~ Super Saturday ~

Hello!  I hope everyone had a wonderful week.  This week some of my groups helped me organize our character traits into two categories.  Ones that can help us build our character and others we should leave to the dark side.  Next week they will receive their challenge for the month of Star Wars.  I will have several quotes that they should match with their character trait we can learn.  For bonus points - I will allow them to add a character of Star Wars that can help teach us that trait.  I know they are excited to get their challenge back - I hope they enjoy it!  They will have till the end of March to turn it in - so no need to rush with this extra activity.

I would also like to announce that for the month of February the entire HA class displays the traits from Brave.  At one point or another, we all must show our bravery.  I believe that inside us all we have this trait - it might just take a little extra courage for some of us to realize it.





Kindergarten CogAT Testing:

We are finished with collecting the necessary data for identification into high ability for the first round.  Every student will receive a packet with their results from CogAT testing.  Look for them to come home in our Thursday folders!  Those who qualified will begin the week we return from Spring Break.  Can't wait to meet everyone!  Remember, end of the year NWEA will be used for the second round of identification of high ability students.  This is given at the very end of the year, but the results will be used to admit more students when they begin in first grade.  Students may qualify for language arts, math or both.




Second Grade CogAT Screener:
We are finished testing all the second graders using the CogAT screener.  Students who met the benchmark, will now take the full CogAT test next week.  Current high ability students will automatically take the full test regardless of their screener score in order to get a complete picture.  Current student will remain in high ability for the rest of the school year, so no worries.  Results from not only CogAT, but end of the year NWEA will be used for placement in third grade for the 2017-2018 school year.

IMPORTANT DATES:

March 10th:  Practice IREAD for 3rd Grade

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

March 13th - March 17th: IREAD for 3rd Grade

March 16th:  Nature Night and Scholastic Book Fair

March 17th: End of 3rd Quarter

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

LANGUAGE ARTS

1ST GRADE:  CONNECTING WORDS AND NUMBERS - TEXT TALK:  On Monday, we put our finishing touches on our persuasive writing.  Then we switched our writings with a partner for them to read, evaluate and give us some advice to improve our writing.

On Tuesday, we took our feedback from another student and used it to edit our writing.  Then the spread out around the room and practiced reciting their paragraph.  We came back together as a class and each student took a turn reading their persuasion paper to the class.  Surprisingly -  each student said NO first graders should not have cell phones!  They shared many great reasons to their argument - that you may view below:

2ND GRADE:  THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX:  On Monday, the students were introduced to our NEW novel - The Tale of Despereaux.  We used this week to preview the story before we begin reading it next week.  First,we looked at a set of anticipatory statements.  Each students wrote if they agreed or disagreed with the statement.
Throughout our story, they will work on this paper as the find text evidence to support or change their answer.  We then worked through a packet on light versus dark.

On Tuesday, we brainstormed some ideas of what it means to be a hero.  Each student shared their ideas.  This led us to a brief discussion on if saving someone is a requirement to be a hero - they concluded no.  In some cases it might make someone become a hero, but not every hero must save a person.  Then we listened to the story Weslandia.  This story was used to introduce the students to making connections, as we will do this throughout our story.  It also introduces us to the idea of our main character being different.  

Next week we will begin our new novel.

3RD GRADE:  THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN - POETRY OR PROSE?:  We started this week by learning about the parts to a poem: lines, stanzas, and the rhyming pattern.  Then we went through the poem stanza by stanza to break apart the meaning of the poem.  As we did this, we found our text evidence to support or change our predictions.  This was still rather confusing to the students by some of the words used throughout this selection.  I encouraged them to use the dictionary for any tricky words.  

On Tuesday, we finished breaking apart the meaning of our poem.  Then we began to talk about how poetry helps us build our reading fluency.  We also discussed what is important about fluency: the rate at which you read it and the ability to bring the words to life.  I told them to think of yourself as an actor or actress when you are reading out-loud.  They each practiced reading a stanza and then recited it to the class.  However, we still struggled with some of the vocabulary.  So I told them I would bring in my favorite poetry books for us to continue working with this in our free time by Shel Silverstein.  They are excited to work on this as they love his poems too!

