Wednesday, October 31, 2012

October 31, 2012

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, BE SAFE!!!!

Ana shared her poster again today, reporting out that she loves bunnies and horses.  We heard about how she and her family had two bunnies, but had to give them away because they chewed on the computer cords.  I love doing Top Banana because you learn a lot from your child.  I hope you are enjoying what they come home saying about it?

We had kind of a spooky Halloween day, we listened to a story on the computer and Ms. Wolfean scared us.  We did start off our day with reading CAFE time.  We had a blast communicating to the text with one another.  Then we had a fantastic time listening to Mrs. Doyle discuss Nonfiction and fiction once more.  She discussed the big idea in a nonfiction story and again reminded us that fiction does not just mean not real.  There are other examples of what makes a fiction and nonfiction text.  We wrote about Basset Hounds and how to crave a pumpkin.  They were to explain the steps of how to crave a pumpkin trying to convince me to allow them to create one on Friday.  Then we moved into math and graphed our snack bag. 

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

October 30, 2012

We had a great day reading and meeting in CAFE groups.  We reviewed in the library nonfiction and fiction texts.  I was proud how much my students knew.  They were well informed and knew the components of a nonfiction text.  They could communicate with us why their books were fiction and nonfiction.  Please ask them to explain why a book they are reading is fiction or nonfiction.  We learned that we will be publishing our small moment stories and what we have to do to create our books.  Then we did our group graphs and are working in teams to create a poster to place in the hall on a CGI type problem.  We are working in groups because we can not only learn from the teach, but from our friends.  Then we began our election unit in social studies.  I sent home a project about our presidential election.  It is not due till Thursday, but feel free to send it in tomorrow if you get done.

Monday, October 29, 2012

October 29, 2012

Only two days of October left, wow time flies when you are having fun. 

Ana is our Top Banana this week, she shared her poster.  We had a blast listening to why she drew a monkey on it.  She did so because she is the Top Banana, but also because it is her favorite animal. I can't wait to hear from her tomorrow? 

Question:  What do you think about our Top Banana starting?

I had a great time teaching our Cafe strategy, we reviewed character traits.  Then we discussed our books in groups and talked about how to question myself about reading.  We moved into writing and discussed our spelling skill, compound words.  This is when we have two words together to form one.  We had a great time reviewing silent /e/.  We discussed how to revise our writing sentences, in our small moments stories.  We need to check for sequential order.  Tomorrow we will discuss if they don't sound right how to correct them.  Then we moved into math.  We our going to review graphs before we take our graph test.  We will be creating group graphs. 

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

October 24, 2012

RED RIBBON WEEK WEAR FAVORITE COLLEGE SHIRT

Today was early release and the teacher appreciation was fantastic.  Thank you parents and PTA for putting on a fabulous luncheon.  The students did a writing benchmark to see how their writing has improved since the begging of the nine weeks.  Then they took a break for Mrs. Shanahan, our counselor to speak to the class.  She did a bulling lesson which tomorrow the students will be bringing home a no bullying contract. Please discuss with your child what this means and what they learned?  Then as they finished their writing the students went into CAFE time or completed old paper work.  Have a fantastic night.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

October 23, 2012

RED RIBBON WEEK-TOMORROW IS SLIPPERS AND CRAZY SOCKS.

 I did not check homework today due to the assembly.  I used that time for teaching, I will check tomorrow.
Today was a fantastic day, yet again the students did all activities.  We even had an assembly about fire prevention.  Ask your child what they learned?  You could even have them make a plan for how to get out of the house in case of a fire?  We started in CAFE and met in reading groups.  We reviewed how to question each other about texts and how to found the answer in the text not our brain.  We moved into writing discussing procedural text, explain to the reader how to do something.  The students learned we can not just write a list, we have to introduce the topic to the reader.  Describe what you are going to teach and what you find interesting about it.  Then at the end of the day we practiced CGI and glued our homework into the spiral.  we ended our day watching the Goldilocks and Three Bears by James Marshall. Then we discussed our next property of matter temperature.

