November 12th-16th

Happy Friday!  We had an awesome week with having two field trips!  The kids always love getting to ride the school bus. 😊  Thanks to our parent chaperones for coming with us.  We will have two more field trips this year...Discovery Place and Gem Mining!  We are excited to celebrate Thanksgiving next week and talk about all of the things we are thankful for.

We are planning on having a Thanksgiving Feast for the kids on Tuesday so no need to send in lunch on that day.  The menu will consist of mac and cheese, green beans, corn, cornbread, and homemade butter (that we are going to make from heavy whipping cream in class)!

November 21st - 23rd: No school...Happy Thanksgiving!
December 20th - January 2nd: No school...Winter Break
January 17th 10:00 AM: American Heroes Play

Math:
Our math time was shortened this week due to our two field trips but we still got some place value practice in!  Students are improving in their ability to express numbers as tens and ones.  We are playing many place value games to practice this skill.

Literacy:
Students are doing great with our word study program!  They are learning new rules each week so they can apply them when writing during Daily 5.  After winter break, we will increase to 10 words each week instead of 5.  It will be even more important then to have your child write their words in the "best" column and practice the words doing fun activities.

Thematic:
We studied Mia Hamm and soccer this week during thematic centers.  We learned about the rules of soccer, who Mia Hamm is, and got to hear from the FSU girl's soccer team captain!  The students loved hearing her talk about her experience playing for Florida State and also professionally for a year.  Thank you Melissa Rieser for coordinating this! We learned that soccer balls have both hexagons and pentagons and students created their own paper plate soccer ball by tracing and cutting out these shapes.  We also made our own life-size soccer players!  Students got to create a team name and logo/mascot.  They turned out really well!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James

November 5th-9th

Good afternoon!  I hope everyone is staying warm and dry today!  We are currently having indoor recess and the kids are playing "Four Corners" which they LOVE! 😆  We had a great week and as I make my lesson plans for next week, I realize we are going to have a very busy week!  

November 12th Hurricane Make Up Day and Veteran's Day Celebration 

November 13th Laurel's Nursing Home 10:30-11:30 AM: Parents are welcome to join us!  You may ride the bus or meet us there.  I will add this on our Sign Up Genius for the week.  We load the bus at CSD at 10:00 AM and the program is from 10:30-11:30 AM and we return to CSD by 12:00 PM. 

November 14th Charlotte Children's Theater Field Trip: Please have your child to school by 8:00 am on this day.  The bus will leaving CSD at 8:30 am sharp.  We will eat lunch when we return to school so send a normal lunch.  Please feed your child a big, protein-rich breakfast that will keep them full until lunch.

***I will be sending play lines home for the American Heroes play within the next two weeks.  Just an FYI. 

Math:

As we dive into our cluster 3 in math, students are learning how to apply their learning of place value in many different ways.  They learned two math games this week to practice this skill and demonstrate their knowledge.  The first one is called Ten Frames (11-19) and work on the student picking a number (11-19), building it on two tens frames using cubes, and then writing how many tens/ones they have and the corresponding equation.  We want them transitioning to seeing numbers as tens and ones.  We will continue to build on this knowledge and soon move into 20+ numbers where the students will have to work with more than one "ten."  

Literacy:

Students continue to work hard during Daily 5 rotations and have the freedom to move from station to station within our one hour literacy block.  We have different "word work" activities for them to do to practice their word study words.  This past week we had whiteboards, rainbow word writing, word searches, and stamping.  Students are making great progress with their guided reading books and that makes me so happy! Keep having your child read those to you Tuesday-Friday.  Repetition with them is key in developing many crucial skills. 

Thematic:

We studied Jackie Robinson and baseball this week during our thematic unit time.  BIG thank you to Andy Cook (Laine's dad) for coming in to talk to us about baseball and his time playing baseball professionally.  The kids loved having him here and were so excited that they each got one of his baseball cards. We started learning our "Break the Barrier" song that we will perform at our American Heroes play in January.  We spent time reading and learning about Jackie Robinson and all of the things he had to overcome in his baseball career.  The kids favorite center was making a baseball necklace out of a washer!  They had to also write three facts they learned about baseball.  I am turning it into a book that will travel home with different students each night.   Next week we are studying soccer and Mia Hamm and will have another guest speaker from FSU's girl soccer team (thank you Melissa Rieser for the connection)!  

