Week 5 Review

It has been a grand week.  We have spent lots of time using our Chromebooks.  As you know, students wrote and posted their first posts directly.  We discussed the standards for my approval.  Students agreed that they would prefer not to have mistakes in their posts.  This really slows down the process because at this point, editing is still such a challenge!  This week's goal was to have each student make sure all words that needed to be capitalized were, all sentences ended with appropriate punctuation and the 'our' was used rather than 'are' when appropriate!  This was hard work but well worth it.  Some students will finish this work on Monday.  

We are still decorating our Writers' Notebooks.  They are looking good! 

In Reading we have begun the book Wonder.  We love it.  We are discussing the three types of connections we use as Readers to make construct meaning: text to self, text to text and text to world.  We had several group connections today during Read Aloud.  Choosing 'Just Right' books remains quite a challenge for many students.  

In Fourth Grade math we are working hard on multiplication strategies and multiplicative reasoning.  We are using arrays a lot to construct and deconstruct numbers.  I think everyone now knows what a prime or composite number is; we know about factor pairs, multiples and we especially practice multiples of twos, threes and fours.  

We began word study this week.  We have six groups which ensures smaller groupings.  Students are assigned to groupings based on their developmental spelling stage.  We work with words in a variety of ways, depending on the group.  It has been a treat to get to know more Equinox students and to see my core students among them.  The team is building cohesion with all among its new members!

Our Responsive Classroom routines which include developing cooperative habits and all of our SMARTS (safe behavior, mindful behavior, accepting behaviors and truthful behavior-and overalls elf control are developing well.  Theys students do love to learn and are quite results oriented.  They also love to sing and play which makes Friday Team Time a real treat.  

   

Week 4 in Review

Hello!

We had a great week! As you will see, the  highlights are typcially around dramatics!  We have enjoyed using funny voices and accents.  We greeted each other in operatic voices, did book talks in fun voices and have generally enjoyed being dramatic.  This class loves to sing and act things out.  I'm looking for ways to capitalize on those passions with our learners.  They are also very pleased to be using the Chrome Books more and more.  They have been incredibly careful and responsible while using them.  Ms. Hennig, our librarian went out of her way to give us positive feedback

She wrote:
"I had to email you to tell you how AMAZING your students just were in my Library Exploratory class...They were all model students, and I am so proud of them and just had to tell you."  We loved getting that email!

Thank you for your support of the Weekly Reading and Math Logs!  We are glad to be getting that started.  We are still working out the Fourth Grade Math homework.  This week we did a better job of matching it with the work we are doing in class.  This week we spent several days building arrays and talking about dimensions, factor pairs, prime, composite and square numbers.

On Friday we had our first Kiva Awards and Team Time.  All students participated.  It was a blast!  Ms. Weegar and I also taught two parts of a four part song.

Reminders:

• Picture day is this Wednesday, 9/24
• Fourth graders may want their own bike helmets for PE this week.
• Please send a note to me with your child in the morning if there is an end of day change whenever possible.  Or send me an early morning email.  Here is why:  students are typically anxious about these changes and check in with me repeatedly throughout the day.  When I don't know about the change, it is difficult to be reassuring.  Thanks for your help with this.  
• This week we shall work on decorating our Writer's Notebooks.  We will use magazine pictures, colored paper and such.  Students are welcome to bring photos from home too.  

As always, thanks for your support!  Have a great week.

Monday News

We had another busy Monday today!  You will notice that your children came home with Reading and Math logs so that they can track their reading and math practice this week.  Third graders have not logged on to Xtra Math at school yet-I'll make sure that we do that tomorrow.

We also sent home a homework contract.  Hopefully it makes sense to you to plan a way to support homework but also to preserve family time.  I certainly do not want homework to rule your lives and would prefer it takes up a small and productive part of each evening.  Let me know how I can help.

We owe an apology to parents of fourth graders: We sent home homework that we did not prepare students for last week.  That Thursday homework was meant for this week.  Ms. Weegar and I  ARE SO SORRY. We will review it in class later this week.  Hopefully that won't happen again, but if it does (ie your child has no idea how to do the work), please send it back unfinished!

Also in today's folder you should see a flyer advertising school photos.  Picture day is next week!

Fourth graders did use bikes in PE today and they will for the next 3 classes.  Bike Safety is the topic being addressed.  Please know that there are helmets here.  If your child wants to wear their own, he/she may bring it from home.

Check back later for more photos...

We met Sage!

9/9

Today Ms. Fisher and Sage visited!  It was great to see both of them.  Students were warmly greeted and they got to touch Sage if they wanted to.  Ms. Fisher explained the susceptiblity of infants to germs so students mainly touched Sage's legs or feet with clean hands.  Ms. Fisher spoke with kids, answered questions.  She also wanted to hear about students so each took turns telling her about important things in their lives.  We showed her how to play Predator and Prey too.

It was a real treat to have those two around!

On another note, I'm still trying to share our First Day Portraits...  Maybe if you click on the link you'll get to see the slide show!

First Monday

After three weeks of school, we finally have had our first Monday and it turns out our Monday schedule is pretty fun!  We have both Physical Education and Exploratory in the afternoon. Today we also had a Kiva meeting.   Ms. Birdsall introduced the Chrome Books and previewed some assignments on Digital Passports (www.commonsensemedia.com).  We are so eager to get our hands on those devices.  Now that they are almost ready for students, we are working in the Tech Lab to get ready reviewing passwords on multiple accounts (network, Google, keyboarding, etc) and protocols for safe and responsible use.  We are also having conversations about how we will use the Chromebooks and tomorrow we will do some 'paper blogging.'

After Kiva we had our first library session. You may notice that each student now has a beautiful plastic bag to keep library books in. The idea is that students keep these bags all year.  They are to protect the library books from back pack mishaps.  Keyboarding Camp also began today-students got some practice using Typing club.     As a result of all the extras this morning, math and snack both got shortened.  Students were flexible and accepting of the changes.

Our afternoon in class work focused on creating SMART posters.  As you know, at Williston Central School SMART is an acronym for Safe, Mindful, Accepting and Truthful.  Students are working in table groups designing posters to 'advertise' this.  As I said, it was a fun and busy day!

We have lots of photos to share already.  I'm looking into a variety of ways to post them.  Mostly I have highlights of the last two weeks including:

• First Day of School photos
• Card Tower photos
• First Day of Quiet Reading
• Team Time with Ms. Schoolcraft's class and a parachute 

You may have noticed the information on Type 1 Diabetes went home today in folders.  There is a student who has this disease and she and her mom presented to us on Friday.  It was very impressive.  I wonder if any of your children spoke to you about it.

Well, I'm off to figure out how to post a slide show.  I'll be updating this blog at least once a week so please be sure to check back!

Here is a link to a slideshow that Mrs. Baker, our art teacher, created last week.  We are anticipating the celebration of International Dot Day in Equinox. Check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_veGIapWow