~FINALLY FALL FRIDAY~

FALL has ARRIVED - I love this time of year!

The fourth Friday of September is 

National Brave Day.

Mark it on the Calendar!

Saturday, October 5th: PTO Color Run
3 to 5pm
Tuesday, October 8th: PTO Meeting
 6-7pm
Tuesday, October 15th:  End of 1st Quarter
Thursday, October 24th:  Yost Blood Drive
1:30 - 7pm
Thursday, October 24th:  Report Card Posted
 at 3pm
Friday, October 25th:  No School - Fall Recess
Thursday, October 31st:  Happy Halloween

AROUND THE SCHOOL

Yost Elementary

FAMILY 2K COLOR RUN

A family focused afternoon of fun that will help us raise money for enrichment programs for the children at Yost Elementary.

This event is open to Yost students, families, and the Duneland community.

Race Date:  Saturday, October 5th, 2019

Fun Run Details:

• Check-in time/shirt pick-up time starting at 2pm on race day.
• Race start time 3pm, DJ Ryan Jury starting pre-run festivities at 2:30pm
• Distance: 2k, untimed out and back fun run with multiple color stations
• Post-run refreshments
• Post-run dance party until 4:30pm
• $20 entry fee for adults, $15 entry fee for students/kids

CLICK HERE to sign up for the Color Run!

Registration deadline for a guaranteed race shirt is September 20th.
Although the deadline for shirts has passed, you can still sign up and join us in the Color Run!



This week our school participated in College GO! Week

1st Grade: CIPHER WHEEL:
This week we started our next lesson.  They were introduced to our first secret message.  Each of our lessons going forward will always begin with a coded message for the students to solve.  This first one was a tricky one because they cannot crack the code until they are given a cipher wheel.  We did look at the message and make some connections to identify it was a sentence - they discovered it began with a capital letter, ended in a period and identified that there might be 8 words.  
This was a great start to understanding our message.  They listened to a brief history to why the Caesar Cipher Wheel was created and this introduced them to why we might need secret messages.  Then, the students were given a cipher wheel to utilize.  We used the secret message to learn how to manipulate the cipher wheel.  They were able to discover the message:  Letters are symbols that stand for sounds.  We ended class with a discussion on what this message meant.  To better understand this statement, I would state a letter and they would give me the sound.  They already took this sentence further by introducing the idea that letters create words and words create sentences!  These are ideas we will actually look at with future lessons.  We will continue working with the cipher wheel next week.

2nd Grade:  STRUCTURE OF WORDS:

This week we continued with our word study on the word PERSEVERANCE.  The students completed their vocabulary map.  Then, we listened to the story The Magnificent Idea by Ashley Spires.  The theme to this book was all about perseverance.  It really helped the students get a better idea of the definition.  They understand it is to keep trying, but this week we stressed the idea of when things are difficult that we keep trying.  After reading the book, the students shared different ways we persevere.  As a class, we listed three ideas we needed in order to persevere:  Staying Calm in a frustrating moment, remembering to have fun while completing the task, and to just keep going.  I was really proud of the list they came up with and we will display these around the room as a reminder to ourselves.  Next week, we will continue with our lesson.

*We were having such a good discussion with the book that I forgot their pictures this week.  Sorry!

3rd Grade:  INTERACTIONS through CHARACTER TRAITS:
This week the students were introduced to their interaction journals.  After each lesson, they will answer a prompt in this journal to think further on interactions.  Next, we looked at a biography from our author to our next story.  The 3rd grade unit usually begins each lesson studying an author to a book and looking at how their interactions in life influenced their writing.  We started this week by look at the award-winning author Paul Goble.  

As we looked at his biography, the students created a chart on important details from his life and character traits they identified.  They were excited to stop and share their different ideas about the author.  


We will continue this lesson next week. 



4th Grade:  CHANGE INTERVIEW:

This week my interviewers were hard at work creating their composition.  They were challenged to take the responses from their interviews and write a report with 3 or more paragraphs.  I was thrilled to see their excitement and hear they have a love for writing.  They were asked to first brainstorm their thoughts and ideas.  Then, they took that to guide them as they created their writing.  We had enough time left to allow them to peer edit their writing with a friend.  Next week, we will create a presentation with their papers.  