Love,

Mrs. James

October 29th - November 2nd

Happy Friday! We all survived the two days after Halloween. 😜 Surprisingly, yesterday and today have been great in our classroom which I did not expect to happen.  We had a busy but fun week with celebrating Halloween, beginning a new math cluster, learning about Wilma Rudolph, and completing week two of word sorts!

Laurel Nursing Home Dates 10:30-11:30 AM: Below are the four dates that we will go to the Laurel's Nursing Home if you want to put them on your calendar.  Parents are welcome to join us!  You may ride the bus or meet us there.  We load the bus at CSD at 10:00 AM and the program is from 10:30-11:30 AM and we return to CSD by 12:00 PM.  

• Tuesday, November 13th
• Tuesday, January 8th
• Tuesday, March 12th
• Tuesday, May 7th

November 12th Hurricane Make Up Day and Veteran's Day Celebration 

November 14th Charlotte Children's Theater Field Trip: Please have your child to school by 8:00 am on this day.  The bus will leaving CSD at 8:30 am sharp.  We will eat lunch when we return to school so send a normal lunch.  We will not have time for a morning snack so please feed your child a big breakfast to keep them full until lunch.

Math:

We officially began Cluster 3 this week which is all about "place value."  As students work with two-digit numbers, they learn that the digits represent amounts of tens and ones.  Then they use that knowledge to compare numbers to see which are less than, equal to, or greater than other numbers.  In this cluster, students will learn to count up from any given start number within 150. Students will learn to group objects by tens and left-overs as an efficient way to count larger groups of objects.  They will write down the number of groups of tens and ones as well as the total number of objects.  A variety of objects will be used for counting but we will mainly use unifix cubes.  Students will also learn to count items in a picture by circling groups of tens to help find the total.  This understanding of place value is foundational as students build fluency with addition and subtraction. 

Literacy:

Students did awesome on our second week of word sorts!  They have actually learned to love them and find them fun and challenging. 😊  Before the students are sent to Daily 5, I teach a mini-lesson that involves a reading strategy.  This week we focused on the idea of "Juggling All Three Balls."  Reader's don't only do one thing when we get to a word. We need to do at least three: (1) think about what makes sense; (2) think about how a book sounds; and (3) think about what looks right.  This is a great thing to encourage your child to do while reading at home!

Thematic:

We continued learning about Wilma Rudolph this week as we begin our American Heroes and Famous Athletes unit. Next week, we will move onto Jackie Robinson.  The other athletes we will learn about are Mia Hamm, Michael Jordan, and Michelle Kwan.  We learned about Venn diagrams and how to use them to compare and contrast things or people.  Students created a Venn diagram comparing themselves to Wilma Rudolph.  Students thought about ways they are different than Wilma and the same as Wilma.  Students also got to complete an obstacle course that I created that involved sprinting, jumping sides, and side shuffling.  They got to run the course three times to see if they could improve their time.  They loved this activity! 

Have a great weekend!

Love,

Mrs. James

October 22nd-26th

Happy Friday! We were happy to have a normal week in our classroom. 😁 Students were excited to begin word sorts again and did great on their first week!  We also began our American Heroes unit and talked about what is a hero and what characteristics a hero has.  We will study many different athletes and heroes such as Wilma Rudolph, Jackie Robinson, The Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, Rosa Parks and MLK Jr, Helen Keller, and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Our American Heroes play will be on Thursday, January 17th at 10:00 AM.  Be sure to mark your calendars! This is my favorite play that we do.

October 31st Parade of Fiction 8:45 AM: Parents are invited to come watch their child walk in the parade.  Your child needs to dress up as their favorite book character and will carry the corresponding book with them in the parade.  No weapons or scary masks.   Please have them come to school already dressed in their costume.  They may bring a change of clothes for after if wanted.  Parents of students in 1st grade are asked to stand in the Middle School Gym to watch the parade. 