4TH GRADE:  CHANGE MAKERS:  On Monday, we came in and talked about our presentations.  I showed them the rubric I used to grade them and explained each category.  We went over each step highlighting different presentations that would mark an EXCELLENT in a category.  Then I asked each of them to fill out a sheet and evaluate their own presentation.  I was pleased when I looked back to see they did this with honesty.  Our last step in evaluating our presentations was to have a peer evaluation.  To be fair, we drew names to see who each student would further evaluate.  When I looked over both evaluations I was very pleased to see consistency with the evaluations,

On Tuesday, we examined further our timelines.  They looked for a time when their subject may have had the most activity in their life.  Then we compared this with the others student’s to see if we could find some similarities in productivity with their subjects.  To end our Change Maker project, we sat as a group and discussed their people.  I have been emphasizing to the students we have been working on these since mid-November and you should be able to share about your person without any scripts.  We went around the circle answering the same questions about our person. I was impressed by all the students for being able to just talk about the person without any notes. To end, I asked one final question in what way will this project inspire change in you? I asked them to reflect on this over the week and we would share our thoughts on Monday.

This week we were delighted to have one more visitor Time Travel to share some information about Albert Einstein.  Enjoy the presentation below…

MATH

1ST GRADE:  INCHING ALONG - MEASURING WITH INCHES:  This week we started out by finishing making our homemade inch rulers.  We took two pipe cleaners and our 1-inch straw to for 1 - 12 inch ruler.  We made sure to use alternating colors as this will make it easier to count our inches.  Then it was time for us to measure around the room. To complete our worksheet the students had to find objects with certain measurements around the room.

On Thursday, it was time for a little fun.  We used our rulers on a Hunt for Inches Challenge. Starting in the classroom the students had a list of lengths and needed to measure objects til they found an item of that length.  After 5 minutes in the room, we took our hunt around the school. When we came back to the room we shared some of the items we found on our sheet,  Below are some pictures from our Hunt for Inches.

2ND GRADE:  AREA - THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR ONE MORE:  This week we completed the worksheet So Big.  This activity had the students work on measuring in square feet with several objects around the room.  They first had to make a prediction and then use our scrapbook paper to find the actual area.  After they found their measurements, they were to find the difference of their two numbers.

We did not meet on Thursday because of a field trip.  Next week, we will add in the last step to our project - figuring out how many sleeping bags would fit into a tent.

3RD GRADE:  AREA - YOU BREAK ME UP!:  This week we continued our introduction with the distributive property.  We continued to learn how to break up small arrays while practicing this method.  However, then we began to talk about why this would help us.  I explained that if I gave you two large numbers to multiply and we tried to work it out verse break-it apart - what way would be faster?  Then we tried this with a contest.  It was a close tie - however my “regular” multiplication group used repeated addition as a strategy, instead of multiplying.  I asked, but what if we couldn’t add them and you had to multiply - now they thought it would be easier to break-up the larger numbers.

    We continued with more practice with our distributive property.  We began by explaining that there are many strategies to multiply.  The distributive property will allow us to break up a large number to one that is easier to multiply. This is helpful now while they might still be mastering their larger multiplication facts. Eventually, they will rely on this as a better and faster way to work a problem other than repeated addition.  Our other main focus today was on the different ways to write an equation for the broken up array.  This was an important focus for us because next week we will be working with the different ways to write multiple equations.  I was happy to see some students that struggled yesterday finding more equations see it better today.

4TH GRADE:  :  This week we learned about plotting an original shape on a plane.  Then we translated that same shape on the grid.  We discussed having our original ordered pairs and labeling them and when translating the new ordered pair it is identified as A Prime or A’. Next, we identified the movement of the translation - if the x-axis changes the shape will shift horizontally and if the y-axis changes it will shift vertically.

On Thursday, we continued translating a shape on our grids.  Then each student plotted and translated their own shape with 4 vertices.  This time they were asked to shift it vertically.  After completing it on their own, they gave a partner their ordered pairs for them to move and check.