So excited for the start of another year! I look forward to communicating through our classroom's website and Seesaw to show you all the fun activities going on this year. Stay tuned!
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This week we powered through a lot! I told the students they were doing such an incredible job and working very hard. I had students ask many awesome questions and have those Ah-ha moments! As an educator those moments bring you so much joy.
Math: We are powering through fractions! This is a funny concept for students because they are having to deal with something smaller than a whole, which can be very confusing at times. We worked to name fractions of shapes as well as break apart a whole into different fractions. Literacy: We are working through a practice state test. We have been reading through the stories and learning how to answer the questions. The students have noticed it is important to take their time and figure out the "most" correct answer when two answers could be possible. They have also learned how important reading the directions is! Writing: We started analyzing the writing directions given to students on the state test and going through the page of directions they are given. Students put question marks next to words or phrases that confused them. We worked through all the directions learning about all the components they require. The set of directions is incredibly long, so I felt it was important to introduce them prior to them taking the test. We will work on writing an opinion piece and including textual evidence to support their opinion this coming week. We are also working on something called Giggle Grammar. Each day I write a sentence which includes many different types of mistakes and one vocab word. The students have practiced looking the word up using a dictionary as well as correcting a variety of mistakes. Each day the sentence contributes to an overall story. Ask Your Child: Have them tell you about the story we have composed so far! Also ask them about the vocabulary word: chartreuse. Social Studies: We moved on to looking at regions within the United States and how each five of them are composed of different climates, landforms, and natural resources. Many of the students have been bringing in different rocks because we talked about minerals being a natural resources found within different regions of Oregon and the United States. I hope you all enjoyed the warm weather this weekend! Such a nice change from the rain and snow. Take a look into our week! Math: We finished our second unit on multiplication and division. Students learned a new property called the associate property as well as reviewed the distributive property as well as the community property. Students are getting a hang of their multiplication and division facts. We did some state testing practice by working as teams to solve problems similar to what may appear on the state test. The pictures below are the students using their communication skills to make sure every member of their team could solve the problem. Literacy: Students spent quality time in their book this week as well as practicing their non-fiction comprehension. Students are enjoying reading articles on topics that interest them. They are continuing to use the skills they learned to help with non-fiction reading. Some students also met with me one-on-one to showcase the progress they have made this year!
Writing: Students used their writing organizers to formulate paragraphs for their informational piece. They worked to make sure they had a topic sentence, details, and closing sentence. We also took some time to practice punctuating paragraphs using periods exclamation points, and questions marks. I am really trying to get them to punctuate their own writing correctly. Social Studies: Students had the opportunity to explore pictures of the different regions of Oregon as well as learn about landforms found in the regions. Feel free to ask your child to see if they can name some landforms. Examples: volcanoes, islands, lakes, mountains, valleys, canyons, etc. To celebrate the science expo our class had the opportunity to work with the Ozobots with Mrs. Klingner's class. Student programmed the Ozobot to knock bowling pins over or to trace the letters of their name. They had so much fun! Hi all,
I wanted to say thank you for all the kind emails and face-to-face affirmations, advice, and support I received from many of you these last couple months. I wanted to keep you all updated from the previous email I sent home a little over a month ago since I know I left you all with very little information. A few days after winter break, I thought I came down with the stomach flu. The nausea would come and go for 6-7 hours at a time and sometimes keep me up all night. I eventually reached a point where I couldn't even drink water without the sensation I was going to explode. After 6 doctors, hours in a hospital, and more scans of my body than I knew existed, they think it came down to a parasite and severe infection in the intestines. All of the unknowns of my stomach caused me to experience fear and panic that I had never experienced. It left me to a week of one hour of sleep each night and fear to leave my house. If that wasn't enough, I was battling the nasty cold everyone went through and excruciating pain due to a herniated disc in my back. While my stomach is responding to treatment and my back is slowly healing, it was your CHILDREN who gave me joy through it all. They are the ones who kept me going. Their smiles and hugs and laughter were my best medicine. They were so patient with the subs and always gave me the best welcome back hugs and smiles. I absolutely love what I do and that is because of your CHILD. So thank you. Thank you for your patience and understanding through these past couple months. I appreciate your kind words and support. Here's to finishing the year healthy and back to updating this more regularly! SWITCHING GEARS... Math: We are back to solving problems using multiplication and division. Students were introduced to solving multiplication and division problems using a variable (letter). For example, 3 x 7 = m; what does m equal? They have worked on solving two-step story problems, the distributive property and the commutative property. We have been continuing to review rounding, adding/subtracting 3-digit numbers, telling time, and multiplication and division. Literacy: We are continuing to work through non-fiction texts. Students have been working on using evidence to support their answers, identifying