~ THOUGHTFUL THURSDAY ~

Can you believe it...we are already a week into November! Our focus this month will be Just Keep Swimming  - some of my classes came up with a great list of ways to build our character from the movie Finding Nemo.  This week we talked about having the right attitude to achieve our goals.  We will build on each week with a new trait.

~ First Trivia Winner~

Congratulations to our first trivia winner! Each week the children try to guess the weekly quote to our monthly theme and after three correct guesses they get to pick a prize from the treasure box. We have a few more friends close to their first prize - keep the guesses coming!

The school reached their first goal on caps!  They are now working towards having enough for a second buddy bench.  They will continue to collect them until December 9th, so please continue to support them and send in those caps.

~ Leaders ~

Sense of Humor!

It was great seeing all of the children work on their traits from last month.  Below are some of the friends who made it into the club for their leadership role in the classroom.  These students always set an example for their classmates, used their listening skills to stay on task and model good behaviors around the room.  

Check back next week for a few more of our friends from the Character of the Month Club!  

I will also share our friends that always make us smile and add the element of fun into our day!

LANGUAGE ARTS

1st Grade:  Silly Speak - Guess My Connection: This week we began to explore another secret code together.  The children had to look at the buttons from a telephone as their tool to decode the message.  After a few minutes on their own, we worked together for them to learn how to use our new tool.  They finished the message on their own.  They discovered we could learn to speak a secret language!  Before we could learn our new language we needed to review some phonics.

On Tuesday, we continued to talk about some of the patterns we see in words.  We worked on a worksheet sounding out syllables and identifying the first vowel sound we heard in a word.  After that I introduced the children to our secret language they will learn - Pig Latin.  I displayed a few words to learn how to speak them and then we looked at the rules for Pig Latin.  At the end of the day, I announced it was time to eanclay upway and they were excited when they decoded it to clean-up!  We will continue to work with Pig Latin throughout our next lesson.

Getting the wiggles out - after lots of writing!

2nd Grade:  Grammar Introduction:  We started the day sharing our thoughts and questions we had from our homework.  This led us into a class discussion over chapters 3 and 4 from their reading assignment.  Then we began to talk about parts of speech in a sentence.  As a class, we listed off the parts of speech and their definitions.  Then the children were introduced to the Four-Level Analysis Worksheet.  We completed it together using the sentence “She shone as bright as the stars on a moonless night.”

On Tuesday, we continued to work on labeling a sentence and discussing the parts.  We will continue to work on parts of speech and parts of a sentence throughout the year.

3rd Grade:  Tall Tales - Grammar:  This week we started off with a review on nouns, pronouns and verbs.  They read a Halloween story and had to identify all of the nouns in the story.  Then they want back and looked for all of the pronouns.  After finding the pronouns, the students drew a line from the pronoun to the noun it replaced in the sentence.  The last step was to look through the passage and highlight all of the action verbs.  When they completed the Halloween story - they took a selection from a Tall Tale and followed the same steps again.

We did not meet on Tuesday because of an assembly for the Cookie Dough Fundraiser.

4th Grade: Men and Women Who Changed the World:  This week we started out with a little review on parts of speech.  We started out by listing the parts of speech and defining them.  After that we watched a few videos from School House Rock to help us remember some of their roles in the sentence.  Next we went through a list of sentences identifying first the subject and the predicate. Finally,we labeled each word with the part of speech it represented in the sentence.

On Tuesday, the students came in and chose a short biography to read.  Then they spread out around the room to read it.  After they finished with their book they completed an organizer to help them summarize the story they read.  We will continue with this project next week.

MATH

1st Grade:  I did not meet with my groups this week because of early dismissal.

2nd Grade:  Length - Marble Crash Test:  This week we came back together as a class to record all of our data onto one sheet.  We compared the results between the groups.  Then we conducted the experiment together as a class to discuss what might have happened to affect our results.  We ran into our first problem on making sure you have a flat surface to work on or the marble would not travel, but instead roll backwards.  

Then we moved to another table and saw that on the first test the marble went so far it traveled to the floor.  So we decided it would be best to conduct our experiment on the same surface the groups did - the carpet.  When demonstrating and measuring we discussed what happened if the vertex wasn’t aligned properly - and a group responded that it caused their marble to fall off the track before it reached marble 2.  Then we talked about the position of our post-it notes to mark the marble - some groups responded that they had to move their post-it notes to the side or the marble would hit it and stop.  As we worked through the experiment again the students were making predictions each time we increased the height.  