Monday, October 22, 2012

October 22, 2012

It is RED RIBBION week.  Wear your western gear tomorrow.We missed you guys.  I had four children absent today, what happened?  Zoei, Jaydin, Joey, and Ana were all out today.  I missed you all big time and so did the class.  Ana our first Top Banana was out, I hope you are well?  Top Banana is how I do student of the week, each one of my students will get the chance to be it.  Today was a day filled with loads of learning.  We started our day with spelling and our new skill is dropping the /e/ and adding the ending, /ed/ or /ing/.  Please make sure they study their words.  We then moved into writing and discussed telling our story on our five fingers before we write.  This helps them to write a complete story rather than missing the main points.  Then we continued graphing data, today we graphed the classes favorite ice cream.  We finished our day with discussing solid and liquids, but did not have time to complete the Venn diagram on it.

Friday, October 19, 2012

October 18, 2012

Okay, I know I did not post in time.  I have been busy and just ran out of here.  I stayed late on Tuesday and Thursday nights to attend health and literacy nights.  I know no excuse, but I had to get plans and meet with my BOSS.  I had a fun time seeing the parents and students who did come out to family nights.  Having explained myself I hope you all will forgive me?

Today was a great day we did our cafe reading early because we had the OLSAT test to complete.  After this we took a break and began our writing.  We wrote about our favorite holiday and how we celebrate it.  Maybe you can sit down with your child and discuss this with them?  We are still working on number sense and graphing in math.  We completed a tally chart, asked ten friends their favorite animal, and graphed our data we found.  Then we categorized pictures into four properties of matter, this needs some reteach.  Then last we complete CGI before we headed to art.
I have heard from most of you that the blog is an excellent way to get your students to describe more of their day, so again I am sorry.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

October 16, 2012

NO LIE, NO HOMEWORK IF YOUR CHILD BRINGS YOU TO SCHOOL TO NIGHT, IF YOU COME TO HEALTH FAIR and  IF YOU COME TOMORROW TO LITERACY NIGHT TOO!!
6:30 TONIGHT AND TOMORROW
Today we had a fantastic day, this might have been one day when I did not repeat myself.  We started the day in CAFE time, practice our reading skills.  We are continuing to ask questions while we read.  However, this week we are actually writing our questions we have for the text we are reading.  We had fun sitting by the fire place telling our friends stories to get ideas to write about.  Ms. Wolfean has been reading Patrica Polacco books and we have been learning how a real life author writes.  Ms. Wolfean even showed us a picture of her revising and editing , Patrica did to a book she wrote.  It was amazing to see, ask them about it?  Then we went to the library to preview books at the book fair, we will be buying tomorrow.  They will have all week to get their books they wish for.  Then we came back to the class to take a quiz on number sense. 

Monday, October 15, 2012

October 15, 2012

HEALTH FAIR TOMORROW NIGHT!!LITERACY NIGHT ON WEDNESDAY!!
TENT FOR TREATS OCTOBER 19
PREVIEW FOR BOOK FAIR TOMORROW 12:45
BUY BOOKS WEDNESDAY 1:15I can not believe in two short weeks that the first nine weeks will be coming to an end.  WOW!  How time flies when you are having fun.  We did a lot today, but it will not seem like it to the students.  We are in our second week of spelling and it is still a struggle to get them to see how to do it.  We spent at length trying to remember the pattern for recording the words on our list.  We will review this tomorrow, I hope next week will be better.  We had Cafe time, not as much as I hoped.  This was because of spelling.  We did our writing and worked on how we add details to our story and review what to do when we get stuck. Then we had math in the hallway, yes you heard right.  We did our next graph as a class in the hall.  We wrote questions and answered them. 


Thursday, October 11, 2012

October 11, 2012

WE HAVE OUR FIRST SPELLING TEST, tomorrow!!  Today we got to SCIENCE!!!!  I am sorry to start with the end of the day, but I am excited we got to have science.  Yeah for us, we finally finished our mystery bags.  Some will surely say they did not cheat, but on some of them I am not sure how they got it right?  WOW, it was interesting to see their guess.  Ask them about their experiment and what they discovered.  We started our day with reading and CAFE discussion time.  We have been working on questioning our self when we read.  also what is text proof for finding the answer to the question we are asking.  They have been practicing this independently and in group.  Please have them model this strategy for you if they have not already?  Then we moved into writing our small moments story about our life.  We have been working on adding details and taking out details that do not fit the story.  We worked on our two step problems in math and glued our new homework question.  I hope you have just as much fun as I do solving these problems.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

October 10, 2012

I am sorry it is late had a meeting and more conferences.