the main idea, and comprehending the text. Students have been able to read about current topics going on in the world now. We read about the Olympics, how McDonalds is getting rid of chocolate milk in the happy meal, and other exciting current events. The students have had the opportunity to pick from hundreds of articles on topics of their interest. Writing: We have been working hard on expository writing! Students are doing a great job explaining and teaching about a topic of their choice. Some students are writing about horses, penguins, athletes, Legos, and the list goes on. I can't wait to see how they turn out. We have also been practicing punctuating paragraphs to help avoid run on sentences. Social Studies: This week we started our PYP Unit: Sharing the Planet. Today students walked around the classroom looking at pictures of six different regions of Oregon. Students had to write down what they noticed in those specific regions. See the pictures below! The other day I sat down to really think about this sweet group of students and all I could think about is how proud I am of these kiddos. They are all making great strides and are growing so much! This time of year gets me excited because you begin to see all the growth they are making. They have turned the corner from being a second grader to really stepping it up to being a third grader. I love watching this! They are making me so proud! Math: We started working on finding the perimeter of a variety of shapes. The students are doing really well with this concept. They were excited to get back to using numbers in math and not describing the attribute of shapes all day. ;) They are also blowing my mind with their math fact achievements. WOW! They are working hard, encouraging each other, and helping each other reach their goals. It has become a classroom team effort. We have flash cards flying all over the place. Thanks for all your support at home with these. It is going to set your child up for a lot of success. Ask your child: How do you find the perimeter of a shape? Literacy: I have seen the most growth from this group of students than from any group ever. It is evident they are reading at home, practicing their power words, and working toward mastering their reading goals. The students were recently tested again in fluency, comprehension and vocabulary and each and every student moved forward and showed great progress. It was one of those moments that made me tear up. These kids mean the absolute world to me and to see them ALL make progress was a wonderful celebration. I love watching them succeed. We are nearly done with our mystery unit. Students learned that how we read mystery books is similar to how we read fiction books. Instead of figuring out what the mystery is in the book, we can figure out what the problem is. Or instead of identifying the crime solver, we can identify the main character. We made the connection between mystery books and other fiction books. In the picture below, students are reading with their reading partner to figure out "how mystery books tend to go". I.e. the crime solver usually has a sidekick or the crime solver tends to guess the wrong suspect first. We will be moving into reading non-fiction next. Writing: We finished our unit on writing personal narratives. We have moved on to writing expository/informational pieces. I am excited to see what they decide to inform me about!! I always learn so much from this writing unit. Science: Students spent some more time diving into magnetism, gravity, and friction. We read an article, brainstormed what we already knew about these three forces, and then wrote down what we learned. Students used their knowledge to communicate how magnetism, gravity, and friction all affect the earth and living things. Ask your child: How do forces affect the earth and living things? My hope is you and the family are finding time to relax during this busy season! Enjoy your time with family and friends! I apologize I haven’t written to you all sooner. I think we can all agree this time of year is a busy one! I hope the family dance was fun last night. I am sorry I couldn’t be there! I caught a flight to San Diego to celebrate the wedding of a dear friend. Here is what we have been up to! Math: We are working away at our Geometry unit learning to identify a series of attributes for a variety of shapes. We have discussed polygons, quadrilaterals, parallelograms, right angles, acute angles, and obtuse angles. Students are recognizing that this is an odd unit because it has very little to do with numbers. We talked about how we are so used to learning math that deals with some number. Students created robots/aliens out of shapes, named the shapes, and described their attributes. Literacy: We started our mystery unit. The students came into the classroom one day after specials to a “crime scene”. They were very excited to figure out who could have been the suspect to commit the crime. Students identified possible suspects who could have committed the crime and then explained why. Students had the chance to look at different finger prints to try and name the type. My hope was to get them all excited about reading mystery books. So far in this unit we are working on summarizing, making inferences, and trying to solve the mystery before the crime solver in the book does. I bought tons of mystery books as well as checked out a handful. Students have been reading one after another. They have been very excited to share their books with others in class and be the first to tell me they finished their book, solved the mystery, and are on to another one. Writing: Students finished their final small moment narrative pieces! Across this entire unit students learned how to start their stories, use dialogue, have a storyteller’s voice, write paragraphs, and to end their story with a bang. We will be moving into our new writing unit after Thanksgiving Break. Science: We have started our new PYP Unit: How the World Works. Students participated in a provocation, which included a variety of stations. Students were given materials at each station in hopes that they would become inquirers. We wanted the students to keep track of their noticings and any questions they had when exploring the different materials. One station included Hot Wheels tracks and cars another included magnets. Each station included a force and motion related concept but the students were not told this. They had an absolute blast exploring. It was fun to watch the students be so engaged and excited about learning. Our first art lit of the year!!
