~ 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