The students concluded:  the higher the height the faster marble one traveled causing the marble two to go further when they crashed.  We took our class results and compared them with the list and we saw some groups had the similar pattern.  We were able to see if there was no change in the inch from one trial to another - it may have been because of an estimation in the previous trial.  They did a great job analyzing their results!

On Thursday, we looked at the problem Dru and Teller have and began to fill out our Think Sheet. We had to decided who measured correctly Dru or Teller - one measured 7 inches and the other measured 14 half inches. The class decided they were both correct with their measurement.  The children worked independently to explain their reasoning to why both Dru and Teller measured correctly.

3rd Grade:  Linear Measurement - In Search of the Yeti:  Class began by hearing a story of the Abominable Snowman, or Yeti of the Himalayas.  Then they were asked to identify the different measurements we heard in the story - altitude and distance.  This lead us into a class discussion first learning about altitude - we looked at a chart listing the highest altitude in each state and a map of the United States showing the different elevations.  The map helped them visualize and understand the idea of sea level better.  Then we went into a discussion on distance and visualizing yards - an example of a football field became a perfect benchmark for us to imagine 100 yards!

On Thursday, we worked  together to find a benchmark around the school - we measured out the longest hallway in the building.  We discovered that the hallway was about 120 yards. Longer then the football field we used yesterday! We took a minute to imagine 3 times that length and how hard it would be to photograph the yeti. We also took note of where 100 yards was in the hallway to relate it back to our football field benchmark. They had a great day working as a team!

4th Grade:  The Shape of Things - Triple Play with Shapes:  The first part of group we spent time comparing our individual Think Deeply questions to a sample response the book provided.  After reading three different samples, I had the children reread their response and then grade their own.  I then met with each one of them to discuss their response and scores. They did a great job for our first time writing independently for math!  Then we moved onto lesson 2.  I explained to them that now that we can define the definition and math attributes of our shapes - we are going to take it a step further and work on comparing and contrasting shapes.  We opened the lesson by looking at the assignment Some, All or None.  We completed the first question together and the students learned about giving a counterexample to a false statement.  To take question 1 a step further they were asked to make a list of similarities and differences between a parallelogram and rectangle.

On Thursday, we created a chart together comparing and contrasting the rectangle and the parallelogram.  Then they worked through the rest of the page on their own.  As one more warm-up exercise to our new concept, they also completed Three of These Things Belong Together.  They were given 4 shapes and had to identify the one that does not fit the group and then explain why it did not belong.

IMPORTANT DATES:

November 1st-18th:  Cookie Dough Fundraiser

November 4th:  No School

November 9th:  Picture Retakes

November 16th & 17th:  Camp Goodfellow – Sloan

November 23rd-25th:  Thanksgiving Break – No School

~Freaky Friday~

Happy Halloween!  I hope everyone enjoys all of the spooktacular activities this weekend with Halloween approaching.  

Weekly Quote

     I hope everyone enjoyed their Fall Break!  This was our last week we focused on Hakuna Matata.  Our first weekvwe focused on a little fun and sense of humor from our friends Timon and Pumba.  Then we shifted our focus onto becoming a leader in the classroom.  We also discussed that a little should be a good listener and have patience. Check back next week to see who made it into the Character of the Month Club by being our leaders in the classroom.

Monthly Theme

Here is a  hint to our new theme in the room for character traits!  This month we will focus on Never Giving Up!





     Some of my students were in their cubs gear this week, so we had a little fun taking pictures wishing them luck!  For all my cubs fans - I wanted to wish you luck this week...

         ~ Go CUBS Go ~

LANGUAGE ARTS

1^st Grade:  Caesar Cipher-Cryptographic Connections:  We started the week out with a quick review on some key terms we learned last week.  I was happy to see the children all remembered the terms deciphering and enciphering.  They were also all able to        remind me the proper way to shift our cipher wheels depending on if it would say a plus or a minus.  We used today to practice deciphering a few more words for extra practice. 

     On Tuesday, the students worked independently on a worksheet.  They had to pick one of our words from a previous worksheet and come up with a connection for it.  They then gave a brief explanation and drew a picture for their connection.  I introduced the children to labeling their pictures today and encouraged them to label all the parts.  We ended the day by looking out the window for some connections we see outside.  The children needed to write down four connections.  For our last connection we went outside so they could find their last connection.  They had to keep their connections a secret and we will use them in our next lesson.

2^nd Grade:  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane:  The kids and I were so EXCITED to begin our novel this week!  We began with a class discussion on our reflection we ended on last week.  “If a journey is to be miraculous, what events might occur on the journey?” – Many students responded with long, scary, and some type of danger.  Then we read chapter one as a class.  After reading the first chapter the students reflected a few notes from chapter one.  Then as a class we discussed some details and many students are already changing their predictions.  The children were surprised to find out that Edward was a rabbit made out of china!  

