Sunday, September 30, 2018

September 24th-28th

Happy Sunday!  I apologize that I have not been getting my blog out on Friday like I usually do.  I normally type my blog and do the Sign Up Genius during my morning planning time, but our team has missed 4 planning periods recently due to holidays and the hurricane.   We have been meeting on Friday mornings so I have not had the time to type this.  Hopefully we will all be back on track soon!

As parent conferences and report cards are quickly approaching, I am using a large chunk of the day to assess students.  Last week I was busy with running records and sight words and this week I am planning on assessing math, spelling, and writing.  All of this will be ready to share with you at parent conferences in two weeks.  The Sign Up Genius was just sent out for conferences. Because we lost the teacher workday that consisted of parent conferences, I have generously been given a half-day sub for Tuesday morning (Oct. 16th) so that I can finish up conferences.

October 11th Make-up School Day (from the hurricane)

October 12th Teacher Workday: Parent Conferences 

October 16th AM Conferences available

October 18th CSD Kickball Festival 4:00-8:00 PM: This event is for the whole family! Be sure to mark your calendars.  😁

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: You can now start thinking about your child's costume for the ball! They can dress up as any fairy tale character.  Please no weapons of any kind (guns, swords, knives, etc.)  We will send out a Sign Up Genius as we get closer for parent volunteers. The students have started learning their salsa dance in Spanish class that they will perform at 8:30 AM for us all.

October 31st Parade of Fiction (time TBD usually 8:30AM): Parents are invited to come watch their child walk in the Parade of Fiction! Your child needs to dress up as their favorite book character.  They will carry the corresponding book with them in the parade.  No weapons of any kind and no scary masks.

Math:
Last week we moved onto Cluster 2 of our math curriculum which is "building a conceptual understanding of addition and subtraction within 20 and developing fact fluency within 10."  We want students to become familiar and confident when solving addition problems when finding the sum or a missing addend.  Students learned two new games last week to practice these skills.  Roll and Record Addition and Seashell Addition.  In Roll and Record Addition, the student would roll two dice, add them together, and color in the corresponding box for the sum they found.  They would then write the equation for the combination they rolled.  In Seashell addition, students were working on combinations of 12.  They had a ziplock bag full of *paper* seashells...some were clam shells and some were spiral shells.  They pulled 12 out of the bag and made two groups.  They counted to see how many of each shell they had and then recorded the addition equation.

Literacy:
We launched our last part of Daily 5 this week which is "Work Work."  Students can come to this station to practice their word study words.  The fun activities we have rotate each week and may consist of wiki sticks, shaving cream, word searches, rainbow words, play dough words, secret code spelling etc.  This past week, students practice their words by using play dough and doing rainbow words.  Now that our Daily 5 is fully launched, students have the freedom to rotate through all 5 stations.  Some students may only do 2 stations in a day while another student may do 4.  They have the freedom to clean up and move as wanted.  This allows me time to pull for guided reading groups, handwriting practice, word sorts, etc.

Thematic:
We started learning about the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin" this past week and will continue studying it this week.  We have read many different versions and we are also focusing on practicing spelling classmates names, as that ties into the story.  On Friday, students wrote all of their classmates names on a chart and could compare how many letters it had versus Rumpelstiltskin's name.  Students also wrote a writing piece about how they would trick Rumpelstiltskin if given the opportunity.  They were so creative!  Their favorite activity that we did was making Rumpelstiltskin's gold coins and they got to eat them when done.  They had to follow step-by-step instructions and used vanilla wafers, icing, bananas, and gold sprinkles to create the gold coins.  It was definitely a hit!

Science:
Thank you Mrs. Sue Sink for being our first parent volunteer for Sci-Fri!  We LOVE having parents come in and this is a great way to get involved in our classroom and get to know the students!  You can teach any science experiment that you would like. If you need help with ideas, I am happy to send some ideas your way that correspond with our curriculum!  Mrs. Sue did an amazing experiment that directly aligned with our curriculum about force and motion.  Students all got to participate in a pendulum painting.  We had a great class conversation about force, motion, and gravity in our everyday life.

Have an awesome week!
Love,
Mrs. James

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