~SHARING SUNDAY~

Mark it on the Calendar!

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

1st Grade:  CIPHER WHEEL:

This week the students completed several worksheets to familiarize themselves with working the Caesar's Cipher Wheel.  The worksheets allowed them to practice their deciphering and enciphering skills.    A new thing they were challenged with was to find the minus rule to each of the plus rules.  To solve for this, they must remember our magic number of 26 letters in the alphabet.  This rule is important as a major time saver.  If they told you the cipher rule was +22, it is much faster to utilize the minus rule of -4.  We worked with this new rule together because adding to 26 was something they weren't quite comfortable with yet.
We will wrap up this lesson next week.

2nd Grade:  STRUCTURE OF A SENTENCE:

  This week we looked at the structure of a sentence.  We looked at the structure of the four-level analyzer and how it helps us dissect a sentence.  Our focus was identifying the subject and predicate of each sentence.  An additional skill the analyzer lets us complete is identifying the parts of speech to each word in the sentence. 

 We will continue to identify parts of speech in a sentence at a slower rate throughout the year - looking at one part of speech at a time.  To end class, we began our next lesson with a read aloud of Marvelous Matie:  How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor by Emily Arnold McCully.  

We will continue with our new lesson next week.







3rd Grade:  INTERACTIONS WITH PAUL GOBLE:

This week the students listened to the story The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses by Paul Goble.  Then, we looked at each individual page and identified interactions with the characters.  We took each interaction further by discussing what this means about that character and identified a character trait that it displayed for them.  










We will continue with this lesson next week.









4th Grade:  PRESENTATION - PAGES:

This week the students came in and were introduced to the app - Pages.  This is a great app on their iPad to utilize for presentations.  For this presentation, they were introduced to typing the presentation, inserting pictures, creating a drawing and recording their writing all within the app pages.  







Next week, they will present their presentations.   

1st Grade:  WEIGHT:



This week the students completed a weight activity in the classroom.  They worked their way through 5 different stations.  Each station was set up with 3 different bags with various items to compare and weigh.  They took a turn at each station and predicted the heaviest, middle weight and lightest of the bags.  Then, they used a hanger balance scale to find out the actual results for each station.  When we were done, we decided to compare bags from different stations for some extra practice with the hanger balance scales.
We will wrap up this lesson next week.

2nd Grade:  Symmetry:

We continued our exploration with symmetry.  First, by looking at a 3x3 piece of paper and finding all the lines of symmetry for the square.  After they discovered it had 4 lines, we cut the shapes out to make triangles.  These triangles are needed for our next step with this lesson in exploring symmetry and transformations with triangles.

 I introduced to them the three terms to transformations - flip, turn and slide.  I wanted to see if anyone was familiar with them, but we will focus on them in the next step of the lesson.  At this point, the students are manipulating the triangles using transformations, but without us focusing on the specific movements.  They are replicating patterns in 3x3 grids using the triangles.





We will continue with the lesson next week.  

3rd Grade:

We wrapped up our first think deeply.  They were rock stars with the first one.  We took our time and put in lots of information in our response.  I again stressed to them that when they attempt the first one on their own it might not contain all these details, but by the end of the year they will be professional writers at explaining their math ideas. 

We began our introduction into our next lesson.  This lesson introduces the idea of a function - we will take it very slow to make sure we are thinking algebraically verse drawing the picture or extending tables.  Some were already challenging this idea, so I have prepared a challenge next week to show them why we should use a function.    

4th Grade:

They completed their first Think Deeply of the year and I was impressed with all the information they shared for our first one.  After their think deeply, they completed a quick review on quadrilaterals.  Then, we began our introduction to our next lesson.  We looked at a sheet called Some, All or None.  This sheet asked the students to identify whether statements about shapes were true or false.  If false, they had to state a counterexample about the statement.  Our last activity of the week was Three of These Things Belong Together.  This sheet had the students look at a set of 4 shapes and decide which one didn't belong.  Then, they would identify the name of the shape and explain why it was different.  
These activities are preparing the students for a game we will play next week.

Hope you enjoyed the Fall Weather this weekend!

Ms. Losinski

~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