FALL FEST FRIDAY

Welcome Back!  Tonight is the BIG night - Yost Fest is here!  The event will take place this evening from 5:30 to 7:30.  Wrist bands will be for sale for endless use of the bounce houses.  You may also purchase tickets for games and food.  The weather will be perfect - come out and enjoy a great time with your family and friends!

College Week:  This week the school is participating in college week - the kids are encouraged to wear the favorite College Gear.

AROUND THE SCHOOL

IMPORTANT DATES

September 22nd:  Yost Fest - 5:30 to 7:00pm

September 25th-29th:  Go College Week

October 3rd: Early Dismissal Day - 1:45pm

October 13th: End of 1st Quarter

October 24th: Picture Retake Day

October 27th - Fall Recess - No School

WEEKLY LIFE GOAL:
Trustworthiness





LANGUAGE ARTS

1st Grade: Coat of Arms Project: On Monday, we had a brief explanation of the rubric for the Coat of Arms project. Then the students spread out around the room and began to assemble their Coat of Arms Project. After they completed the assembly, they practiced their speech around the room.

~ Her Thinking Pose ~

On Tuesday, each student came to the front of the room and presented their project. When presenting to the audience, 1 student also evaluated a presentation. Allowing the students to help in the grading role, will hopefully give them a better understanding to following a rubric and to have a better understanding of their expectations as a presenter. The students did a fabulous job with their presentations!

2nd Grade: Eldorado: This week the students were working with the poem Eldorado by Edgar Allen Poe. After reading the poem once, the students were asked to reflect on the meaning of them poem. As expected, this was a clear struggle for the students to understand the meaning behind this poem. To develop an understanding for their reading, the students were introduced to the reading analyzer.

The reading analyzer is a worksheet the students complete to look for the meaning of their reading. They will be using this source throughout the year - this week was simply an introduction on the proper way to complete the form. We worked through each step as a class to make sure they understood what each box was asking them to complete. It was great to see them begin to understand the poem the further we completed the worksheet. We will continue to work with Eldorado next week as we learn one more tool we will use throughout the year.

3rd GRADE: INTERPRETING INTERACTIONS: This week we began by reviewing the concept of interactions. Then we looked at human/animal interactions. We did this by looking at the book How to Speak Dog: A Guide to Decoding Dog Language by Aline Alexander Newman and Gary Weitzman, D.V.M. We reviewed non-fiction text features to help us navigate to our topics within the book.
Reviewing our text features helped us find the certain selections we needed to complete our worksheet - Interpreting DOG Interactions. As we were completing the sheet, the students began to see the importance of knowing what certain actions mean - as this is the way a dog communicates with their owners. The owner must be able to interact with the dog by responding to its form of communication. This brought up several stories the students were sharing of their personal pets, as now we know what our pets are telling us.
We will continue analyzing human/animal interactions next week.

4th GRADE: CHANGE IN VOCABULARY: We took a few minutes to have introductions and go over the classroom procedures. Next, we defined the generalizations to change. This led us into our discussion with the changes we see in vocabulary. This led us into identifying the different word parts: root word, prefix and suffix. These examples led us right into our lesson on Greek and Latin Roots. We will work through a packet next week looking at changes in vocabulary.

MATH

1ST GRADE: UNIT INTRODUCTION: On Wednesday, we reviewed our terms we learned to define our shapes for What's the Same About These Shapes. Together, we completed a second one defining a group of quadrilaterals. On their own, they defined a pentagon and hexagon. When they finished they were allowed to try and draw another shape to match their definition.

On Thursday, it was time for some fun to end our lesson! We played the game Zani Lingo - Bingo with Shapes. Together, we reviewed the shapes they will see on their Lingo Cards: Triangles, Quadrilaterals, Pentagons and Hexagons. Then we played a practice game to learn the rules. I would announce the number rolled on the cube and the students would place a chip over a shape with that amount of sides.

However, if we rolled a 1 or a 2 the students shout, "Oh! No such shape!" We follow these rules until someone gets a Lingo - 4 in a row. While playing the game, we would stop and look at boards to go over proper strategies of where to place the chip. Winners won a chance to select something from the prize box.







We will wrap up our intro unit next week.



2ND GRADE: SYMMETRY IN ACTION: On Wednesday, the students were greeted with a memo from Dru and Teller. They discovered that it will be their job to create a scale model for a Shape Gallery. Our math concept we will be working with in this lesson is symmetry. I was happy to hear the students already have good knowledge on the definition of symmetry. They were then introduced to the Line of Symmetry. This was new term for most of them.


As a class, we identified two ways to find a Line of Symmetry: by folding the paper or using a mirror. For the first part of the lesson, students placed a mirror in places of a pentagon - identifying if it was a line of symmetry or not. In order for it to be a line of symmetry, the students would see the exact pentagon within the mirror. This was a little tricky at first because they would still see a shape in the mirror. With a few reminders, they were catching on quickly that it must be the original shape.

For additional practice they completed 2 more worksheets. The first one they had to identify yes or no to if the line given was symmetrical. This brought up the discussion of the circle - I was SHOCKED when a student was able to tell may it has an infinite amount of lines! The last work sheet was a bit more of a challenge and now they were in charge of using the mirror to mark the lines of symmetry for the shape.
We will continue to work with symmetry next week.


3RD GRADE: REPEATING PATTERNS: Our introduction into our Think Deeply question continues... We reviewed our 4 strategies to solve a problem with a repeating pattern. Then the students used the remainder of the time to use one of those strategies to solve the problem. On Thursday,we went over a chart that explained what should be included in their writing. We are looking for the students to identify the Math Concept(s) using Math Reasoning within their answer. The last thing they should include is Math Vocabulary.
If a lesson has more then 1 solution we are looking for them to explain the different strategies to solve the problem, so we can identify if they struggled with any of the concepts. This was were the struggle in our writing came into play. Most of them were successful in writing about the strategy they understood the best. Adding onto their writing about all concepts they understand became the challenge in their writing. This is always the most challenging part of the lesson, especially with the first writing assignment. By the end of the year, they will be masters at explaining their ideas. For this being the first


4TH GRADE: FRACTION STRIPS: This week the students created fifths and tenths on their own. We talked about 2 ways to fold the fifths because it is a little more challenging then the halves and thirds. They struggled with these two ways because it was a challenge to get them just right. We looked at all of our fraction strips and identified equivalent fractions.

Now it was time to move onto the investigation portion of our lesson. We have mastered increasing our fraction strips by 2's, but what if I need to turn 1/3 into 1/9 and 1/5 into 1/15. This brought up the discussion of folding a new strip into the unit fraction for thirds and fifths. Now for the challenge, how can I fold my unit fraction to divide it into 3 parts. After a few attempts, I heard the excitement of success! Some students began to figure it out.

I allowed them to share their thoughts with the class. As a class, we were able to conclude that if we took our folded thirds and fifths and folded it with the "s" folding motion it would break each fraction part into 3 more parts. The "s" fold would allow us to multiply our denominator by 3 to get our new fraction strip. 1/3 x 3 gave us our 1/9 and 1/5 x 3 gave us our 1/15. We will wrap up this lesson next week.

~ Ms. Losinski ~