~ FROZEN FRIDAY ~

Are you ready for another 
Frozen Frenzy?  


Due to Thanksgiving Break, there will be no blog posted next week. 

 I want to take a moment now to wish all my families a HAPPY THANKSGIVING and hope everyone has a wonderful break.


Mark it on the Calendar!

Wednesday, November 27th: Thanksgiving Break 
No School
Thursday, November 28th: Thanksgiving Break
No School
Friday, November 29th: Thanksgiving Break
No School 
Thursday, December 5th:  eLearning Day
December 9th - 13th:  Santa's Secret Workshop
Friday, December 13th:  Winterfest
5:30pm - 7:00pm
Thursday, December 19th:  2nd Quarter Ends
Friday, December 20th - Friday, January 3rd:
Winter Recess - No School
Monday, January 6th:  School Resumes

AROUND DUNELAND:

Winter Card Contest 2019

The Duneland School Corporation is excited to announce our 3rd annual Winter Card Contest!  All Duneland students in grades K-8 are eligible to participate. Please see the flyer below for contest guidelines. Submissions are due to the student's school art teacher on or before November 26, 2019. Only one entry per student, please. Student winners will be recognized at the mid January school board meeting.

1st Grade:  MAGICAL ANAGRAMS:

This week we continued our study on anagrams.  The students listened to the story The Great Show and Tell Disaster by Mike Reiss.  This story is FULL of anagrams!  As we read the story, we listed a majority of the anagrams we found on the board, until we ran out of room.  



When we were reading the story a student was wondering about the meaning of the word colossal.  We continued reading to see if we found any clues to help us discover the definition.  Afterwards, the students were introduced to a vocabulary map which is a tool to help us look and develop an understanding of new words.
  Together, we defined the word colossal with our vocabulary map.  I challenged them to try and use this word this week to someone.  (However, you too can join in the fun and use the word colossal and see if they tell you what it means.)  The students used their remaining time to continue working on their anagram packet.
We will wrap up our fun with anagrams next week.
  

2nd Grade:  FREYTAG'S PYRAMID:

This week we completed our grammar lesson with adjectives and adverbs.

  








Then, we moved onto learning about the structure of a story.  The students were introduced to Freytag's Pyramid.

 

Together, we defined each section of the pyramid.

We will continue exploring Freytag's Pyramid next week.

3rd Grade:  BEATRIX POTTER:

This week the students shared with the class their analyzers of the story they selected from our collection of Beatrix Potter.  Then, we listened to the story The Tale of Peter Rabbit together as a class.  As I read aloud the story, the students completed a reading analyzer on the short story for one last practice with completing this sheet. 
 To end our lesson with Beatrix Potter, we compared and contrasted our stories with a 3-way Venn Diagram.  The students are familiar with this sheet when it works with two circles, but this was a twist for them seeing it with 3 circles.  They did a great job finding items all three stories shared.

Next week we will move onto a new lesson.

4th Grade:
My Fourth Grade class did not meet this week due scheduled events.

1st Grade:  AREA:

This week the students were introduced to the word Area - which is our new concept for our next chapter.  They had to look at two different placemats and decide which shape had the largest area.  Next, they were introduced to square units as our measuring tool.  This allowed them to check the actual area of the two placemats and make a conclusion of which one was larger.

  Then, the students began some worksheets to practice working with area independently.  We ran into new vocabulary terms: larger, smaller and the same as.  Some students were writing about the same as which is what we stated for weight.  This led us into a conversation of our answers being exact (the same as) or close to the same (about the same as).  To end the day, the students explored predicting and measuring the area of items around the room.

2nd Grade:  THINK DEEPLY:

It was time to help our friends Dru and Teller with a question. Some students sent them their tessellations and they needed our help in explaining to them about the basic unit and how it was transformed.  They were asked to identify the shapes in the basic unit, explain how they were connected and how the shapes moved in the tessellation.  The students worked with a partner to fill-out their think frame. 

 Then, as a class we shared all of our different ideas that we should include in our answer.  The students used the remainder of their class time to respond to Dru and Teller.

  

3rd Grade:  CHAPTER CHECK-UP:

This week the students completed their first chapter check-up.  This tool allows us to see how the students are progressing with the material up to this point and look and see if there are any areas we need to revisit.

  On Thursday, we reviewed a few items on the chapter check-up.  Then, we used the remainder of our time to play KaHoot to wrap up this chapter. 

4th Grade:  CHAPTER CHECK-UP:

*Due to scheduled events, we only met one day this week.

This week the students completed their chapter check-up.  We utilize the check-up as a guide to see where the students are at this point with all the material covered.  We will review any of these areas after break.  To end class, we had a few minutes left to play a game of SET. 

Have  Great Weekend & A Happy Thanksgiving,

Ms. Losinski

~ MARVELOUS MONDAY ~

Our Emotional Bank Account:

This week some of my classes heard the story Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun by Maria Dismondy.  This story is filled with the message of being kind.  It's message is how we are all unique and different on the outside, but on the inside we all have a heart with feelings.  Those students that have had me in the past know how much I love the word UNIQUE and to be true to who you are on the inside - so this book was perfect to share with my classes.  We used this book to teach a new reward system within our classroom.  It is called our High Ability Emotional Bank Account.
  We hope our EBA will be filled with deposits of kind actions and words around the classroom.  However, a class may have a withdrawal if they are not always putting their best foot forward with their actions and words.  We compared our deposits to being bucket-fillers around the classroom.  Some of my classes took a moment to brainstorm what a deposit or withdrawal might look like and we will post those around the room.  We talked about how we hoped these emotional deposits would carry over to their classroom, around the school and at home.  The catch is ALL eight of my classes are filling up one EBA collectively.  When they fill the bank account each class will have several different options to choose from as a celebration for their positive behaviors.  I am excited to start the EBA next week with all of my classes and think this will be a great reminder for following our classroom expectations.