~ Cubbies ~

     On Tuesday, we began by reading chapter two together as a class.  Then the children completed a reading analyzer on their own – this will help them organize their thoughts from this chapter.  The children were asked to read chapters 3 & 4 for homework – to be completed by Monday.  I also sent them home with a paper to track any thoughts or questions they have to use as a reminder when they return to class for Monday.  They can use this paper to help them in our class discussion.  I also discussed with the children the importance of not working ahead of the group when they take the book home.  We will work through this together as a class and I don’t want anyone working ahead spoiling any parts of the story for the class.

3^rd Grade:  Legends and Tall Tales:  This week we began by reviewing what we know so far to help us define a myth, legend, and a tall tale.  We worked through a list together on the board to help us organize the characteristics to each of these genres.  This will help us better identify our reading materials as we continue through the unit this year.  Then they were asked to pick out a story and begin to read it.  Although they are not finished reading it I asked what their first guess was to what they were reading and right now we think it is a myth.  We will see if their thought changes when they finish their stories.

     On Tuesday, they came in and finished with their reading.  Then we analyzed the story to discover what genre we read.  As a hint the students were asked to go back and highlight any exaggerations in the story.  Our thoughts started to change to a tall tale when we started to mark all of the exaggeration we saw in the story.  We ended the day making a Venn diagram for a myth, legend and tall tale.  I was so excited to see this chart become easy to fill out and the descriptions to each one becoming easier.  We were also able to use the terms fiction and folktale properly as something they all have in common.  It was great seeing the properties to each becoming easier!

Go Cubs Go!

4^th Grade:  Change in One Person’s Life:  We have started a new lesson this week introducing biographies to the group and how they show change.  We started class out with a discussion on Genres.  We focused on Nonfiction and briefly discussed autobiography before a student answered a biography leading the discussion to our focus.  As a class,we came up with a list of components that we would expect to see in a biography.  Then I showed the children a collection of different picture book biographies.  We began reading Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein.

     On Tuesday, we finished reading our story as a class and then discussed the ways we see change in the story.  Then we broke down the different word parts to biography as a class to work on the definition of a biography by using the word parts.  Next the students broke into two groups and started breaking apart words in the word family “bio.”  We will continue to work with this together next week.

MATH

1^st Grade:  It’s Heavy! – Heavier or Lighter:       We started the week finishing up our heavier or lighter centers from last week.  Then we took all the bags and made predictions together as a class - looking for the heaviest, lightest and about the same with all of our objects.  Each student took a turn picking out the item they thought was the heaviest and the lightest.  Then they each picked out two items they thought were about the same and we took turns weighing our predictions.

    
     On Thursday, we received a fax from our friends Imi and Zani needing our help.  They needed us to figure out how we would decide the winner of the weight game for the measurement fair.  As a class, we started to fill out our Think Deeply sheet to help us answer the question.  We will write our response to our friends in two weeks.  I will not meet with my 1^st grade math group next week because of early dismissal.

2^nd Grade:  Length – Marble Crash Test:  It’s Marble Crash Test time!  The kids were so excited because we finally began our marble crash test.  Today they came in and I showed them a brief example of how to conduct their experiment.  Then they worked with a partner and were off conducting their own tests.  Below you can see the pictures from their experiments this week.  On Thursday, they continued conducting their crash tests.  We will look at our results next week.

 

3^rd Grade:  Linear Measurement - Measuring Me:  This week we continued working on our Think Deeply question together.  After completing this assignment  – the kids shared some of their answers that they added onto our group response.  This allowed them to see other ideas they can add to their writing next time.  For our first attempt at writing, we had some great ideas – the students did a great job using their math terms and some even added pictures to explain their steps.

     On Thursday, I wanted the children to try the second Think Deeply question on their own.  We left our math message up for the students to utilize as a tool.  This time they spread out around the room and began to compare their different measurements from Measuring Me – and then they recorded their thoughts.  Then we came back together sharing our responses.  I wanted the kids to hear different samples of writing and assured them this is a process we will continue to work together until they are comfortable on their own.

 

4^th Grade:  The Shape of Things – You Either Have It…Or You Don’t:  This week we are working on summarizing our first lesson.  The children are being introduced to our first Think Deeply question.  A Think Deeply question is how we will end every lesson in our book.  As a class, we will fill out a Math Message Board together discussing what the question is asking and what we know to help us answer it.  Then they will write a response to the question.  To help them with their writing they will have many tools to utilize:  the Math Message Board will stay displayed, the math words will be on the word wall, they may use their glossary in their journals, or they can use their student journal pages to help them with their writing.  As you can see from the list above they have many resources to help in this step.   We also looked at what should be included in their answer and how it will be scored.

