Happy Friday and Happy March everyone!
We had a great week back from vacation jumping into some review on Monday to refresh our brains of all the good work we were doing the week before vacation! We played some new math games to review converting mixed fractions to improper and improper to mixed. Students were also introduced to some other review games we will use to continue to review place value, geometry as well as factors & multiples as we continue our work in Fractions. New Math menus began on Wednesday with some new game choices and some specific review items for students individualized based on areas I have seen them needing a little extra boost. Students seem to like the menus - they like having a choice of what they are going to work on after we complete our mini lesson. We worked together on an Exemplar comparing how much cake 2 different kids ate. By using drawings as well as remembering how to add fractions with unlike denominators we worked our way through 2 different strategies using this 5 Step Problem Solving Process. I was really proud of the questions students were asking throughout our work - staying with it and gaining clarification where needed! We started our work with multiplication of whole numbers by fractions today and I was really pleased with student's work! Looking forward to diving in with this next week! We are excited to have Ms. Pagnani working with us three days a week during this part of our Fraction unit! We have started a new Read Aloud titled Front Desk. Be sure to ask your child what they think about the way Mr. Yao is treating Mia and her family. What do they think will happen to Mia's family? Will Mia and Jason become friends? This is a fabulous story about an immigrant family and the hardships they are faced with setting up a new life in California. They are already VERY into this story and I can't wait to see their reaction as Mia's family faces some new challenges! We had exciting news this week as well! Author of The Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, Dusti Bowling, respondedto a post our class tweeted and offered to read the first two chapters of the sequel to this books. I wish I had captured the students reaction when I read them her response to our tweet - it was priceless! Stay tuned as we will be setting up a date with Dusti to Skype with her ! Such a powerful message to our students that this author would offer her time to keep their enthusiasm for reading going! We finished reading Number the Stars just before vacation and have doing some writing work around this novel. Students were asked to write about their favorite character, choosing the character traits they thought best described their character. We are working on a a strategy called A.C.E - Answer, Cite, Explain. We also are working on writing from a character's point of view. We read an excerpt from the book when the family was traveling to Uncle Henrik's house and students have been asked to write about the train ride from the point of view of Ellen Rosen or Kirsti Johansen. This type of writing is often challenging for many, so it will be a focus over the next few weeks. In writing, we continue to work on gathering evidence for our argument essays. Students have been reading some different articles and watching some short videos, gathering pieces of evidence that would support serving chocolate milk in school as well as evidence against. Good argument essays are able to state their point of view and also point out what the other side might say and refute it. Students are already getting excited about "their" side of the argument! In Science, we are working on a Solar System Project. Students are gathering facts about each of the planets and building a model which shows the correct order of the planets with their orbits and the correct placement of the Asteroid belt. They are very engaged in this project, hoping to finish this up next week then begin our review of our Earth's Systems to get ready for an assessment! In Social Studies, students read about the settlement of Plymouth and gained further insight into the first Thanksgiving. Many were unaware it was actually 3 days long and didn't realize how important Massasoit was to the success of the Plymouth colony. We will be starting a project next week on the first settlements. Students will choose Roanoke, Jamestown or Plymouth and will use a program called Telagami to create an avatar, and will record a message about their chosen colony and illustrate what this colony looks like. I'm looking forward to their creativity! It was a busy day in Room 15 for Read Across America Day! We had our second Book Tasting today! Be sure to check out our pictures! Students were able to "taste" numerous books and will be partner reading a book. Partners will decide on their book and will work together to set reading goals to get the book read by the end of March. We will be working on creating good discussion questions and really digging into the books chosen! These book tasting always leave me smiling as I see students choosing books they may never have thought of! Check out our photo gallery for some pictures! We also had lots of "characters" in our class today and spent some time reading Dr. Seuss books with our Little Buddies ! Thanks to Mrs. Ryan's class for inviting us up for some reading fun to end our day! As always, thank you for all of the support you provide your children at home and our classroom each and every day! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember: Tuesday, March 5th 8:15am - Extra Math Help Room 15 Wednesday, March 6th 7:30pm PTO Meeting Thursday, March 7th 8:15AM Kangaroo Math 6:30 - 8:00pm Family Literacy Night Sunday, March 10th Daylight Savings - Move Clocks Ahead! Monday, March 11th 9:30 - Rob Surette Presentation - come see this wonderful presentation!
