Each day next week we will have a different theme to help us get in the Holiday Spirit!  

Monday = Grinch Day

Tuesday = Reindeer Day

Wednesday = Santa

Thursday = Pajama Day

Mark it on the Calendar!

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

JOIN US TONIGHT AT

This event will take place at Yost Elementary School from 5:30 to 7:00.
Admission to this event is FREE to all Yost Families.

Come dressed in your Christmas PJ's and see Santa!

Santa's Secret Workshop will also be opened during the event.
Plus, many other fun activities.
There will be cookies and hot chocolate for you to enjoy too.

Hope you can make it!

1st Grade:  LIPOGRAMS:
This week the students listened to the story E-MERGRENCY!  by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer.  A fun fact to the story was Tom got the idea for his story when he came about a short video titled Alphabet House written by a 12 year old boy named Ezra.  This story introduced us to the importance of the letter E in our language.

  At the end of the story, there is a chart shared with the reader on the frequency of letters in our language.  We took some type to discuss what letters would be challenging to create a lipogram and what ones would be a less difficult.  Next, we wrote 3 sentences retelling our story.  The twist to the assignment was the children were challenged to rewrite the sentences as a lipogram.  
The only rule is they had to select a high frequency letter to replace in the sentence.  These students were AWESOME and said they wanted to create their lipogram with the letter E, our most frequently used letter in the alphabet.
We will continue working with our lipograms next week. 

2nd Grade:  MY FATHER'S DRAGON:

We started the week with a few grammar lessons.  First, they completed a sentence analysis.  Then, they had to edit a paragraph and find 9 errors with capitalization and punctuation.

  This was our first time completing this activity, so we found all the solutions together after they tried on their own.  Most students found 6 or more errors.

Next, we looked at our short-story we will study for the next few weeks.  The students were introduced to My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.  We discussed the genre of the story prior to reading it and there was a guess that it might be historical fiction.  We revisited this question after reading our first chapter and they changed their thought to classifying the story as fantasy because of a talking cat.  Then we took some time to discuss the importance of making a prediction.  We looked at some details from chapter one that should help us narrow our prediction to talk about certain things.  To end the week, we reviewed what a paragraph should include when writing our predictions.  I was pleased to hear the students mention 5 sentences, an introduction, 3 details and a conclusion.  They had all the ingredients to our hamburger structure!
We will continue to work with predictions next week.


3rd Grade:  CLOSE READING:

This week the students completed an activity with close reading while exploring a biography of Jane Goodall.  We reviewed the symbols we will use when we mark-up our paper. 

 Then, we modeled together how our inner voice talks to us while we read and how to mark our thoughts on our paper.  Next, each student took a turn modeling their thoughts while they led the class with a paragraph.  


4th Grade:  CHANGE THROUGH TIMELINES:
The week started with the students analyzing some sentences.  Our sentence analyzers have added 2 new parts for the students to analyze.  They must identify the sentence structure by identifying the clause(s) and deciding if the sentence is simple, compound our complex.  They also must identify the sentence type by deciding if it is declarative, interrogative, exclamatory or imperative.
We switched gears to our new lesson on how a timeline shows change.  We looked at the word timeline and identified it as a compound word.  We compared a compound to our beginning unit where we looked at words with prefixes, root words and suffixes.  We then discussed how a timeline shows us change over a period of time and is a graphic structure to visually organize the change.  To end the day, the students started to complete a double timeline.  They started to complete the Indiana side of the timeline.
We will continue with this project next week.

1st Grade:  AREA:

This week we continued comparing the area of our figures in our centers.  This week's center had them predict which shape was larger.  Then, they had to check their work by measuring it with square units.  To complete the center the students had to write how they knew which shape was larger.  This was great practice for helping them write their thoughts similar to their think deeply assignments.


We will finish our area centers next week.




2nd Grade:  ZACCARO PACKETS:
This week we are taking some time away from our books and the students are being introduced to our Zaccaro Packets.  We utilize the Zaccaro Packets within our High Ability program as a way to introduce some other topics to the students during the school year.
  The packets are arranged with different levels to a math topic.  They range from level 1 to the Genius level.  
Each student works at their own pace as far as they can through a section.  Each level increases the difficulty to continue challenging the student.
The tough part for the students is the wanting to solve them immediately.  They will challenge the student and require some time to work through the different levels and multiple steps to solve them.


  When they complete a page I check it and they must have them all correct before they can move onto the next level.  This assures us that they are ready for the next step as the difficulty increases.  As an introduction to the packets, we are working with levels 1 and 2 of our packets.

We will continue working through our Zaccaro packets next week.


3rd Grade:  PATTERNS IN HUNDRED CHARTS:
(I am so sorry, I completely forget pictures of this group for this week.  I will do my best to take a few extras next week)

The students came in and finished observing and recording patterns they saw with their 100's chart.  Then, we discussed the different patterns the students saw within the charts.  They did a great job recognizing the math with the movements to describe the patterns.  This allowed me to share early with them a chart that displays the pattern they identified.  To end the week, the students started a worksheet that lets them make connections with the different patterns of their multiples. 
 Over the past few weeks, if the students finished an assignment early they have been completing a worksheet on order of operations.  This week I was meeting with some of them working on the assignment to share with them the acronym PEMDAS.  This should help them moving forward with this assignment.  They will continue to work with PEMDAS, as a when I am done activity. 
We will continue to explore our charts next week.


4th Grade:  TRANSFORMATION:
It was time for our GAME DAY -  Packers verse DA BEARS! 
 

