December 11, 2013

Hello! 

You have been invited by Melissa Marnell to sign up for "Holiday Party." Please click on the link below to view the online sign up sheet. 

To sign up, go to: 
www.SignUpGenius.com/go/10C0948ADA928A5FE3-holiday

Today was a great day we started off in the computer lab finishing up our research and tomorrow we start the final project.  They are traveling around the world and you should ask your child where and what they are learning about?  They went to Italy and learned a lot about Christmas there.  I hope they are coming home excited about their learning. We are not stopping learning do to around the world, they are still having math, reading, and social studies.  This is how we are getting in geography, map skills, and culture differences.  The students seem to love it.

We also heard from Kelsey, but due to internet not working yesterday I could not post.  

She shared that she loves the color blue,"My sister Lacey loves that color and so do I."  her favorite picture on her poster was the one of her family.  She has two brothers and when asked, "How old they were?" You heard the whole class say, "OH WOW!"  She told us, "They are 17."  We also learned she loves to dance and hopes to get back in to it when her mom signs her up again.  The class though ti twas funny she added a cupcake to her poster, but it is not her favorite dessert. No one thought to ask what was her favorite?  She loves to watch scary movies with her cousins.  I just hope she does not have bad dreams after, like me?    My favorite picture was her in first grade and as a baby, becasue I only get to see them at this age.  I love hearing from Kelsey because she has shared more with me this week and talked more then the whole year.  I love to listen to her and can't wait to hear more.

December 10, 2013

Hello! 

You have been invited by Melissa Marnell to sign up for "Holiday Party." Please click on the link below to view the online sign up sheet. 

To sign up, go to: 
www.SignUpGenius.com/go/10C0948ADA928A5FE3-holiday

December 9, 2013

Dear Parents,

PTA will be selling pizza and bottled water tomorrow prior to our Science Night. 

They will like to have an idea of how many pizzas to get. Please let PTA know if you are planning on getting some pizza:

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090B4FAEA72FAB9-science

Thank you!

We heard from Nathan about his show-n-tell, then we turned over the room to Kelsey.  She is our new Top Banana, we did not hear from her because we ran out of time.  It was a strange day due to the fact we had a different schedule.  We had a performance and your child performed.  They were the stars of the show the Nutcracker.  They danced, laughed, and giggled the whole time.  They seemed to enjoy themselves a lot.  We did our writing and reading cafe time.  Then moved in to math and discussed our numbers in a table pattern.  Soon after that we did spelling and we ran out the door to head home.

December 4, 2013

Today was early release and we went through all activities quickly.  We started off with writing and had them share about their imagined stories.  Please ask them to share some of their amazing stories with you. We then discussed research and how to come up with questions for our topic.  Then we began math and this new concept of creating a table for number patterns is a tough one because we just started to learn it.  Please give them some problems and have them answer the problems.  As soon as math was done we moved in to Social Studies where we are discussing maps.  They need to practice using north, south, east, and west. We will be look at real life maps tomorrow.  If you have maps please show the students them.    Ms. Wolfean has class today after school and is looking forward to learning new strategies to come back to teach my monkeys.

Nathan  shared that he loves playing Swamp Force, the video game. I love to play with my friends," he stated.  He also said, "I just think it is real cool and fun."

December 3, 2013

EARLY RELEASE TOMORROW

I am happy to report we are back in the swing of our days, and I missed my Monkeys over Thanksgiving.  I am excited to have Nathan as our Top Banana and yesterday we learned he loves piano. He just started playing back in September.  Nathan told us, "I just saw an organ at a friends house and thought it would  be interesting to learn to play." He has a lesson every Wednesday and I would love to hear him play one day.  I forgot to ask him to share his poster today.

We are still learning about how to research a topic and we will be getting in to groups to do more research on our topic.  We are starting to look at tables in math and how to read a number pattern inside the table, to solve problems in math.  We brought home our new CGI problem with modeling this strategy tonight. we are also discussing maps in Social Studies.  i hope your child is excited to return to school as I am.

November 19

I love Alexis being my Top Banana, she does keep me on schedule and wants to make her own too.  I have to love children's enthusiasm to being the teacher.  We learned a lot form Alexis she shared her poster today and reported she added a picture of her brother and her searching through drawers in the kitchen.  When asked why she told us,"You would have to ask my mother I was too little."  We asked why she liked to play with her brother Alex she replied,"My big brother is always too busy."  I love to report exactly what they say because children do have a vivid explanation for things going on in their life.  She shared she added herself as a baby so we could she her when she was small.  I loved learning about her today, can't wait for more.

We had a great day continuing withe research and learning the key to research is reading and narrowing our topic to fit what we know something about already and have more questions.  We completed our CGI math with subtracting and addition.  Please make sure your child is not just writing a number sentence.  They need to show how they solve for the answer.  I have taught them base ten method or partial sum method.  Please have them show you the strategy to fit them.  If they are to solve 52-38 they would think of it as what number do I add to 38 to get me to 52. 38 is 2 steps to 40, 40 is ten steps to 50, and 50 is 2 more steps to 52.  This would be 2+10+2= 14 the answer is 52-38=14.  They have been doing this in class and should be able to model this for you.  I hope you are having a fantastic time letting them teach you.

Tomorrow we should have enough time to hear from Aiden and Kelly, who need to do their show-n-tell. They forgot on their week.

November 18

We had to sadly say good bye to Aiden as Top Banana and hello to Alexis.  I have to report we did not get to share out with Alexis due to clean up taking longer than it should.  We did get to see her become our new line leader and oh boy she lead well.  

We had a great day filled with lots of learning.  We are starting our research unit during reading and writing.  Their focus is how do we begin research?  We discussed reading and gathering background knowledge and just exploring books is the best way to begin.  Then we continued to write more imagined compositions and looked at our problems and solutions in our writing.  Then we finished up are subtracting and addition with double digits.  We are continuing to discuss our government lesson in Social Studies.