     On Tuesday, we began to walk through answering the first question together.  I helped by modeling step-by-step how to answer the question allowing them time to add to each area their own thoughts.  Then we looked at one more question and I asked them to try it on their own.  We will use this question to compare to a sample response our book has shared with us.  Then they will have an opportunity to grade theirs based on the samples we read.

IMPORTANT DATES:

October 28^th: Fall Parties

November 2^nd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 3^rd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 4^th:  No School

November 9^th:  Picture Retakes

November 16^th & 17^th:  Camp Goodfellow – Sloan

November 23^rd-25^th:  Thanksgiving Break – No School

~FALL BREAK FRIDAY~

Weekly Quote

Greetings!  This week we continued our discussion on being a leader in the classroom.  The focus this week was on why a leader needs to be a good listener.  This led a few of my groups to discuss the importance of not being a “bossy” leader. We also talked about different leaders in the building - coming up with the principal and their teachers.  However, I turned it back to them and told them I want them to think of ways to demonstrate being a leader in the classroom.  This will be our last week focusing on being a leader. 

Can you believe it - Thursday was the end of the 1st Quarter!  Today starts Fall Break and the kids get to enjoy a 3 day weekend!  The school is continuing their quest in collecting bottle caps.  On Thursday I saw some classrooms with multiple bags filled by their doors!  Please continue to support this effort and send in those bottle caps with your children. 

This week is National Red Ribbon Week!  Each day will be a different theme the children can participate in as they pledge to be Drug Free.  Follow the Schedule below:

Monday:  Sign the Pledge

Tuesday: “YOLO” Wear Red today

Wednesday: “We’re Too Bright for Drugs” wear neon/bright clothes and sunglasses to show we are to bright to do drugs

Thursday:  “Elect to Be Drug Free”  Wear Red, White and Blue

LANGUAGE ARTS

1^st Grade:  Caesar Cipher – Cryptographic Connections:  On Monday, we started out with a brief reminder of how we use our cipher wheels.  Then we worked together to decipher the message - Letters are symbols that stand for spoken sounds.  We started out taking turns with each student giving me a letter one at a time.  As they became comfortable deciphering, I encouraged them to figure out the last part of the message on their own.  They were masters with their cipher wheels!

     On Tuesday, we had extra practice with our cipher wheels.  As a group, they deciphered a few more words.  They were also introduced to enciphering the words - now they got to take some words and turn them into a secret code.  This was a little tricky at first, but with a few more words to practice with they were understanding it better.   Next week, they will work on ciphering independently.  I think they are up for the challenge!

2^ND Grade:  The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane:  On Monday, we finished with our predictions for our story.  We will revisit these throughout the story to see if our predictions were right and modify them as we have more information.  This will be ongoing throughout the story.  We then learned about another tool we will be using throughout the year – the vocabulary map.  We looked at one together as a class to define the word student.  Then they tried completing one with a partner for the word journey.

     On Tuesday, we looked at a few of the boxes in the vocabulary web as a class.  I showed them the dictionary and explained to them what they can find in it to help them with the web.  We were able to find three answers to our vocabulary word in the dictionary: the definition, the part of speech, and the origin to the word.  Then they took a few more minutes to complete the rest of the web with their partner.  We ended today with our first reflection to the following sentence “If a journey is to be miraculous, what are certain events that might occur during the journey.”  I explained to them that the reflection is similar to our predictions in I am not looking for one correct answer, but simply what this sentence means to them.  We are super excited because we are ready to begin our novel! 

3^rd Grade: Legends and Tall Tales:  On Monday, we reviewed the different genres we have looked at already and made a list of characteristics to each one.  Then I read a story about Johnny Appleseed.  After reading the story, we had a challenge to guess the genre of our book.  Our first thought was a biography; however after we looked back at a few pages we realized it was definitely fiction.  Now onto the challenge myth or legend???  As we looked at each one it turns out we had a new genre we were reading – a tall tale.  We focused on the exaggeration to help us discover our new genre.  We also discussed how all of our stories could be identified as a folktale – as they have all been handed down over a period of time.

     On Tuesday, we were up for a new challenge.  We picked out a new story to read and again worked on classifying it as a myth, legend, or tall tale.  We also began to fill out another retelling worksheet.  We will continue exploring tall tales next week.

