Highlights from Week 18!

We had a short week with Monday off to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr! Next week, we will have another shortened week with Friday off for our day between semesters. Can you believe that it is already the middle of the school year?? After that day, our specialist time will switch: PE will be on Monday/Wednesday and Art on Tuesday/Thursday. In addition to our Art/PE specialists, our third graders will be starting music next week! Leschi has hired a new music teacher for students in grades K-3. Every other week, classes will meet with the music teacher for 30 minutes twice a week. Our class was assigned Monday and Wednesday from 9:50-10:20. During this time, the 4th graders in our class will continue to have work time in the classroom.

Highlights:
-We are well into the drafting portion of our non-fiction research books. Students are learning to use their notes to write about their topic in their own words. We will continue this work for the next few weeks.
-New math units have started for all three math groups. Ms. Deese's group will begin a unit on Multiplying with Decimals, my 4th grade group is learning Multiplying with Double Digits, and my 3rd grade group is learning Division Concepts. During this unit, I will also be pulling small groups to review and learn some new geometry concepts that you may see in the homework as well.
-In science, students were introduced to three types of rocks: sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. We will begin studying each of our 12 types of rocks and learn what makes each unique.
-Every student has written a bio on their Medieval Times character. Those introductory letters are hanging outside our classroom - come check it out! Ms. Anders is helping us by making busts of our characters with clay during art!
-Next week will be our last week dissecting non-fiction books in reading. The unit starting in February will be Poetry! Another exciting part of reading time is our new couch in the classroom! We had a classroom meeting today setting up some rules and expectations on the couch - here it is!

-Genuis Hour: we took some time off from Genuis Hour during the holidays and because our weeks have been so short recently. However, we continued today with learning how to set up a website! Students were so excited and engaged in learning how to create their own site. A parent letter has gone home today that has a permission slip portion so that parents can sign off on students creating a site. It is a student blog through Weebly, and teachers have the access and control what can be published on each site. If your child is going to present their information through a blog, please sign the form. The blog is only for the Genuis Hour Project and posts must be related to the topic. It is optional, so students are not required to make their own blog. Here is an infographic on how blogging can help students:

-We are going on our next field trip on Valentine's Day with Ms. Deese's class! We will be going to MOHAI, so please return the field trip form with $4 as soon as possible. Please consider chaperoning as well! Thank you!

*We will have our first auction next Thursday (January 30th). If you would like to donate any cool little prizes or funds for me to get prizes, please let me know as soon as possible!! 

Highlights from Week 17

Happy Seahawks weekend!  Leschi celebrated Blue Friday and here is how many students were dressed! 

How we decorated our room :)

Highlights:

-Students are finishing up taking notes on their non-fiction books and ready to begin drafting this week!

-My math group took the math test on Friday and did very well. I graded and passed back the tests so please ask students to see how they did. Ms. Deese's math group will be taking their math test on double digit division on Wednesday. Both groups will start the new unit this week. 

-We observed more of our rocks this week and will learn to categorize them in science: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous. 

-Students were assigned roles/characters for our Medieval Times unit. They will be making their characters using clay during art class this week. With Ms. Deese's class, they worked on the castle and will finish the castle model this week!

-In reading, we started the second half of our nonfiction unit on Narrative Nonfiction and comparing it to Informational Nonfiction text. Students also had deep discussions on nonfiction articles from our Scholastic Magazines. Check out the picture of the group of boys having a conversation below!

-With our Buddy Class, we watched a Martin Luther King Jr. video and worked on some writing together.

Going to the Super Bowl! Go Hawks!!

Highlights from Week 15 & 16!

Happy New Year!! We started this new year with a very, VERY full week! We started lots of new units, worked on some assessments (I know!), and started MAP Testing. Because I took a break from blogging over the winter break, I did not put up our December pictures of some of the activities we worked on right before the holidays. At the end of this post, I will show some of those pictures including: gingerbread house making, making Polar Express hot chocolate with our Little Buddies, launching our non-fiction unit, a picture of the snow storm we had, and the holiday gifts students received.

Highlights:
-We chose our Non-Fiction Writing topics this week and will begin our research! In order to do this, students need to find books and articles (at school and/or home) on their topics to help them. This goes along perfectly with our reading unit, which is learning how to read non-fiction text: taking notes, finding main ideas/supporting details, understanding the text and being able to say it in our own words. If you can find articles or get books on the specific topics, please do so and bring it to school.
-In math, we began our new unit on Multiplication or Division with 2-Digit Divisors depending on the math group students are in. This is a short unit, and we will be taking our math tests on Friday of next week: 1/17.
-Rocks and Minerals is our science unit that we also launched. We are learning to talk about the different properties of rocks and carefully observing them. If you have rocks at home that you would like to add to our collection for students to observe, please bring them in!
-In social studies, Ms. Deese's class and our class have started our Medieval Castle unit. Students will be starting to build the structure of the castle on Monday. Each group is assigned a different part of the castle, and this frieze/structure will be right outside our classroom. It will be an ongoing project and next week, students will also create their characters in art and write about them.
-Our Little Buddies came to our class today to present their All About Posters on different animals. It was so nice to see their learning and presentation skills. Room 307 students were the most amazing audience! They sat quietly and gave specfic compliments to the Kindergarten and 1st grade presenters.
-We took our MAP Math test today in the computer lab, and will be taking the Reading portion on Monday. Students are writing down their scores to meet their goal, so please ask students on Monday what their reading/math scores are if you are curious.
-Last but not least: Mrs. Froberg (our student teacher) shared about herself on Thursday. She showed us pictures and shared about her life growing up in Canada and some of her hobbies including cooking! I have linked her cooking blog so that you can check out one of her passions outside of teaching! Along that note, please sign and return the permission slip that went home about the video taping of her lessons. It is very important - thank you!