Laurel Nursing Home Dates 10:30-11:30 AM: Below are the four dates that we will go to the Laurel's Nursing Home if you want to put them on your calendar.  Parents are welcome to join us!  You may ride the bus or meet us there.  We load the bus at CSD at 10:00 AM and the program is from 10:30-11:30 AM and we return to CSD by 12:00 PM.  

• Tuesday, November 13th
• Tuesday, January 8th
• Tuesday, March 12th
• Tuesday, May 7th

November 12th Hurricane Make Up Day and Veteran's Day Celebration 

November 14th Charlotte Children's Theater Field Trip: Please have your child to school by 8:00 am on this day.  The bus will leaving CSD at 8:30 am sharp.  

Math:

As we finish up Cluster 2 in math, we are working heavily on addition and subtraction.  Cluster 3 will be learning about place value.  I taught the students about number bonds this week and we practiced solving different equations where the addend was missing or the sum was missing. Below is an example. These are GREAT to practice at home! We differentiate by choosing different numbers to meet the needs of all students. 

                                             

Literacy:

Students did a great job as I introduced word sorts back into their normal routine.  Below is our weekly literacy schedule.  While I am pulling small groups for guided reading and word sorts, Mrs. Rumburg is pulling small groups for Handwriting Without Tears.  During our writer's workshop time this week, we worked on the skill of "writing for our readers" and made very detailed and interesting books.  

Monday: Daily 5 and Word Study

Tuesday: Daily 5 and Guided Reading Groups

Wednesday: Daily 5 and Word Sorts

Thursday: Writer's Workshop

Friday: Daily 5 and Spell Check

Thematic:

As mentioned above, we began our American Heroes unit this week!  We have already started practicing the songs for the play.  We will study all of the famous athletes first and then move into the heroes.  Wilma Rudolph was our first athlete that we studied and we had many conversations about hard work, dedication, and not giving up even when things are hard.  We read the book Wilma Unlimited which told us the story of Wilma and how she persevered and became the fastest woman in the world.  We also set and wrote three personal goals for the school year and these can be found out in the hallway.

Have a great weekend!
Love, Mrs. James 

October 8th-12th

Happy Monday!  It seems that a "normal" week of school is hard to come by these days. 😊 Thank you all for coming to pickup your child promptly when we lost power last week.  I know it can be tricky to have to leave work early so we appreciate it.  We are excited to see all of you this Thursday and Friday at the CSD Kickball Festival and the Fairy Tale Ball!  Your child brought home an invitation today for the ball that had all of the details on it and they are also listed below.

October 18th CSD Kickball Festival 4:00-8:00 PM: This event is for the whole family. See you there!

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: Please have your child come in their fairy tale costume to school.  They can bring a change of clothes for after the ball if they would like.  Please arrive to the elementary gym at 8:15 AM to get a spot around the perimeter of the gym to watch the student's dance.  The two dances they learned in music and Spanish class will begin at 8:30 AM.

October 31st Parade of Fiction 8:30 AM: 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:

Cluster 2 of our math curriculum has mainly focused on addition and subtraction within 20.  We have practiced through story problems, roll and record, and many other games.  Students have recorded their equations on paper as they play the games so they practice number writing and equation writing.  Tomorrow we are learning how to play roll and record subtraction (instead of the normal addition).  It is important for students to learn addition and subtraction at the same time so they understand how they are related.  Our next cluster that we will move into is all about place value and how it relates to addition and subtraction.

Literacy:

Last week we moved onto another unit during our Writer's Workshop time.  We finished up our small moment stories and learned about "writing for your readers."  We talked about all of the qualities and characteristics that make up a good book and what we should include in our own books so that others want to read it.  We talked about including lots of details in our pictures, multiple sentences, an interesting storyline, many different characters, and an attention-grabbing picture on the front cover.  The students did great with their first week on these books!  We continued with our Daily 5 and guided reading groups.

Thematic:

Last week we studied Rapunzel and talked about the storyline in this fairy tale.  Students got to make popsicle stick puppets so that they can reenact the story for friends.  They practiced reenacting it with a friend after creating the puppets.  Students also learned how to braid yellow yarn and created Rapunzel's tower using different art mediums.  Students also did a sequencing activity where they had to put pictures from the story in order. We will wrap up our fairy tales unit this Friday!

