Research, Place Value, Fun Fair

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library
Community Reads - March 31

Parent/Teacher Conference - April 13 and 14

Research Project:

The research groups are working so hard! This week, all groups worked on revision and clarifying information. They looked at their rough drafts through an editor's eye to see if information made sense and was easy to understand. I am now in the process of meeting with each group to work on editing and starting the final product. 

Math:

We started our place value unit last week. In this unit, the students discover how to break apart 2 digit numbers, compare 2 digit numbers, and add and subtract 2 digit numbers. We have a variety of math tools for this unit: tens frames, base ten blocks, and hide zero cards.

We also started learning how to tell time to the hour and half hour. More on that next week!

Fun Fair:

Were you able to go to the fun fair? Mrs. Thompson and I had so much fun at the limbo game! The Fun Fair is such a great event that brings everyone together for an evening of fun and laughter!

Recess:

The crazy weather on Friday kept us inside for recess. A group of students and I took out the dominoes and had so much fun building with dominoes and watching them fall! We all talked about videos we have seen online of big domino projects. We aren't there yet, but we had fun trying! I have a slo-mo video that I took, but I can't get it to load right now... I will try to update later. ;-) 

What a week!

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library
March 22 - Report Cards

March 24 - Fun Fair 4:30-6:30

Parent/Teacher Conference - April 13 and 14

Due to the snowstorm, report cards are going home on Wednesday, March 22.

Jump Rope for  Heart:

What a week! We started the  week with Jump Rope for Heart. It was a fun 50 minutes of jump roping and activity. We all had a good workout! 

Research Project:

Each of the research groups were able to list 3 choices for an animal to research. I went through all the choices, looked at our resources, and on Monday I revealed which animal each group was doing. The researchers got right to work, finding resources in the room and recording information in their fact finding notebooks. Mr. Gile found a bunch of books in the library for us to use. As a class, we created a list of "Must Haves," what has to be included in their work. 

Now, the students are working hard on their rough draft of the project. I have observed students using what we learned about giving and receiving feedback, thinking about how to use features of nonfiction to teach others about their topic, and working together with their research group to make sure everyone gets a voice and is involved. Super job researchers!

Reading with others and the start of a new unit!

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library

March 15 - early release

March 17 - Report Cards

March 24 - Fun Fair 4:30-6:30

Parent/Teacher Conference - April 13 and 14

Before vacation we shared our nonfiction books with Mr. Schlatter's second grade and Miss Bushey's kindergarten. Our class had to read like experts and prepare books with questions and places to stop and think. The students did a great job!

 

This past week we kicked off our Project Based Learning unit (PBL). I'll be sharing more about this in next week's post. But this past week, we started off by talking about giving and receiving feedback. We watched this video.  Then, we tried it ourselves. The students worked really hard to give and receive feedback on how to make their butterfly drawings more realistic. I impressed with the quality of feedback the students gave each other.

Valentine's Day + Snow = FUN

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library

No School: February 27 - March 7

I know this was a shorter week with a snow day on Monday and early release on Wednesday, but we did so much! I took a ton of pictures this week. I think this post will be mostly pictures. :-)

Meet Nana:
This is our Foster Grandparent, Marion Kennedy. The students call her Nana. She is with us Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 8:00-1:00. We love having her in the classroom!

Valentine's Day:

We had a blast on Valentine's Day! First, we made dog biscuits for the Humane Society of Chittenden County. I'm dropping them off later today. Then, we made our own batch of Heart Healthy Soup. Later in the day, we exchanged Valentine's Day cards with each other. It was a lot of fun!

SNOW!:

Recess has been extra fun with all the snow! The students are burying themselves in the snow, building the biggest snowmen ever, and having races to see who can push a giant snowball the fastest.

On Friday, we went outside as usual, and the maintenance men at school had made giant snow mounds for us to climb on! We could have stayed out there all day on those mountains! Please remember to send in boots and snow  pants. It doesn't hurt to have an extra pair of clothes and socks in case of wet clothes after recess.

