Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Good afternoon!

I hope everyone had a great, long weekend!

This week's IA: Music
Next week's IA: PE

*I wanted to make you all aware that ALL students will need a sack lunch TWO times next week. The first is for our fieldwork on Tuesday, October 2nd. The second is on Friday, October 5th for Boot Camp. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Just a reminder, all classes who have 100% of students who have registered for Boot Camp get a $25 gift card. This could be $25 of new books or apps for the iPads. Thanks to everyone who has already registered their children. And, even if you register, your children do not have to collect donations. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Reader's Workshop
This week, we continue to read personal narratives. The focus though, has shifted to listening for the words that create images in our minds. This is helpful so we can include words that paint pictures in our  personal narratives that we write. We'll also focus on reading with fluency, paying very close attention to where authors use punctuation. Again, this will help us put punctuation in our own writing.

Writer's Workshop
Most of us are finished drafting our personal narratives. Over the next couple of weeks, we will revising our pieces, making sure they sound exactly how we want them to. Our next step will be to edit the pieces for punctuation, capitals, and spelling. We hope to have all of our personal narratives published before Fall Break so that we can share them with you. Be watching for an invitation to our classroom for a sharing celebration.

Math
We are currently learning many strategies to become "Fact Power Superheros!" Ask your child what this means to him or her. In class, we practice many ways to solve simple addition and subtraction facts. However, there isn't any time built in for memorization of these facts. I've discussed with students the importance of having these facts memorized, because later this year, we'll be solving more complex addition and subtraction problems. I don't want the lack of knowledge of these simpler facts to get in the way of these tougher problems. Please try to find about five minutes a night to practice addition and subtraction flash cards.

Expedition
Last week, we worked as detectives to put clues together to find out what we will be studying for our first case study of our Social Studies Expedition. Below are pictures of students viewing a mystery piece, which is a photograph of a tumble-down building. The students viewed this photograph and another one. Then, I read them quotes from various newspaper articles. After thinking about these three clues, the students tried to make a reasonable guess as to what our case study is. They discovered, using their background knowledge and the clues, that we will be learning about a ghost town. More specifically, Dearfield, Colorado. We will be going to Dearfield next Tuesday to gather more information about this ghost town. While there, we will have an expert speaker from the University of Northern Colorado.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Good afternoon!

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

Last week during All School Meeting, we kicked off our fall fundraiser, Bootcamp! To go along with Bootcamp this year, each crew is collecting non-perishable food for the Douglas County Task Force. At the end of each week, the crew that has the most cans, gets to have a visit from the Bootcamp Mascot for the entire next week. Well, our crew ROCKED the first week of the food drive, brining in 119 cans! Yes, you read that right, 119 cans in just TWO days! Wow, when these kids are called to action, they really respond! The food drive will continue until Bootcamp, which is Friday, October 5th. So, thank you so much for all of the generosity you've already shown and let's keep it up! Here is our mascot with our huge donation pile.

Reader's Workshop
This week in Reader's Workshop, we are learning how to determine what's important while we read, and what's unimportant but interesting. This is an important skill that we use when we summarize what we read. Please help your child with this at home, but asking them to tell you what was important that they read, and how do they know it's important?

Writer's Workshop
We continue to write personal narratives, or stories that are true about our lives. We've learned that some experiences are just so great, that they just have to be written down. We have read many published personal narratives, looking for what details authors choose to include. I have been so impressed with how the students are stretching their details out and are including powerful words. I can't wait to share these pieces of writing with you!

Math
In math today, we talked about the importance of "fact power." Students know that it is much faster to memorize easy math facts. This is a great thing for you to practice at home. Please consider doing some addition and subtraction flash card practice at home with your child. Just a few minutes each day can make a big difference.

Expedition
In small groups, we have been creating posters that represent what we know about community. Here are just a couple of examples of what we're working on.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Happy Monday!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I accomplished a goal that I've had for a very long time...I completed my first triathlon yesterday. Ms. Lisa and I swam, biked, and ran it together. What an experience!