Have a great week!
Love,
Mrs. James

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

September 17th-21st

Good evening parents! What a crazy two weeks we have had! It was nice to have some extra days off school, but it will be nice to get back to our normal schedule next week. 😊 We squeezed in as much as we could in three days of school this week and the students did great with their second week of word study!  Just a reminder that they will bring home their binder on Monday with their new words (and you can see their spell check from the previous week then).  Next week will begin our third week of word study and each week will bring new markings for the students to learn.

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

October 12th Teacher Workday- Parent Conferences: Please reserve this day for conferences.  Admin has kindly offered to get us a sub on another day so that I can have two full days of parent conferences to fit everyone in.  I will let you know the date of this as soon as I find out.

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.

Guided Reading Books:

Thank you for taking such good care of our guided reading books and remembering to send them back on Friday's!  I highly suggest that whenever your child reads the book to you, they put it right back in their reading bag when they are done so it doesn't get lost.  That way they know exactly where it is when Friday arrives.  Below are some tips for guided reading and things that we do during our guided reading group that may help you at home.

- Have your child point to each word as they read.  This is so beneficial because we are able to            see if they are tracking, skipping words, or understanding the concept of saying one word and pointing to one word.
- If your child misses specific sight words in the book repeatedly, write them down and practice them later on when you practice word study.  Sight words are essential for them to learn and memorize in this phase of learning to read. You may notice that I write down sight words on a sticky note that I have noticed them struggling with.  You can find a fun way to practice these!
- Ask comprehension questions all throughout the book to make sure they are understanding the story.
- Have them retell the story to you once the book is over to see how much they remember.
- Encourage them to read with expression once they have read the book two or three times.  This is one of the reasons we have them read the same book for three nights.
- Encourage them to use our Beanie Baby Strategies we learned last night when they come to a word they struggled to decode.  If you want a copy of these to print out for home, I will be happy to email them to you!

Word Study: 

Please have your child write their spelling words in their "best" handwriting column as some point during the week.  I highly encourage your child to practice the words during the week if they do not know them already.  Make it fun!  There is a list of activities in the "handouts" section of their binder.  We notice a strong correlation with the students who know their words when the spell check comes on Friday. They are the students who do their "best" handwriting section and practice the words during the week.  They also practice explaining the markings to their parents so they understand the "why" behind the spelling rules.  Thanks for helping your child in this way!

Math:

Students were able to rotate through 8 different tubs during our math workshop time.  These tubs included games such as Grab Bags, Start With Get To, Get the Goof, and Red Bird Yellow Bird.  Get the Goof is one of our newer games where students have to investigate a series of numbers to figure out what is missing.  They then rewrite the number series in the correct way.  Red Bird Yellow Bird is our newest game where students are working on combinations of 10.  They use a ten frame to organize and show their thinking and record their findings on a chart.  We are finished with "Cluster 1" of math now and are moving on to "Cluster 2" which is addition and subtraction.

Literacy:

Students did very well with their second week of word study! We also had guided reading groups on Tuesday which is always my favorite.  I love reading with the students in small groups and getting to work on their individual needs.  We will soon begin doing word sorts on Wednesdays during our Daily 5 time.  I introduced our fourth element of Daily 5 this week which is "Work on Writing."  The students were thrilled! They are able to go to our writing table or can write at any of the normal tables.  They are able to work on our monthly writing topic or any other free choice topic.  I will soon introduce the last element of Daily 5 which is "Word Work" and this is where they practice their spelling words in fun ways!

Thematic:

We wrapped up learning about Jack and the Beanstalk this week and are moving onto Rumpelstiltskin next week.  Students got to make their own beanstalk by using paper and linking it together.  They had to keep linking the paper until the beanstalk was as tall as them. They then counted how many links there were and recorded it on one of the leaves.  We also did another measuring activity where they used non-standard measurement tools (unifix cubes, paper clips, pennies, etc) to measure a beanstalk.  

Have an awesome weekend!

Love,

Mrs. James