This week we spent many of our days wrapping up our PYP Unit: Who We Are, I taught the last narrative writing lesson and fiction reading lesson. Students will start finishing up their narrative writing pieces, take a post-assessment to show their understanding of inferences, summaries, character traits, and their understanding of texts. We also had a lesson from our counselor, Mrs. Randolph, about diversity. It was a very powerful lesson and all the students were engaged. Math: We started our Geometry Unit about polygons, quadrilaterals, parallel lines, right angles, etc. Students need to be able to classify shapes and describe attributes about them. The students were given examples of polygons and examples of non-polygons. As groups, they had to come up with a definition of their own. We continued this activity for quadrilaterals and parallel lines as well. Ask Your Child: What is a polygon? Answer: A shape with straight sides and no openings. Literacy: Our focus this week was on identifying character traits in the books we are reading. To help us identify character traits, it helps to look at a character's action, what they say, and what they think or feel. Students participated by writing down their character's trait, what evidence from the book made them think that, and then put it on our sticky note wall. See the picture below. Ask Your Child: How would you describe the character in your book? Writing: This week I taught student that good narratives have strong endings, are written in paragraphs, and use dialogue correctly. Students practiced those skills in their writing. We will be writing our final drafts after spending some time editing their work. I have posted all of the anchor charts students are using to write their narratives on the white board, so they are front and center. Take a look at everything they are working to incorporate into their narratives. Science: Students are working on finishing their finals projects for our PYP Unit: Who We Are. As a class, they came up with a rubric they wanted to be graded on. So, I will be using that to grade students on their final pieces. They are identifying 3-5 inherited and acquired traits and writing a short piece on an acquired trait they would like to improve this school year.
FYIs! -Book Fair is this week. Our class will be shopping on November 1st. They may bring money during that time to shop for books. -YOUR CHILD NEEDS TO BE PRACTICING THIER MATH FACTS! :) I can't stress this. As a class, students performed poorly this week. I was bummed to see their results on Friday. They will be tested again on Thursday. Students should have passed their 2's this week. -Spelling will begin this week. They will be getting 5 words they personally misspelled. Their test will be on Thursday. -Reminder no costumes on Tuesday. Thanks for attending conferences! I spoke with many of you about helping your child understand their story. These are three skills that we have been working on since the beginning of the year. They are crucial skills your child needs to know that will absolutely help them with testing in the Spring. You can check your students comprehension with these few ideas. Ask them for evidence from their book. That is what really distinguishes understanding a book in Kindergarten through second grade from understanding a book in third grade and on. They need to be able to provide evidence from their book with their answer. Here is some work from a few students in the classroom. They are demonstrating the skills above by keeping track of them on sticky notes as well as in their reader's notebook.
Since this week was a short week, I decided to combine the last two weeks into one update. Our classroom won the golden music award this week! Woo hoo! For those of you who do not know, classrooms have the opportunity to win a weekly award for any of the specials. This week, it was our turn! Yay!
