~ HEY, HEY it's FRIDAY ~

This quote seems fitting for today, as it is

 National Do Something Nice Day!  

Around the School

October 11th - PTO Tailgate
October 12th - End of 1st Grading Period
October 15th-16th - Camp Goodfellow 
(4th Grade -1 Class)
October 17th - E-Learning Day
October 24th-25th - Elementary Parent Teacher Conferences
October 26th - Fall Recess

More Information:

Come out on October 11th and enjoy the 

Tailgate Party!

This event will take place at Yost from 5pm-7pm.

Activites Include:

Bounce Houses, Football Toss, Tag Football, Cornhole, Dunk Tank, & Classroom Pumpkin Decorating Voting

Wristbands       $8.00 per child

Tickets       $1.00 each

Food      1 ticket each

(hot dogs, nachos, chips and drinks)

Don't miss out on this fun night of activities!

2ND GRADE:  THE MIRACULOUS ADVENTURE OF EDWARD TULANE:  We began our journey with Edward Tulane.  This week we looked at Paul's Reasoning Wheel as a way to question and interpret what we read.  We read chapter 4 together and used this chapter to model Paul's Reasoning Wheel.  The students were struggling grasping the purpose of the story from Pellegrina.  This was a perfect time for us to pause for a moment from our lesson and look at our Edward Tracker.  The Edward Tracker is something we will complete as a class that will help us organize our notes from the story.  One of the categories tracks important details.  

To help the students understand the meaning behind Pellegrina's story, we looked back at some key moments from chapters 1-3.  This allowed them to make a connection that Edward only cares about himself, similar to the princess in chapter 4.  Going back to Paul's Reasoning Wheel, we were now able to conclude that Pellegrina's story was to try and teach Edward about the importance of love, although at this point we are not sure it has helped him.

Students are to read Chapters 5-7.  STOP at Chapter 8.

3RD GRADE:  CHARACTER TRAITS THROUGH INTERACTIONS:

  Wow!  They were rocking out interactions this week.  It is all about understanding that there must be an exchange or trade - without it you probably have a cause and effect.  This group had to find interactions and infer character traits from them throughout the story The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses.  In almost every example given, when the students identified the interaction they would follow with an exchange.

  Next, the students had to create a paragraph using the hamburger model on The Girl from our story.  We reviewed the Hamburger Model because it was our first time utilizing it this year.  Together we brainstormed some character traits.  We decided the girl was caring, helpful and generous.  They came up with three details from the story each containing and interaction where they made sure to identify the exchange.  Then we turned it into paragraph, making sure to add an introduction sentence and conclusion sentence.

  Next week we will begin our new lesson.

4TH GRADE:  FAMILY:  This week the students were introduced to a Family System Analysis that we will use to organize the different stories we are studying on family systems.  To model the chart, we went back and completed it on the story Thunder Cake.  Next, the students watched a short clip on What is a Family to a group of children from Australia.  Afterwards, the students were asked to write a paragraph defining their family in a similar way.

  We had time to practice some of our editing tools we learned about last week.  The students seem to do the best with peer editing.  ARMS and CUPS is a struggle for them because they are not spotting their own errors.  We will continue to work on those two skills throughout the year.

  We will continue with our lesson next week.

2ND GRADE:  CIRCUMFERENCE:  

This week the students were first introduced to a new unit of measurement  - the centimeter.  We explored several different activities with a centimeter cube to allow them to become familiar with the length of a centimeter.  Then they completed a measuring activity to practice measuring with centimeters.  The students were given some measurements that were not exact.  This led us into a discussion on rounding with centimeters, similar to how we did with our inches.  

The students discovered that there are 10 millimeters between each centimeter.  If it was at 5 or more they would go up and 4 or less they would go down to the smaller number.  Now it was time to learn about another new math concept - circumference.  As a class, we explored different tools to measure the distance around something.  

The students explored with a centimeter cube, a ruler, and a pipe cleaner.  This led them to the idea that if we could combine a ruler and a pipe cleaner we would have a perfect tool.  Some students knew that our perfect tool for circumference was a tape measure.  The students will complete a worksheet where they will guess and then measure circumference using different tools.  Together, we modeled through the worksheet using a large egg.  

Next week they will follow the same steps independently using a small egg.  

3RD GRADE: IN SEARCH OF THE YETI:  
This week we had to find a hallway that measured 100 yards.  We started out with the hallway closest to our room.  We quickly discovered that the tiles were exactly one yard.  This allowed us to use them as a benchmark and count out 100 tiles - we just missed our goal by 2 yards. 
 We found a longer hallway to measure.  This one had different tiles, but we quickly discovered each tile was 12 inches.  
The students quickly decided it would be easier to count out 300 tiles.  We found a distance in the school that was 100 yards.  
Now they needed to imagine it being 3 times as long.  Looking through the camera on the tablet we could barely make out anything at the end of the hallway - 3 times as long and we would definitely not be able to capture a proper image of a Yeti.  
Now it was time for us to create our own class size Yeti.  This week we chose a student that we would have to double their size to create our own yeti.  Then we organized our measurements and converted them to the doubled measurement.
  We have all of our data ready to go and next week we will begin to construct our Yeti.

Our View of 100 yards

4TH GRADE:  MAKING SENSE OF FRACTIONS:

This week the students explored finding the common denominator of two fractions.  They were able to handle this part very well.  When applying this step to comparing fractions, they struggled  remembering to find an equivalent fraction and not just use the old numerator.  We will continue practicing this skill throughout the year.

  Our next lesson has us judge a frog jumping contest. The students were given a strip of paper measuring 3 feet.  It was their challenge to find and label 1 and 1/3 on the strip of paper.  The first challenge that needed to overcome was figuring out what our one would equal on the strip.  Then knowing the denominator was 3 they needed to go back to our lesson on folding fractions to find a way to divide the strip further.  After figuring out that 1 whole is equal to 1 foot they were able to complete this project.  Next, we discussed another way to label 1 and 1/3 as 4/3, which introduced the idea of improper fractions to the students.  

We will continue exploring improper fractions next week.

Have a Great Weekend,

Ms Losinski