Student Post #3: Welcome Mrs. Schlick Noe!

Here is the interview with Mrs. Schlick Noe, author of Something to Hold (our class read aloud) as promised!

Interview with KSN:
Q: What do you want us to call you?
A: Mrs. Schlick Noe

Q: What was Ms. Staab like as a student?
A: She was nice and worked well; imagine someone proud and kind to all.

Q: Was Tela a real person?
A: No, Tela wasn't a real person.

Q: Were Jewel and Raymond real?
A: They were based on 2 kids in my class.

Q: Was Walter real?
A: Oh no. He is terrible...

Q: Did you actually live on the reservation?
A: Yes, I lived there from 2nd to 6th grade; my father was a forester.

Q: Was your nickname Kitty?
A: Yes

Q: Was Pinky real?
A: Yes, she is still my friend today.

Q: Was Mr. Nute real?
A: He was based on a teacher who was good.

Q: Was Ms. Anthony real?
A: She was based on a real teacher I had.

Q: Is Sidwalter real?
A: Yes, and I have been there.

Lucy and Jesse's Personal Interview:
Q: How long did it take and was it hard to fit in?
A: It took a long time; I was really shy...

Q: How long did it take to write the book?
A: 14 YEARS!!!!!!

Thanks for reading our class blog this week!
Lucy and Jesse :)

Week 7 Highlights

Room 307 spent a lot of time outdoors this week! On Monday, we had our first Garden Club Class led by Kim Blakemore. She will be partnering with graduate school students to teach our class about water conservation and other forestry/environmental topics this year. Garden Club will happen once a month on a Monday. This time, we helped to thin out our Leschi Garden, find worms to put in our garden, trim some of the dead herbs, weed, and plant tulips! Here are some of the pictures from our time on Monday. If you would like to stay connected with our Leschi Garden website, please click here to check it out!

Yesterday (Friday), we went out to Peppi's Woods with one of the forest stewards, Jana, who led us through planting some native plants in Peppi's. Thank you to the families who came out to help make this happen in an organized fashion. It is so wonderful to be able to spend time outside to learn more about our backyard, Peppi's Woods!

Something different this week was that we had several guests come to observe our classroom! Ms. Trapp (our Resident Teacher) was spending time going to different schools, and other STR Residents came to see how Room 307 works! Students enjoyed having new teachers in the classroom and getting to know some of them. Ms. Trapp will be back with us next week!

This upcoming week, 5th graders will be going to camp from Wednesday-Friday! If you are a 5th grade family, please make sure that your child is packed up and ready to go days in advance. I would spend this weekend packing together, learning how to roll up/pack the sleeping bag, and making sure that everything they need is packed. If you need a packing list, please ask me! If you are a 4th grade family, your child will be with other 4th graders in our school with several substitute teachers. Those three days may look a bit different from our normal schedule in 307, but it should be a good time getting to know other 4th graders at Leschi.

Highlights:
-Writing: we have just a couple more weeks to draft and finish up our realistic fiction stories. Students have been really engaged in this unit and getting to make up many conflicts/struggles for the character in their story to make it really interesting for the reader. This was one of the tips that our guest author gave up when she came to visit on Tuesday. More about that in the Reading section!
-Math: students in Stanford/Princeton groups are working on their chapter review/study guides to prep for our Unit 2 test! Harvard students are working on long division and multiplication - please continue to practice these skills and concepts at home!
-Reading: we had a special guest author come in on Tuesday for a presentation! It was extra special for me because this guest is not only the author of our current read aloud: Something to Hold, but because she was my literacy professor in my graduate program for teaching at Seattle University! Katherine Schlick Noe came to read from her book and share about her life as she wrote about it in her novel. Students were SO excited to be able to meet her and ask her questions about how much of her novel was true. Our class bloggers/journalists took notes during the Q & A session as well as interview her privately. Please look forward to that post coming up! Katherine Schlick Noe is also the author of many teaching books on Literature Circles (book clubs, which I am a huge fan of)! Here is a link to her personal website if you would like to know more about her work: Katherine's website.

Student Post #2: Go-Cart Challenges!

Hello, students and families! It’s Lucy and Jesse, your class bloggers\journalists! As promised, Lucy and I have brought you our science: Modeling and Design Unit! Lately, we have had fun building humdingers and go-carts. Here are some pictures of our scientific progress!

Miss Trapp has been giving us challenges for our go-carts! One of the challenges was to make to your go-cart move without using physical contact\force. We all pretty much had the same idea: to make a ramp using a peg and a hole board. Looky here:

Week 6 Highlights

Hello 307 families! This is Ms. Trapp. For those of you I have not met yet, I am a Resident Teacher this year in Room 307 and a graduate student at the University of Washington. If you’re interested in learning more about the Seattle Teacher Residency, check out the website: STR. It has been a pleasure working with and getting to know your students so far and I am so excited to learn along with them this year!