We both agreed no one would want to be a Vikings fan!  From there it was all serious, as we played the game Flip-Sliding Around.  This game challenged the student to identify the matching shape on the game board.  Then, they transformed the shape using our proper terminology from the lesson to land on the correct shape and make sure the shape is in the correct position.  

The difficulty level increased with this game, as they must visualize their entire move and can't move the shape along while they are identifying the transformation.
  The opponent would either agree with the movements or they could challenge them and win the square. 
 Every time you transformed the shape correctly you would place a chip on the game board.  The first player to place 4 of a kind in a row either vertically, horizontally or diagonally was the winner.  This game was intense as the students were strategic to block their opponents from being able to form their line when selecting their squares.  It was great hearing the improvement of terminology as we got a chance to play the game several times.


And the winner was...Green Bay!





Next week we will wrap up transformations.

Have a Great Weekend,

Ms. Losinski

~ HELLO DECEMBER ~

Mark it on the Calendar!

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

1st Grade:  LIPOGRAMS:

On Monday, we finished our packet on magical anagrams.  Then, they completed a worksheet where they had to come up with a synonym for a word without using the letter "E" in their new word.  This was VERY tricky.  Next, it was onto decoding a new secret message.  The students had a little trouble with this cipher wheel, but with a little guidance with looking at the cipher they were quickly able to work independently to find our secret message: The Letter E is used most often when we write!

  I introduced them to the word lipogram, which is writing words or stories without using certain letters.  We looked back at the worksheet from the beginning of class and they now saw they were creating lipograms on this page - this made the assignment make more sense now.  They were able to go back and fill in some of the missing words when they first attempted this assignment.  

Next week we will explore lipograms.

2nd Grade:  PLOT STRUCTURE:

This week we switched gears and the students modeled Freytag's pyramid.  The class was divided into 3 groups and each assigned a classic tale.  Each group met and summarized their story together.
  Then, they shared their summary while walking along Freytag's pyramid.  When we were hearing different stories the discussion came up that there are different versions to our classic tales.
  This went perfect with our lesson.  We discussed that although there are many versions to the story The Three Little Pigs each story will keep the important details we modeled in our plot structure, but some of the little details may have changed with each author putting their own twist on the story.

We will move onto a new lesson next week.


3rd Grade:  JANE GOODALL:

This week we started class with a discussion to define the word activist.  After they understood the definition, we discussed what an animal activist might do - this let us refer back to one of our first lessons on how animals can't speak to humans, so they might be the voice to speak up for animal rights.

  This led us to meeting our new author - Jane Goodall.  She isn't just an author, but a famous animal activist for chimpanzees.  We looked at her autobiography My Life with the Chimpanzees. 
 We started to explore some excerpts of the book to look at Jane's life and the influence it played on her love for animals.  After each assigned excerpt, the students would identify an interaction they read and then decide how the three generalizations defined the interaction.

  We completed a few of them together, before the students completed the rest of them independently with a scoot around the room - moving from one station to another.

We will continue studying Jane Goodall next week.

4th Grade:  ADJECTIVES:
All fourth graders completed the CSI test on Monday, so we only met one day this week.

This week was all about adjectives.  We took some time to look at the Rules for Ordering adjectives when describing a noun.

We completed an exercise where the students were asked how to describe a noun with a set of adjectives with the objective of listing them in the correct order.
Next week we will move onto a new lesson.  

1st Grade:  MAKING PREDICTIONS:
This week we completed an activity to practice predicting our area.  The students worked through different stations where they first predicted an area then they would measure for the actual area.  We discussed different strategies for making a good prediction.  We also discussed how utilizing a good strategy helps us as mathematicians make a more accurate prediction.  The students discussed visualizing the square units as a strategy.  We also discussed filling in gaps of shapes and then subtracting them from the total number.



We will continue to explore area next week.



2nd Grade:  CHAPTER CHECK-UP:

The time came for the students to take their Chapter-Check-Up.

At the end of each lesson, students complete a chapter check-up to review all of the information we have studied in the chapter.  This tool is then utilized to see if there are any areas the whole class might need a quick refresher before we move onto our next chapter. 

 It also helps to keep them seeing are topics throughout the year, so they are ready for the Unit Assessment at the end of the year.

We will begin a new lesson next week.

  


3rd Grade:  PATTERNS IN A 100'S CHART:
This week the students began exploring the different patterns we see in 100's charts with our multiples.  First, the students were given a 100's chart to identify as many patterns as they could find with their multiples.  We discussed some of their discoveries.  They were already discovering so many different patterns that they were completing our next activity without knowing it yet!

  We discussed some important terminology to use when identifying the patterns on our chart: rows, columns, horizontal, vertical and diagonal.  They caught on quickly to discussing the chart and patterns with these terms.  This was a universal tool for us all to understand and quickly find the areas of the chart each student was discussing.
  To end the week, the students began an activity working with mini-charts to identify our individual patterns of our multiples from 2-10 on our charts.  This helped them sort out their first chart that had many of these already identified, but not as easy to read with so many different patterns.



We will continue to work with patterns next week.


4th Grade:  TRANSFORMATIONS:
This week the students were introduced to our new topic - transformations.  We looked at the terms translation, reflection, and rotation.  I asked if any students remembered these terms because we briefly studied them in 2nd grade.  They needed a quick refresher and when I stated a slide, flip and turn they quickly remembered.
  In second grade, the students used the terms slide, flip and turn now those are the definition to our vocabulary translation = slide, reflection = flip, and rotation = turn.  We completed three different activities to practice transforming shapes with each of these movements.
We will continue studying transformations next week.

Have a Great Week,

Ms. Losinski