~ HAPPY HOLIDAYS ~

Enjoy some pictures below from a week of fun daily themes to help us get in the holiday spirit!

Monday - Elf Day

In the picture to the Right:
I offered a little green for my friend to cover, I mean add to her outfit, but she outsmarted me when I took the picture!    :) 

Tuesday - Reindeer Day

Wednesday - Grinch Day

Thursday - Santa Day

AROUND THE SCHOOL

December 22nd: End of 2nd Quarter

December 25th: January 7th:

Winter Recess
January 8th: School Resumes

January 15th: No School - Martin Luther King Jr Day

Change/Gifted Children/Best Practices

Duneland's high ability program will be changing starting with our current kindergarten students.  Change is not always easy, but if it benefits our students then we know we are moving in the right direction!  More details will soon follow . . . 



LANGUAGE ARTS

1st Grade: Anagrams: To start our week, the students began to work on a packet with anagrams. They were given a word with a hint to change it into the anagram. The first page started with 3 letters then they grew to 4 and even 5 letter anagrams!

They were encouraged to use their set of alphabet letters if they were stuck on any of the anagrams and to manipulate the letters until they found a new word. This seemed to do the trick whenever they were stuck! We ended our week by taking a break from anagrams and completing a few different word puzzles - like the ones we have learned about all year - with a Holiday Twist. First, they came in and were asked to solve a secret message in Pig Latin. Then, we completed some word ladders.

To end the day, we made some connections by looking at pictures with hints to Holiday Movies. We will finish up anagrams when we return from break.

2nd Grade: This is Jeopardy: We started the week with a few worksheets to complete on our journey with Edward. First, they cut-out words and glued them to either describe Edward when he lived on Egypt Street or on his journey.

Then, they listed the different names that Edward took on throughout our story and the different wardrobes he had. If they had time, they began the crossword puzzle. They will have time to continue to complete the crossword puzzle throughout class (even after break) while we play Jeopardy.

On Tuesday, we began a round of Jeopardy for some fun to end our week. We will play a few more rounds of Jeopardy when they return after break. They all earned a trip to the prize box for being separated by only 10 points in our first round of Jeopardy. This was great, as they were also learning the rules in this round. Plus, it was based on our first 5 chapters - they did a great job remembering some little details! We will conclude our novel study with Edward Tulane when we return from break.

3rd Grade: Jane Goodall: To wrap up this lesson on Jane Goodall, each student was asked to select a quote from Jane Goodall. Then they needed to write about a time this quote applied to their life. We used the remainder of time to look at an article on Jane Goodall from the October Issue of the National Geographic.


On Tuesday, we had a little Holiday Fun. However, we quickly discussed what is meant by the words background knowledge. This was to prepare them for our next lesson. We will be working with Jane Goodall in our next lesson and wanted to have them store that knowledge they have gathered on her so far.


We went around the room for each of them to share a fact or two they have already stored in their background knowledge. They did a great job sharing what they have discovered about Jane Goodall. Now it was time for some fun. We completed two Holiday worksheets with our remaining time.

MATH

1st Grade: Angles: For a reminder on our rules for the One Loop Game, we started our week with a few rounds of our game from last week. Then it was time for them to complete a worksheet simulating the one loop game.





They were asked to place three shapes in the loop that followed the rule, three shapes that did not on the outside of the loop and label their rule. After they completed this activity, it was time for some attribute practice - holiday themed.



We completed a worksheet identifying reindeer shapes by their names. There were some tricky ones, so they decided to move our activity over to our word wall. In this time, they also decided to rename the word wall to the shape wall!



These guys always make me smile. We ended the day completing a snowman glyph. They filled in a snowman following certain rules to their likes and dislikes of winter.

2nd Grade:

We were unable to meet this week with all the fun Holiday activities going on within the school! I am looking forward to starting our next chapter when they return.

3rd Grade: 100's Chart:
We finished our worksheet observing our patterns and took some time to share what the different groups observed. First, we looked back at our own visualizations we saw when completing the individual 100's charts.






We took some time to explain identifying a true pattern with the diagonal they saw. For it to be a pattern, it must have always followed the same rule moving down to each row.



One example was our 3's & 9's that followed the pattern of down one and to the left one. Our 4's and 8's followed a similar pattern, but moved to the left two. Some friends identified a slant within the pattern of the 6's, but we could not identify a rule for the pattern. To end our week, we had some Holiday Fun with 100's charts. The students completed a Holiday picture filling in their charts.

4th Grade: Comparing Fractions: This week they were introduced to our fourth strategy to compare fractions - common denominators. We talked about this idea earlier in the year, so they caught on quickly. We were given two fractions to compare. This introduced us to listing multiples to find the least common multiple for a set of denominators.

We discovered that our two numbers could have had an infinite amount of common denominators if we would have carried out our list. We already found three on our board with our small list. This introduced us to also identify the Least Common Denominator allowing us to work with smaller numbers. Then, as promised it was time for the students to answer question number 5 on their worksheet.

They placed the fractions in order from least to greatest. I told them if they used their answers from questions 1-4 they already have a good start to ordering them using our benchmarks rules. This made them feel confident with this project and I even heard them say how easy it was looking at the fractions in smaller groups!
They had the order almost perfect - they confused 1 rule of being 1 away from a whole with 1 more than a whole. They applied the theory correctly just to the wrong set of fractions. They were very proud at how quick they handled this project and with such confidence! It was great seeing them use team work as they shared their knowledge with each tool we covered. We ended the day looking at a fractions worksheet for making Christmas Cookies. This assignment was a little tricky, because we haven't learned all the tools to solve it yet. We had a mini lesson today for the worksheet and they all completed it. I assured them that our mini lessons will be revisited letter and now they have knowledge to some of it early.

See You Next Year,

Ms. Losinski