!

We will begin a new lesson next week.

2ND GRADE:  AREA - THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR ONE MORE:  This week we had to finish a few more measurement around the room. Then we shared our measurements with the class.  We had to double check one measurement together.  

On Tuesday, I shared with the students our measurements for the sleeping bags - for an adult and child.  Now our goal is to figure out how many sleeping bags we can fit into a tent. We started by using masking tape to lay out the area of the tent.  

Then they figured out how many children sleeping bags could fit in that area and then adults. Each child was also given a layout of the tent on a worksheet to complete.  

We will continue to look for our solution next week.

3RD GRADE:  AREA - YOU BREAK ME UP!:  This week we finished up our investigation with the Distributive Property.  As some were still struggling with forming the equation, we worked through the different ways to write the equations.  To continue practicing this idea with the help of measurements from the Yeti’s Pen - we used the distributive property to break-apart large numbers when multiplying.  

However, the focus was also on the different ways to express the equation - so after they completed one way they would switch with a partner for them to check and then solve it another way.

We will begin our Think Deeply question next week.

4TH GRADE:  :  As they requested, we used Wednesday for extra practice on plotting on a graph.  Before we began, we went over the ordered pairs and plotting the x-axis and then the y-axis.  They practiced this by solving a riddle - to find the answer they had to plot points on the grid.

“Why was the stadium hot after the game?”  - because All the Fans Left.  

Their confidence with plotting grew as they worked through the worksheet.  On Tuesday, we went back to our lesson.  We plotted a scalene triangle in quadrant 1.Then they had to shift it 7 to the left, 7 down and 7 to the right.  This would continue to move the triangle to each of the quadrants - continuing our practice with plotting points all over the plane.
Next week they will create and plot their shape and then translate it to different quadrants on the plane.