SPELLING HAS STARTED!!!!!!! :)

We had a busy day but due to talking we could not make it through Science.  They did receive a consequence, no experiment to do.  There were too many children to figure out who the ones doing most of the talking, this is why I let them be green.  I think it is time for another seat change, what do you think?  I hope tomorrow we can have a better day and get through two Science lessons, you think you all can handle this?

They did have a great beginning to our day we got through reading and writing with flying colors. They were starting or finishing their small moment stories.  We worked on adding and deleting details to make our writing more interesting.  We began math by comparing numbers using a greater than or less than sign.  Here are the signs for you parents who need a visual This is the > greater than sign and this < is less than sign.  We then ended our day with notes and discussing the book fair next week.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

October 9, 2012

What a great four day weekend.  I am sure all of you had an excellent time relaxing while I was at work discussing with your parents.  You know you need to stop laughing because I had to work.  I had a blast today, it was my birthday and Mrs. Norris came in to make the students sing.  Thank you for brightening up my day with them serenading me.  You all are sweet, and I have the best class. 

We had a fantastic time learning, we started spelling.  They should have brought their words home with them to study.  We went to the library and we learned that we will be having a book fair next week.  We previewed the books that will be there and then checked out new books.  If your child did not bring home a chapter book, please make sure they return one and exchange it for a chapter book.  They are to bring one free choice (dessert book) and chapter (just fit book). Please discuss with them my expectations and yours.  I hope this clears up questions about what books they are bringing.  We did writing after spelling and most of them have completed one small moment.  We did math and it was hard because it has an extra step to them.  We will be doing two step problems for a bit and returning to one step again. 

Friday, October 5, 2012

October 5, 2012

WOW, WHAT A DAY!!!!!!!!  They were right on target and we had a fun filled day with an explosive amount of learning.  We began our day at the Friday assembly, and came in ready to learn.  We started in independent reading and they can read for 30 minutes.  We moved into CAFE book talks and had a CAFE group time taken away.  They got grounded, hope we can get this back soon?  Then we moved into writing and continued our small moments story.  We had Joey and Ana return to school from their vacation away from learning, and both began a small moments story about their experience.  What a great thing to have real life activities to write about.  We welcome them back, but are sad they did not include us??  We then had math and completed are activities in flying time.  We ended this weeks number sense lesson and will begin to discuss next weeks.  This will be an on going topic in math, due to the fact place value is a hard concept for them to master.  We ended our day with science mystery matter bags, ask them to explain??

Thursday, October 4, 2012

OCtober 4, 2012

I have been enjoying my conferences and getting to know your parents.  I hope we can continue to work on not talking while the teachers and students are talking.  I do have to say some students are doing wonderful and are trying to improve their effort level.  However, some are following behind.  I am excited about getting to know your child they are starting to come out of their shell and have fun.  This might be the cause for them talking way too much. 

We have been continuing to use strategies to figure and read words correctly in our CAFE time.  We are practicing how to use different strategies to come up with just the right way to read words, or figure the meaning out.  During math we worked on CGI and continued to use number sense strategies to read and write numbers.  We used base ten blocks to model the number and draw them to add up two numbers.We discussed properties of matter mass, texture, flexibility, and shape.  We will be doing an experiment using our matter words.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

October 3, 2012

I am sorry this is late, I have had teacher conferences and a meeting after school.  We had a full day of learning we got to most of our items on my list.  I am excited to report the students had a much better day on their talking.  I could see them working hard to improve on their abilities.  We did our CAFE time for reading and worked in groups with our teacher. We had an excellent time creating numbers using the base ten blocks and being a teacher or a student to our friend sin the class.  we watched a video about computer safety and discussed things we should and should not do.  Then we headed to PE and had an awesome time getting hot.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

October 2, 2012

OKAY, I am bad.  I forgot to post my message from yesterday.  I had conferences, got the class ready, and forgot to add a new blog.  We have been having a lot of trouble being able to stay quiet in the halls, and while the teacher is giving directions.  We even had trouble in Art, and this concerns me.  I know they are working hard and I see most of them trying to improve.  We just need to continue to practice this, and make better choices.  Today we worked on one of our reading strategies, how to check for understanding.  We are focusing on when we read words and come to one we may not know.  Also not guessing at the word by just looking at the front of the word.  We need to check the whole word and ask ourselves, "Does this make sense when I read what I think it says?"  We continued to do addition problems in CGI and will move to subtraction soon.  We work on Science by going over the properties of how to categories objects as a scientist.  Over all October is looking great so far.