1st Grade:  WEIGHT:

This week we completed math sheets from our math journals to reiterate what we have been working on with weight.  They had to glue different shapes into scales to make them true.  They were introduced to drawing the scale in two ways to show the same statement by reversing the line.
  They continued to work with the math terms heavier, lighter or about the same to describe the scales.  Next week, we will begin some math centers to explore the concept of weight further.

2nd Grade:  SYMMETRY:
This week we started to look at different shapes and determine if a given line was a line of symmetry to that shape.  Then, they were given shapes and they had to find and draw the line of symmetry onto the shapes.  When they got to the last shape this was a struggle because they were determined to find the line of symmetry, but this introduced the idea that not all shapes have a line of symmetry. 

 They were also given the letter "A" as a shape to find the line of symmetry.  It was interesting to hear some of them discuss this isn't a shape, but it led us to a discussion of what other letters are symmetrical.  Then, another student introduced the idea that numbers can be symmetrical too.  It was great listening to them take this idea further.





  We will continue to work with this lesson next week.




3rd Grade:  THINK DEEPLY:

This week it was time to complete our first think deeply question.  We began by looking at the question and making sure we understood what they were asked to answer.  Then we took the time to discuss all the knowledge they have learned with repeating patterns. 



We also talked about the steps to solving the given pattern.  By the time we finished our discussion, the students had all the information to answer the question on the board.  This is a step we will continue with each think deeply as a review to the topic.  

They are encouraged to use the information from the class discussion to answer the think deeply question. 
Together, we took the notes we created on this topic to complete our first think deeply.  We will wrap up this step next week,



4th Grade:  THINK DEEPLY:
This week the students came to their first think deeply question.  We took the time to look at the question and take notes on what it was asking the students.  This week we looked further at our definition of a parallelogram and a square.  It was also recapping that a shape can be identified by many names.  We took the time to list the different name for each of those shapes.  In doing this step, we took a moment to discuss what makes the parallelogram and square also different.  This served as a reminder that squares may be parallelograms, but not all parallelograms can be squares.  We kept careful notes of our discussion, so the students can utilize them while responding to the think deeply.  Next, the students utilized the remainder of class time to write their response.  They are encouraged to utilize our notes as a guide.

Have a Great Weekend,

Ms. Losinski

~ FRANTIC FRIDAY ~

This week all my groups were AMAZING, as we dealt with a little change.  Our classroom received a makeover this week, so we held class in a different room.  Looks like we will return to our normal routine and classroom next week - the room looks AWESOME!

Mark it on the Calendar!

Saturday, October 5th: PTO Color Run
3 to 5pm
Tuesday, October 8th: PTO Meeting
 6-7pm
Tuesday, October 15th:  End of 1st Quarter
Thursday, October 24th:  Yost Blood Drive
1:30 - 7pm
Thursday, October 24th:  Report Card Posted
 at 3pm
Friday, October 25th:  No School - Fall Recess
Thursday, October 31st:  Happy Halloween

AROUND THE SCHOOL

Yost Elementary

FAMILY 2K COLOR RUN

A family focused afternoon of fun that will help us raise money for enrichment programs for the children at Yost Elementary.

This event is open to Yost students, families, and the Duneland community.

Race Date:  Saturday, October 5th, 2019

Fun Run Details:

• Check-in time/shirt pick-up time starting at 2pm on race day.
• Race start time 3pm, DJ Ryan Jury starting pre-run festivities at 2:30pm
• Distance: 2k, untimed out and back fun run with multiple color stations
• Post-run refreshments
• Post-run dance party until 4:30pm
• $20 entry fee for adults, $15 entry fee for students/kids

CLICK HERE to sign up for the Color Run!

Registration deadline for a guaranteed race shirt is September 20th.

1st Grade:  SHIELD OF ARMS:

  First, thank you for all your help in making sure they completed their homework from last week.  They took their patches and assembled them onto their shields.  They were allowed to decorate the space around the patches to personalize their shields.  Next, they practiced their speech around the room.  Then, each student took a turn presenting their shields.  If you were not the presenter, it was important that you were a good audience member because you were going to grade the presentation. 