Mark it on the Calendar!

Wednesday, November 20th:  4th Grade Musical
at 6:30pm Chesterton Middle School
Wednesday, November 27th: Thanksgiving Break 
No School
Thursday, November 28th: Thanksgiving Break
No School
Friday, November 29th: Thanksgiving Break
No School 
Thursday, December 5th:  eLearning Day
December 9th - 13th:  Santa's Secret Workshop
Friday, December 13th:  Winterfest
5:30pm - 7:00pm
Thursday, December 19th:  2nd Quarter Ends
Friday, December 20th - Friday, January 3rd:
Winter Recess - No School
Monday, January 6th:  School Resumes

AROUND DUNELAND:

Winter Card Contest 2019

The Duneland School Corporation is excited to announce our 3rd annual Winter Card Contest!  All Duneland students in grades K-8 are eligible to participate. Please see the flyer below for contest guidelines. Submissions are due to the student's school art teacher on or before November 26, 2019. Only one entry per student, please. Student winners will be recognized at the mid January school board meeting.

1st Grade:  MAGICAL ANAGRAMS:

This week we started a new lesson.  First, we decoded our secret message.  This one was different from some of our previous ones and I was happy to say they were able to figure it out all on their own.  They were given a mirror to decipher mirror writing.   Can you read this magical message? - was their secret message for the lesson.  I showed them a few other tricks to reading the message if they didn't have a mirror handy.  Then, we took four letters P,T,S, and O and rearranged them to create 6 different words.  This introduced the students to the term anagrams.  We looked at a few more samples on the board together before they began to complete some anagrams on their own.

We will continue exploring anagrams next week.  

2nd Grade:  GRAMMAR TIME:

*We only met for one class period this week because of the 2-hour delay.

My second graders started class this weekend with a mini-lesson for our new behavior system in the room.  We took a moment to listen to a story about expected behaviors and discussed our new Emotional Bank Account.  Then, we switched gears to reviewing our figurative language from last week.  We needed to look back at similes when they used the word like to compare one thing to another and make sure we included both items in the comparison when identifying it in the sentence.  We briefly discussed prepositional phrases because some students were including those in their similes, but we will go into more detail with that topic later in the year.  

We will continue with some more grammar fun next week.

3rd Grade:  BEATRIX POTTER: 

This week our class finished reading The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.  Then, the students were introduced to a reading analyzer.  The reading analyzer is a diagram that allows the student to examine their reading and take it further to look for the deeper meaning in the story.  This allowed us to discuss the difference between summarizing the actual events in a story verse the author's purpose for sharing the story.  

We discussed that yes Beatrix Potter entertained us with a short-story, but she was also teaching us a lesson about kindness.  Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was kind and valued her friendships. She also enjoyed doing the laundry. She wanted to wash her friends' clothes to have in return the joy of cleaning and doing something kind for her friends.  We changed gears and the students read a short-story from Beatrix Potter of their choice.  Then, they began to analyze the story they selected to read.

We will continue exploring Beatrix Potter next week.

4th Grade:  CHANGE-MAKER:

*We only met for one class period this week because of the 2-hour delay.

This week we continued to read the story Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges.  As we reached some more sensitive pages in the story, we looked at this part of the book as a class.  This allowed us to discuss what was happening with the protests and rioting together.  We took a moment to look back on when the story took place and the students were surprised to learn that 60 years ago segregation was taking place in schools.  

We will continue to explore change-makers next week.

1st Grade:  CHAPTER CHECK-UP: 

This week the students completed their first Chapter Check-Up.  This check-up covered all the topics the students studied with weight. The students did a great job with this chapter.  

To celebrate completing our chapter, the students had a KaHoot Day of Fun all over the topic of weight.  It was a great way to wrap up this chapter.

The students will learn our new topic next week.

2nd Grade:  TESSELLATIONS: 

This week we looked at creating a tessellation with more than one shape.  We looked at patterns and identified the basic unit used to create the repeating pattern within the tessellation.  Then, the students took some shapes and created their own basic pattern.  

They were encouraged to select between 2 and 6 shapes.  After finding their basic pattern, the students transformed it across their page to create their own tessellation.  We had enough time this week to allow each student to share their designs.  As each student shared, the class identified the number of shapes in the basic pattern and identified the transformations used for the tessellation.

We will wrap up this lesson next week.

3rd Grade:  THINK DEEPLY: 

The time has come again to wrap up another lesson with a Think Deeply Question.  The students were given all of the information to a function table up to the 4th term in a story problem.  The students had to take this information to identify the 10th term in the pattern.  This is the first time they have had this information presented to them in a story problem, so we completed our math message board together and deciphered all of the material given. 

 We reviewed all of the important vocabulary to make sure everyone understood the different terms we were using.  Then, the students looked at the first four terms given and saw they had a decreasing pattern.  This let them select the decreasing function S -  (TxP) to solve for the 10th term.  The students realized they were given the starting number, so they knew the number to replace "S" for our function.  The students looked back at the pattern from the numbers and saw it was decreasing by 5 - this gave them the number to replace "P" with in the function.  From there the students had all of the information needed to solve for the 10th term and explain their answer.  This lesson took a little time, but I am happy to see them understanding and relying on the formula verse extending the table.

4th Grade:  THINK DEEPLY:

It was time to complete another Think Deeply Question.  The students referred back to their thoughts and ideas we completed last week.  This paper helped to guide them while they completed the answers.  To end the week, the students began their first Chapter Check-Up.

Next week they will finish their Chapter Check-Up.

Have a Great Week,

Ms. Losinski