Reminders:
1. Please make sure to sign up for a conference time if you have not already!
2. 5th grade families: Please turn in any remaining camp paperwork and money. Camp is less than two weeks away!

Highlights:
-On Monday, we recognized Seattle’s first Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which coincided with Columbus Day. Students watched videos and read from books representing multiple views on the holiday and the change in Seattle. We considered bias in historical accounts and students were encouraged to examine the issue from multiple perspectives.
-Writing: This week we celebrated the end of our personal narrative writing unit with a celebration with Ms. Deese’s class. Students were able to show off their stories and all of their hard work, as well as have a chance to read their classmates’ stories in a gallery walk. We also started a new realistic fiction writing unit. Students created plans for their characters, mapped out their story arcs, and many began drafting their stories.

-Math: Students were introduced to order of operations in math and focused on identifying problem solving strategies for complicated word problems. We will be reviewing in the coming week for the second math unit test. As a class, we also examined and created bar models, which are a problem-solving tool used heavily in our new math curriculum.
-Reading: We are finishing up our read aloud, Something to Hold. This week, we considered why characters act the way they do, examined how characters change and grow throughout stories, and considered the importance of passages that make us feel strong emotions. Students also selected new books that they will be reading with their reading partners. Next Tuesday, Katherine Schlick Noe, the author of Something to Hold (and Ms. Staab's graduate program literacy professor), will join our class to read from and discuss her book!
-Science: In science, we continued our work with go-carts. Students explored how gravity can make things move, designing ramps for their go-carts. Erica, one of our 4th grade classmates, also presented her snap circuit project and diagram to the class, continuing our discussion on electricity from the humdinger project. We now have a snap circuit set for students to use during free choice time!

Student Post #1: Chromebooks & Class Pet!

Hello, Room 307 students and families! We are excited to say we have donors from Donors Choose! We used the money to buy 7 NEW CHROMEBOOKS! Students love these Chromebooks and their new color cases. Lucy and my favorite ones are the pink and neon purple ones! They are full of color and are easy to recognize with the cases! We have a new project up, so please check it out if you can! They are for book club books and the giving code is: SPARK! Click here for the latest project!

This year we have a special edition to our classroom, his name is Norbert, and he is a bearded dragon. He is named after Norbert the dragon in Harry Potter, Miss Staab's favorite book series. Norbert must have caretakers. This is a classroom job. They are called zoologists. They feed, bathe, and play with Norbert. Right now, TW and Andrew are being trained by Tamala and Floyd, the recent zoologists. Norbert was born around early August or late July.

Thanks for reading!

Your Class Bloggers/Journalists,
Jesse & Lucy

Next Week's Post: Models & Design Science Unit!

Week 4 & 5 Highlights

Can you believe we are about halfway through the month of October already?! October is definitely flying by! We have been extremely busy the past two weeks with fun activities and finishing up several of our units of study. Before I share what Room 307 has been up to the past couple of weeks, I have two reminders to share:

1. Please make sure that if you haven't signed up for conferences that you do so as soon as possible. It is coming up next month!

2. 5th grade families: the camp money & forms are due tomorrow, October 13. Please contact me if you need scholarships or have any questions or concerns regarding camp. It is coming up in two weeks!

Highlights:

-We started off the month of October with making delicious apple crisp in a crockpot and having it with some vanilla ice cream!

-We published our 2nd personal narratives to finish up our Personal Narratives unit in writing. This week, we will start a Realistic Fiction unit in writing. For homework writing entries, students are encouraged to continue the writing entries they are working on in class or to start new stories in the same genre as our writing unit. 

-In math, we are working hard on long division and double-digit long division. It is a very challenging skill for students, but practice will help to get students more fluent in division. Please send students early to school to get math/homework help from me if they need the help!

-We are finishing up the last third of our read aloud, Something to Hold. Next week on October 21st, we will have a special visit from my grad school literacy professor from Seattle University, Katherine Schlick Noe. She is the author of our read aloud book, and she has agreed to come meet 307 students, share about her writing, and do a Q&A. I am so excited to have my former literacy professor come and teach my students!! We will definitely update with pictures from the visit. 

-Last but not least, we finished our humdinger challenge:

... and started a new challenge in science, designing functioning go-carts! We will have many different challenges with the go-carts - here are some students getting creative and building their models:

*Student post written by our class bloggers/journalists coming soon!!