Allowing them to grade a presentation is another way to help the students understand assignments given with  rubrics - I always explain to students the best thing about a rubric is the teacher is giving you the formula to receive an A.  It also is a way they can see and identify things to help them next time they are the presenter.  That is one thing I truly enjoy about the 1st grade curriculum - it gives the students several times throughout the year to work on presentations.  Learning to have confidence in public speaking at a young age will help to eliminate the fear in it.  They did a great job with their first presentation and I can't wait to see their confidence grow throughout the year.

Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who will go first!

2nd Grade:  STRUCTURE:

This week the students shared their structures from home.  It was great having them share their different items.  Thanks for allowing the students to share!  The students are beginning to place into memory the 3 generalizations for a structure.  The tricky one for most of them is remembering it can change over time.  We moved onto our next lesson where we will focus on the structure we find in words and in sentences.  

This week we looked at the structure we find in words.  This activity introduced the students to the vocabulary map.  As a group, we looked at the different sections on the map.  This led us into a discussion on synonyms and antonyms.  We also talked briefly about the tools we would use to look up the definition of a word.  I was excited when some students could tell me the dictionary!  




Over the years, I have learned that with technology - the dictionary seems to quickly be fading away.  We took a moment to talk about the structure of the dictionary before coming back to the vocabulary map. 

 We will continue to work with the structure of words next week.

3rd Grade:  INTERACTIONS as COMMUNICATION:

This group continued on with their project from last week.  They concluded their research into different interactions we have with cats.  They became more confident in understanding there is no right or wrong as long as you can justify your thoughts.  

This led to some interesting conversations on the positive or negative affect - they are learning some good debate skills in the process!  They also looked at a training skill and explained how the generalizations of interactions apply to training a cat.  We will wrap up interactions as a form of communication next week.

4th Grade:  CHANGE IN LANGUAGE:

This week the students discovered how our language has changed overtime.  We completed a study on Greek and Latin Roots to discover their influence in the English Language.  We also looked at word parts with prefixes, root words and suffixes. 

 Next week, we will use their discoveries to lead a discussion on how it has changed our language.

HOMEWORK:  This week the students were asked to complete an interview.

1st Grade:  WEIGHT:

This week we received a letter from Imi and Zani asking us to help them creating a weight game for the school measurement fair.  The students decided they were up for the challenge.  Before we test out the game, we must work through some activities to learn more about the concept of weight.  They were introduced to the terms lighter, heavier and about the same.  These are different terms we used to define the balance scales we made with our arms weighing some objects around the room.

2nd Grade:  SYMMETRY IN ACTION:

*Due to picture day, we only met on Wednesday.*

Dru and Teller have invited the students to create a design for the Shape Gallery for their children's museum - the Sensational Math Institute for Learning and Exploration or SMILE for short.  Throughout the year the students will complete different scale-models for different parts of their designs to send to Dru and Teller for SMILE.  

In Chapter 1, the students are exploring different attributes to shapes in order to design a wall mural. To help them with their designs, the first concept they were introduced to was symmetry.  We looked at an introduction activity using mirrors to work on developing a definition for symmetry.  The mirror helped to introduce the idea of a mirror image on both sides of the line of symmetry.  We will continue to work with symmetry next week.

3rd Grade:  REPEATING PATTERNS:

  This week we completed another practice sheet on repeating patterns.  It is important throughout the entire year that the students are looking for the pattern to discover the function rule verse just knowing what comes next in the pattern. This is why we took some time to practice working with repeating patterns.

It is time for our Think Deeply with this lesson.  There is a big jump in what the student is asked to complete with this assignment from second to third grade.  


This is why we take our time with the first one, so the students understand their expectations for the remainder of the year.  We looked at some samples from our book that helps the students see 3 different responses and how to improve on each of the scores.  Next week we will complete our first think deeply together.

4th Grade:  IT'S ALL IN THE NAME:

*Due to picture day, we only met on Wednesday.*

We continued on with creating a list of different attributes to our 7 shapes.  The students started to understand that calling a shape certain names defines certain attributes to that shape without restating all of the attributes.  Next, the students created their own definitions for the shapes.  This was a great way to review and see what they remembered from our discussion with each shape.  This came pretty easy to them which hopefully meant the attributes to the shapes are sticking to their memory!  We will wrap up this lesson next week.  

Have a Great Weekend,

Ms. Losinski