Math: We finished up our first module on multiplication and division and took the final assessment. I will be sharing their scores throughout conferences so you can see how they performed. The students and I are working through the problems they missed to help them learn from their mistakes! We will be starting our geometry unit next. Literacy: We continued with practicing inferences last week as well as finished our read aloud book, Stone Fox. We started our new read aloud book, Pippi Longstocking. I can hardly read it out loud with laughing. For some reason this book just cracks the kids and me up! :) This week I introduced a new skill: summarizing. I pre-assessed these students on these skills and this was a skill every student in the classroom missed. Thus, we have a lot of learning to do! The way I taught the students is to remember this: someone wanted but so then... Someone: Who are/is the main character/characters? Wanted: What did the character want? But: What is the problem? So: How did the character try to solve it? Then: How did the problem resolve? For example: Little Willy, a ten year old boy, wanted to save his Grandfather from dying of sadness but he did not have enough money to pay the taxes his grandfather owed for the farm. So, he used his college money in his bank account to enter a dog sled race where he could win $500 to save his grandfather's farm and his Grandfather. Then Little Willy entered the race and won the money to pay the taxes for Grandfather's farm. Ask Your Child: What happened at the end of Stone Fox? Did it end the way you thought it would? Why or why not? See if they can summarize it using someone wanted but so then. Writing: They continued to work on their small moment. This week they chose one of the stories they wanted to work on publishing. They then tried out three different leads for their stories to try and hook the reader in. Science: Students had the chance to move throughout stations where each station had a different activity about how nature and nurture influence plants, animals, and people. They LOVED the different activities. One activity required them to see how different amounts of water and different soils affected how flowers would grow. We also had a guest speaker come in. She is a genetic scientists and taught the students all about DNA. The students had the opportunity to create a DNA representation. It was a HUGE hit and we were so thankful to have such a wonderful opportunity! See the picture below to see their DNA creations and them working together on the different stations. What a quick week! The students were so kind to me as I was feeling a bit under the weather. At one point I was in the middle of teaching math and a sweet boy raised his hand and goes, "Mrs. Davidson, are you feeling alright?" Talk about melting your heart! Sheeesh! I love these kids hard and often times they feel like my own but to feel the love back was something else! :) Thanks for raising such kind-hearted kiddos! Also another bragging moment about this awesome class: I walked out to pick the students up from lunch recess and our class was the only class lined up and completely silent. That called for a celebration! :) So proud of them! They are working together as a team and demonstrating outstanding behavior for our lunch duty teachers. Math: Goodness gracious...we started the dreaded distributive property. We talked about how the distributive property is meant to help us as mathematicians break a part of multiplication problem into two simpler ones. We all agreed by the end that it doesn't appear that way. Thus we named the property the dang distributive property! So much work told solve such a simple problem. BUT! They started getting the hang of it! It was on their quiz that went home. I have a few students who I still need to meet with, so if you haven't seen it, it will be coming home soon. We continued solving multiplication and division story problems. Literacy: Fiction: We are working on making strong predictions. Strong predictions help readers understand a story better. Students have been making predictions in their personal books as well as our read aloud book, Stone Fox. We have been chatting about how strong predictions explain what you think is going to happen BUT also how why you think it is going to happen based on what has been previously read. PHEW! Lots of thinking! Non-fiction Fridays: As mentioned last week, the students spend time in non-fiction text every Friday. Each Friday I teach them a new strategy about how readers can best understand non-fiction. This week we talked about how sometimes authors use maps to help give more detail about the topic being written. Ask your child: What is your prediction about Stone Fox and WHY do you think that is going to happen? Writing; Students are continuing to write their narrative stories, filling their pages with small moment stories. They are eager to share what they have been writing with our class. We are continuing to work on writing stamina as well as produce small moment stories. Science: Students worked on sorting different inherited and acquired traits. They also designed a creature of any sort but needed to label 5 inherited traits their creature had as well as 5 acquired traits. They were SO into this activity. So fun to watch! See the pictures below of their first sketches. Ask your child: What did you creature and what traits did your creature inherit and acquire? CONFERENCES: If you haven't please make sure you have signed up for ONE conference slot! http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0b48a9af2fa7f49-2017 **I also had many students turn in their reading log with VERY minimal reading this week. Please be sure your child is reading 120 minutes (30 min a night) or more a week.** |
Sept. 14th- First Day of Online Learning
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