Happy February!

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library

February 14: Valentine's Day (info coming on Monday)
February 15: early release

No School: February 27 - March 7

Library is now on Tuesdays because we have guidance on Wednesdays with Mrs. Murphy. We also have gym on Tuesdays so make sure to send in sneakers for Tuesdays and Fridays.

Foster Grandparent:

 I am so excited to tell you that we have a Foster Grandparent starting on February 14! She has a 2 week trial period to see if our classroom is a good match for her. I haven't even had a chance to tell the kids yet! The Foster Grandparent program is a wonderful program that connects adults (55 and older) with kids. The Foster Grandparent helps out in the classroom providing one-on-one help to the students in the class. I was lucky enough to have a Foster Grandparent several years ago and I'm happy to have another one! 

Literacy:

This is a piece of writing from a student in our class. She wrote it during mindfulness time. During mindfulness, the students can color, read, do turtle time, watch our aquarium video, or write. It says: 

When school is 

like your

family  you 

will make friends.

Everybody has a friend.

We love JFK.

Math:

This week we worked on the concept of fact families. We used dominoes to introduce the concept. The mathematicians would use the three numbers on the number to name the part, part, total of the fact family. The class developed a public record about fact families. We ended the week with an activity where the students had to find all the members of their fact family. The students were able to justify why a group of equations were a fact family. Super work mathematicians!

 

School Wide Celebration:

JFK filled the heart monitor again! This time we did a dance party! Miss Bushey's kindergarten class came and joined our class and we danced for half an hour! So  much fun! 

Class Celebration

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library - new day

February 15: early release

Winter Clothing:
Winter is here. Please make sure to send in winter clothing for recess. We go outside everyday. Snow pants, boots, mittens, hat, and a coat are really important this time of year. Do you  have boots, snow pants, or a coat your child has outgrown? I would love a few to keep in our extra locker for those days that items are forgotten. Please feel free to send in any old winter outdoor clothes that you don't need anymore.

Class Celebration:
I didn't get a chance to write an update over the weekend due to sickness. But I really wanted to share about our celebration!

Last week we fill our heart bucket once again! This time we did a very different type of celebration. Earlier in the week, Zulie, Nadia, and Yasmina spent a recess cleaning the playground. They were shocked by the garbage and clothing that they found. They asked if they could make posters to tell people not to litter or leave their clothing outside.


So for our celebration, we learned all about taking care of the environment and the 3 R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. After reading some books and watching a fun rap video, the students created their own posters to educate others which are now hanging up throughout JFK. Our plan was to then go out and finish cleaning the playground. Unfortunately, the playground was really wet on Friday and then I was out sick on Monday. Hopefully once the ice and snow melts we can get outside and finish the job.

I love that the class used a celebration to teach others how to care for the earth. Thanks so much to Zulie, Nadia, and Yasmina for giving us the idea! What a great class we have!

January 16. 2017

Important Dates:

Wednesdays: library
February 15: early release

Winter Clothing:
Winter is here. Please make sure to send in winter clothing for recess. We go outside everyday. Snow pants, boots, mittens, hat, and a coat are really important this time of year. Do you  have boots, snow pants, or a coat your child has outgrown? I would love a few to keep in our extra locker for those days that items are forgotten. Please feel free to send in any old winter outdoor clothes that you don't need anymore.

 

Literacy:

We are loving nonfiction! We continue to learn about nonfiction features such as labels, table of contents, and diagrams. But, we are also learning how to talk about our books. The students have time everyday to share the information they have learned from reading. They need to state the topic and then name several supporting details. 

We have also started to learn how to write nonfiction books. The class has a wealth of knowledge of so many different topics!

We also took time on Friday to play a couple rounds of sight word bingo. We had fun while learning our sight words!

Math:

We have discovered another math app on our ipads that we love! We started playing Monster Math and the students work on finding equivalent equations using addition and subtraction.