Highlights from Week 14!

Only one more week until winter break! I cannot believe how fast the first trimester of school has gone by and it is almost 2014! Seeing that it is the holiday season, we are celebrating with some fun activities and treats during the last week before break. We will be decorating gingerbread houses and making hot chocolate in our classroom among other activities. Thank you to families who have helped to bring some of the supplies for our gingerbread houses - you can see the finished product when students take them home next week :)

Next week will be our first week to welcome Mrs. Froberg officially to our classroom as our student teacher. She will join us every day next week to get to know students and help out in our room. In January, she will come once a week (every Thursday) until March, and then finish the year off with us full-time. We are all very excited to welcome her and have an additional teacher in our classroom! Mrs. Froberg will be sending out an introductory letter next week so you can learn more about her soon.

Highlights:
-This is our last week writing our last narrative piece, and January will be the start of a new non-fiction writing unit! It will support our non-fiction reading unit as well as our Genius Hour research that will be happening in the next few weeks.
-Next Friday, we will have our unit test on multiplication/division. We will be working on the study guide early in the week, and students will be able to take it home so parents can get a chance to see what will be expected on the test. Please continue to help your child practice their multiplication facts so that the longer multiplication/division problems can be solved more easily/fluently.
-We are building our reading stamina in non-fiction. We learned a few strategies such as marking up a text, how to read text features and identify them. If you can, please show your child all the different non-fiction text that are all around them (menus, brochures, newspapers, magazines, cookbooks, how-to manuals, etc).
-Most students have decided on their Genuis Hour topics! Please talk to your child about their chosen topic and how you might be able to support them in the research process.

*Apologies for not having pictures this week, but it just flew by! Many pictures to come in the next post :)

Highlights from Week 13!

We have launched our classroom economy system this week! Students are so excited and motivated to learn about how it all works. We opened up our bank accounts, earned our first paycheck (after applying for our jobs, of course), earned bonuses, some owed fines, and deposited our money into the accounts today. If you are curious of how the whole system works, please check your child's Star Binder under the "Economy" tab. You will find the bank logs, bonuses/fines list, how to pay rent for your desk, and their student wallets. Check out this website for more details on the entire system and where the idea originated: www.myclassroomeconomy.org.

Today, we also began "Genius Hour" - which is an hour every Friday that we will spend on individual students' passion projects. We began this morning by watching this video by Kid President:


I then introduced the idea of "Genius Hour" by showing this video:


Students were able to generate some ideas of different passions they have and how they can create a project from those ideas. By next Friday, students will have to come up with their project question, and we will soon begin the research for their projects!

Highlights:
-We had our realistic fiction writing celebration this week with some pumpkin scones and tea! Our next short writing unit will be on any narrative genre. Students have been asking to write fairy tales and fantasy stories, so the next couple of weeks will be spent on those narratives before we begin our non-fiction unit in January.
-In math, some students started on the multiplication unit, and some students started on a long division unit. Today, I sent home login information and passwords so that families and students can log into the math curriculum page at home. This will have all of the units and lessons that I am teaching in class. Students should have their usernames and passwords memorized!
-Monday, we will begin our non-fiction reading unit! Students presented their character posters this week and got to share about their learning throughout the book club. Check out some of the pictures of book club groups working on their posters together!

-Last but not least, please check your e-mails for a Volunteer Spot invitation. We will be making our annual Gingerbread Houses during the last week of school and we are in need of some candy to decorate the houses with! Please help if you can :) Have a great weekend!