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art

*Tonight is the first night for math homework. Homework will come home every Monday-Thursday from now on. I expect homework to come back to school the following day. If your child is really struggling with the homework, please don't push them to complete it. I don't want it to be frustrating. If this happens, please just write me a note on the homework. That way, I'll know that I need to recover a concept with your child. Please remember that you can see what homework your child needs to do on the homework tab of this blog. Thanks so much!

Reader's Workshop
We continue to learn about how we can use our background experiences to help us understand why characters do what they do in stories and why an author wrote a story. We are currently reading examples of published personal narratives because we can connect something from the story to something from our lives. That's what makes personal narratives so much fun to read (and write)! Another reason we are reading these books is because they are helping us write our own personal narratives. A Chair for my Mother, Some Birthday!, and Owl Moon are just a few of the titles we've read during Reader's Workshop.

Writer's Workshop
We are learning more and more about personal narratives. We've brainstormed ideas for stories we could write. We know these have to be true stories about our lives. One way you could help your child at home with his or her personal narrative is to tell your child about an experience from their lives that lives past the moment. This is something that should be important enough to your family, that you want to have a record of it. We are studying personal narratives and want to show students why some experiences are worth remembering and sharing.
Today we looked at how published authors started their personal narratives. This helped us come up with interesting ways to start our stories. Here are some examples of how students chose to start their stories: 

It's kind of difficult to see, but this writer chose to start her story with sound effects. 

 So did this writer. 

Another excited thing we started in Writer's Workshop is Kindergarten Buddies. Some of you may have read about this in your child's Weekend Family Message Journal. We will get together with Ms. Jody's class every other Friday. The kids are all so excited to share their writing with an audience. We will also be doing some projects together this year. 

Math

Every Friday in math is Math Game Day. This provides a chance for children to learn basic math skills in a fun way. A popular game right now is Addition Top-It. This can be played at home with a deck of cards. Ask your child to teach you how to play. This will help your child get fast with math addition facts. 

Expedition

This week in Expedition, we are learning all about community. This is starting to build some background knowledge for our first case study. Stay tuned to hear what our first case study will be! 

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Hello!

I hope you all had a nice, long weekend. I was able to spend time relaxing with my family.

This week's IA is Music. Next week is PE.

Reader's Workshop
This week, we will be learning about how making connections helps us understand our reading better. Today, we read, Bedhead, about a little boy who has a nasty case of bedhead on picture day. We talked about how he was feeling embarrassed, and times that we felt embarrassed. Then, we discussed how these connections helped us understand how he was feeling. We better understood why he acted like he did. While you're reading at home with your child, stop every now and then and ask them what the story reminds them of, and how thinking about that helps them understand the story.

Writer's Workshop
We are beginning our first Genre Study. We will do many of these this year. This week, we begin learning about Personal Narratives, or stories about our lives. These will be "small moment" or experience stories. We will immerse ourselves in published personal narratives to learn how other authors wrote their stories. These will be the mentor texts we model our writing after. Once we've drafted, revised, edited, and published our personal narratives, we'll invite parents in to share our stories with. I'm very excited to read some amazing stories!

Math
The beginning of the year in math is a lot of review from 1st grade. We're reviewing how to count money, tell time, and find patterns in numbers. Homework for math will begin next week.

Expedition
Before beginning our first expedition, we are finalizing our in-depth study of our character traits. We've finished learning about perseverance and stewardship. Here are some pictures of our character traits in action.

Though the zip line was the highlight of the Voyage, it took a lot of perseverance to get up the tower and let yourself step off and trust the equipment. The smiles show just how fun perseverance can be! I love that I can pull these experiences back into the classroom, so when students are feeling challenged by academics, I can remind them how they persevered at Camp Elim and I know they can do it here too. 

Each day, we have stewardship time, when we take care of our classroom and make sure it's ready for the next day. This includes making sure the library is organized and the floor is picked up. I've noticed that this has transfered to other parts of the day. Many students were recognized by their classmates today for picking up trash on the playground during recess!