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Good afternoon!
We started the week with a wonderful community meeting reminding us about how simple gestures of kindness can make a huge difference in our community. We worked hard all week to catch each other and those at Cole School doing kind deeds - it was great to recognize so many! The NHS Peer leaders returned to talked with us about Direct and Indirect Peer Pressure. Students role-played some different situations to help them realize how peer pressure can get them into some tough situations! It was great to have them with us this year! We had an excellent trip to the Museum of Science on Wednesday, visiting the Planetarium and then having some time to explore the rest of the museum. Students were able to make many connections to the curriculum as the show talked about the moon phases. order of planets, and constellations. The Museum will be visiting us at Cole School later this spring to review some concepts of Electricity and Magnetism. We are so fortunate to have the Cole School PTO providing this wonderful enrichment for us! The class was very excited all week as they prepared for the Variety Show last night. It was so great to see so many of them living our School Motto by daring greatly and shining brightly! Be sure to check out the pictures in our photo gallery! So proud of all who participated! We also worked hard on our compliment hearts for Valentine's Day. It was so nice to watch them reading all of their compliments yesterday afternoon. They were excited to create them as necklaces to wear home and share with family! In Math, we continued our work with Adding and Subtraction Fractions. Working hard to find common denominators! We also continue to work to make sure all improper fractions are simplified to mixed. We will be continuing our review of these concepts as we move to multiplication and division of fractions after February vacation. We have also been working with Line Plots. Analyzing data and discussing what these types of graphs can tell us. This will also remain a focus for us after break. We have used FlipGrid a bit to show what we know about different math processes. It is great for students to practice explaining using math terms! I look forward to sharing more of these with you soon! In Science, we looked at the patterns in the sky, focusing on 5 major constellations by building a model in our classroom. Students connected their learnings about the Earth revolving on its axis to why the constellations seem to be moving. We have been working hard to analyze the different patterns caused by the Earth's rotation - the seasons, our shadows etc. Students have been asking some great questions ! In Social Studies, after break we will be comparing the first 3 settlements; Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth. We are getting ready to dig into the early colonies comparing the New England, Middle and Southern Colonies and how geography played a part in their growth. This is always the start of some great conversations and I can't wait to get going!! In Reading, students were on the edge of their seats this week with two novels we have been working with; The Honest Truth and Number the Stars. Thursday, you could have heard a pin drop in our classroom as we finished The Honest Truth, students were begging to finish this story and find out what happened to Mark and his friend Jessie and his trusted dog Beau. Be sure to ask them about this story! In Number the Stars, we are learning about the bravery of AnneMarie Johansen and her family. Ask your child what they thought about AnneMarie and her confrontation with the German Soldiers! They are begging me to tell them what we are reading next, but I told them I would tell them after break as I had a few good books in mind. I love to hear their enthusiasm to know what's coming next! We will be doing another book tasting when we return. This time, students will be working with a partner and will create a timeline for getting their book read and discussed together! I can't wait to see what they think about our next tasting! Thanks as always for your support! It was great to see so many students at the Variety show cheering on their classmates! Love our community! Have a wonderful break! I cannot believe we celebrated 100 days together this week! We are over half way done ! So proud of their progress and looking forward to so much more as we finish strong! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember: Friday February 15 - February break begins Monday, February 25th - School Reopens Tuesday, February 26th - Ambassadors to Cradles to Crayons Thursday, February 28th - Early Release - Elementary Professional Development Friday, March 1 - Read Across America Day - Dress up as your Favorite Character from a book! Good afternoon
We started the week with a wonderful Connections get together, reading Tomie dePaola's The Popcorn Book and then challenging our teams to create a container for the popcorn. Today, our class took this challenge to the next level - who could build the container with the smallest volume?! It was awesome to see them thinking through what they had learned about Volume to strategize their container. Discussions were had whether to go higher or longer and how that would impact the total volume of length x width x height. We learned a great deal listening to each other and are looking forward to our next challenge! In Math we continue working hard with fractions. This topic is many times the most challenging to students as there are so many different strategies to remember; making equivalent fractions, simplifying, finding least common multiples and greatest common factors, how to add unlike denominators, mixed and improper etc. Students have been really working hard to understand the concepts and when to use specific strategies. We spent some extra time on converting mixed to improper and improper to mixed as we will need to be really strong with this as we get ready for Multiplication and Division of Fractions after February break. We love the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) site. Students spent time during our computer lab time this week creating improper fractions and looking at the mixed fraction models that