4^th Grade: Changes in Vocabulary:  Welcome back 4^th graders!  This week we finished working with Greek and Latin roots.  We had a few more questions to review on our worksheet and then they had a challenge to work in groups and come up with 3 new words.  It was interesting to see the groups choose different approaches.  One group added more real words that were not included on their list above and the other group was trying to create 3 brand new words.

     On Tuesday, we watched a video about the book Frindle trying to explain why a dog is a dog and a pen is a pen.  In this case a pen is now a frindle!  The children enjoyed watching the video.  Afterwards, we came back together as a group and summarized our lesson on the changes in our language.  We talked about how borrowing from the Greek and Latin roots we can combine them to make new words.  Then we changed the conversation to how technology has changed our language.  Some ideas were as new systems come out a new name is given – one example they talked about were the different internet browsers.

MATH

1^st Grade:  It’s Heavy-Heavier or Lighter:  On Wednesday, we reviewed our worksheet from last week.  Then the students were introduced to the hanger balance scale.  The students were explained that the hanger would be our smaller version of a balance scale while we discuss weight.  We learned the proper way to attach the items to the scale and practiced using the scale together.  Then they were introduced to our experiment for this lesson.  As a class, we walked through a set of four bags recording our information together as a class. 

     On Thursday, the children were ready to conduct the experiment with a partner.  Before I set them free to explore, we reviewed the new terms predict and results.  Then they were off to the different stations around the room – each station had bags filled with different items to help explore the concept of weight.  At the station, the student would first make a prediction with the bags using the terms heavier, lighter, or about the same.  Then the children drew a picture to show the actual result.  The last step they had to do was record a sentence in two ways with their results.  They had a fun day working through the different stations.  We will review their results as a class next week.

2^nd Grade:  Length-Marble Crash Test:  We only met on Wednesday of this week because they were on a field trip on Thursday.  We finished our paper on measuring a blade of grass.  By the end, most of the children were catching on that their measurements should double when switching from the inch to half-inch.




    Dru and Teller have asked us to help them purchase a safe car.  We looked at a chart that displayed safety ratings from 5 vehicles.  From looking at the chart we concluded that 5 stars were excellent and 1 star was poor.  Some students were glad to see that the chart displayed no cars with a 1 star rating!  We had to use the data displayed to decide what car was the safest.  The chart tried to trick us with one car having a 5 star rating for the passenger, but only a 3 star rating for the driver.  After further evaluating the chart, the children all agreed to purchase the same car with a 4 star rating for both the driver and the passenger.   The kids are super excited because next week they will conduct their own marble crash test!

3^rd Grade:  Linear Measurement-Measuring Me:  This week we are learning about the last step in our lessons – the writing.  First, as a class we looked over some sample writings for the children to understand how their writing will be scored.  In their writing we will be looking for three areas to be covered - the math concept, their reasoning, and using math language in their writing.  I had the children practice scoring the samples so they get an idea of what they should include in their writing.  Then we introduced the math message board that we will complete as a class at the end of every lesson.  As a class, we will summarize the lesson with the question they are being asked to write about on the message board.  Then the math message will stay displayed on the board for them to utilize as a tool in their writing.  They were reminded about their math wall with important words and their glossary in their workbooks to utilize as tools for math language.

     On Thursday, we started to look at our first Think Deeply question.  Think deeply – is the name our math book calls their writing prompts.  The students took a few minutes to write down any questions they had from reading the question.  Then they used partner talk to discuss and try to clarify and of their questions.  Then as a class we started our math message board.  We will continue our writing next week.  We are taking our first question slow and working on it as a class, so they know what is expected throughout the year.  We will continue working with this step next week.

4^th Grade:  The Shape of Things-You Either Have It…Or You Don’t:  On Wednesday, we began by looking at a chart that helps explain the different names of a shape.  Then we quickly recalled some of the math attributes they should use in the definitions they were making.   For the rest of class the students finished their class definitions.

The Winner!

     On Thursday, we summarized our lesson with a video all about polygons.  After that it was onto Jeopardy!  We played a review game to summarize the lesson to make sure the children understand that shapes can go by more than one name and to see if they can identify the attributes to the shapes we discussed.  We played a game of three rounds - 1st Round: they identified the names of shapes, 2nd Round: they had to identify the shape or attribute by its definition, and the Final Round:  was a mini game of jeopardy on the computer!  And the winner is…

IMPORTANT DATES:

October 20^th: End of First Grading Period

October 21^st: Fall Recess- No School

October 24th-28th: Red Ribbon Week

October 28^th: Fall Parties & Report Available Online

November 2^nd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 3^rd:  Early Dismissal – Parent/Teacher Conference

November 4^th:  No School