we could build from the improper! The site also gave them a look how decimals and percents were related. Students have links to many of these activities within google classroom, but the one that works with mixed and improper fractions can be found using this link . www.nctm.org/Classroom-Resources/Illuminations/Interactives/Fraction-Models/ Next week we will be reviewing more with adding/subtracting with unlike denominators and what we need to do when we need to regroup with mixed fractions. Line plots have also been a part of our discussion over the past few days. We have been creating line plots of different class data and discussing what we find out from the data. Next week we will continue our work with line plots but will be using some fractions on the data as well! On Wednesday of next week we will be heading to the Museum of Science and attending a program about space and constellations in the Planetarium. Students will need to bring a bagged lunch (no glass please and peanut free) . They will be able to have a snack on the bus and then we will eat after attending the planetarium program. Students should NOT bring any money with them as we will not visit the gift shop or be buying any food. Buses will leave Cole School promptly at 9am to be sure we arrive on time for the Planetarium, so if you are driving your child to school, please be sure they are here on time on Wednesday! THANK YOU! This should be a fabulous day of learning for all especially since we will have just been talking about the Moon phases, constellations and rotation of the Earth! Students will also have time to explore the rest of the museum with their chaperone. Next week we also have the Cole School Talent Show which is always a great night of fun. Recently there have been a few issues with some unkind words being said at recess about certain acts etc. We have had classroom discussions about the importance of supporting each and every performer. All students involved are DARING GREATLY and SHINING BRIGHTLY and we need to remember to always use kind words, no one act is better than another - we all are talented and should celebrate the uniqueness in each of us! I know I am looking forward to seeing lots of talented students on stage next Thursday and celebrating every performance! In Social Studies we have begun talking about Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth. Ask your child what they remember about the Lost Colony of Roanoke. They were all very intrigued by what could have happened! Today we dug into Jamestown and lots of students remembered the story of Pocahontas, but didn't realize that Tobacco became the cash crop for the Jamestown settlers who had originally come looking for gold! Next week we are on to Plymouth and then will be doing a mini project on these 3 colonies! This week we also have started using FLIPGRID in our classroom. I am able to post a video question to the students and they have to respond to me in a video that is 90 seconds or less. I asked them all for feedback on their Math Menus and their responses were honest and thoughtful. They shared with me what they like about the menus, what they would like to see more of and areas that are continuing to challenge them. Seeing and hearing them take ownership of their learning is just wonderful! As I get better with this wonderful tool, I will send some links home to you so you can see how your child responds to these prompts. We also used it to talk about kindness. Next week is World Kindness Week so I had them watch a short video called "Color Your World with Kindness" www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwelE8yyY0U I then asked them to tell me how THEY could help color the world with kindness. Once again, I loved their honesty, but also loved seeing how they viewed each other's ideas and gave positive comments to classmates. Can't wait to share more of this wonderful tool with you all! In Reading, we are really into our new read aloud The Honest Truth, about a boy who is sick and decides to run away from home to hike Mt Rainier. Kids are on the edge of their seats begging for me to read more each day. We are discussing questions like "What are you wondering about Mark?" "Do you think Jessie will tell his secret? Would you tell the secret?" Ask your child about this book, I am sure you will get some very interesting thoughts! We are also continuing our work with Number the Stars. The Johansens have just taken Ellen on a train ride to Uncle Henrik's house. What do students think will happen at the house by the shore? Again, they are making some great predictions and really starting to relate to the characters! Strong discussions in room 15 for sure!! In writing we have begun to take a look at writing a persuasive essay. This week our focus has been to read 3 articles about whether or not chocolate milk should be served in school. Students have been taking notes when we find facts to support chocolate milk and also when we find facts that tell us we should not serve chocolate milk. Next week, they will be picking the topic they will have to argue out of a hat - half the class will be in support of chocolate milk at school, and the other half will have to convince us why we should not have chocolate milk in school. Students are learning the importance of knowing both sides of an argument. We will have some fun with this writing for sure! After we model this structure and discuss what goes well and what we could do better, students will then be given a choice of a few different topics and will write their own persuasive essay. We will look forward to sharing our progress with you! Please be sure to check out our photo gallery as lots of pictures of guest readers and students at work were added last week and this week! Valentine's Day is next Thursday - Students should be working on their compliment hearts. All hearts should be cut out and returned to school by Wednesday, February 13th so we can distribute on Valentine's Day. We will be making compliment necklaces for all students as they exchange these wonderfully positive notes to each other next Thursday! A class list was sent home today and is also attached to this email. Have a wonderful weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Hi everyone!
Well this week we certainly had a great deal going on in Room 15! We truly celebrated World Read Aloud Day by having lots of parents, family members and community members come in and read their favorite stories to us. Please be sure to check out our photo gallery to see pictures of these guest readers! Thank you to all who could come in - we certainly showed the students in Room 15 that we all love READING! If reading to our class is something you would like to do but your schedule just didn't allow right now, just shoot me an email and we can try to schedule a convenient time! Our Student Government Representative came back from the meeting this week and challenged our class to do acts of kindness as we recognize National World Kindness Day which is celebrated on February 17th. As a class, we are challenging each other to look for ways to spread kindness over the next two weeks as we prepare for World Kindness Day! A giant heart is outside each classroom at Cole and as students share kindness, they will write what they did and their name so we can recognize all of the good we are doing as a school community! Hopefully these acts of kindness will include helping out at home as well! Our goal is to spread smiles as much as we can! In Science, we continue to look at the Earth's Systems and how we can find patterns in many of our systems. This week our focus was on shadows. We discovered why our shadows point to the west when the sun comes up in the east and then reverses as the sun sets. We also looked at the length of our shadows. Ask your child about our Science Investigation where we used protractors with a flashlight and a mini lego person to be able to see how the sun effects not only the direction of our shadows but the size! Next week we will be digging deeper into some of the constellation and try to understand why they SEEM to be moving in the sky. We are talking a great deal about the Earth's rotation on its axis and how this affects so many different patterns! Students are building graphs with their data so we can analyze these patterns! In writing students wrote a personal narrative this week. We wanted to see how they did now that we had taken a break for a bit. I was happy to see them remembering to start with a catchy hook and also taking time to use strong vocabulary and dialogue. We will be moving into persuasive essays, which I can tell already is going to be lots of fun with this class. We will initially look at the question "Should schools allow chocolate milk at lunch?" and then will move into students choosing for a few different topics. In reading, we continue our work with Non Fiction Signposts. We love pointing out Extreme or Absolute Language and this week talked about Numbers and Stats. Why do authors put specific numbers in different articles. What purpose do they serve? Are we stopping to ask ourselves if the numbers are important? Do they help us visualize the story better? Great discussions on this topic, looking forward to this continuing! We also started Lois Lowry's novel Number the Stars, about two families and their friendship during Nazi occupation. We are only three chapters in, but the connections to other books and "I wonder" statements coming from our class have been wonderful! Ask your child what they think about AnneMarie? What do they think is going to happen to the Rosens and the Johansens? In Math we have done a nice job with equivalent fractions and are gaining confidence with Improper and mixed fractions. Next week we move to adding and subtracting fractions with UNLIKE denominators. Extra Math help remains on Tuesday mornings 8:15-8:45 where we will remain focused on helping students with fractions for the next few sessions! Students have been doing a nice job with their math menus. These are differentiated menus given to students with practice work in fluency, problem solving and previous topics. Students choose different activities when they complete the work due as part of our daily mini lessons. It has been great to see students realizing areas where they need the most practice and choosing to do those activities first. Mrs. Louchheim and I are able to pull small groups or work individually if necessary to break tasks down when students need it. By spiraling and reviewing constantly students are gaining confidence in areas where they perhaps were a little shaky, while at the same time continuing to learn new topics. We have a new game in our classroom called EQUATE - it is basically Scrabble but with MATH. Students have really enjoyed this as one of the activities on their menus, but I have also seen students playing at indoor recess. Another game they love is 24, which is a game reviewing order of operations. Ask your child about this one! I will be offering a before school 24 group later this spring on Thursdays - stay tuned for details! Looking forward to another great week of learning next week! Thank you all for your support of our classroom! Have a great weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember
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June 2019
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