April Showers!!

 Well this week was full of fun and excitement even with some post assessment testing. Thursday was the Duneland District Book Bowl and Spelling Bee. Looks like our Purple Pandas Riding Dragons lost to Bailey Elementary. 

You guys really worked hard and did a great job!! We are all so proud of all your efforts!! Eamon was representing Brummitt at the Spelling Bee and did a great job. 

The 4^th grade has had an excellent year and they have put so much heart into everything they do. Keep it up. Tonight is the PTO's Sock Hop. Have a Big Boppin' Poppin' Time dancing your socks off. 

We are still working on our Life Skills and this week we are working on Effort and Initiative. I see such great things from all the students when they put in the effort.

 I want them to learn that even if a task isn't their favorite thing to do, if they put in the effort it will show and people will notice how great they are. 

With the assessments starting this week I thought this was a great time to remind them that all their efforts will show in their work if they take the time to care about doing their best. 

I look forward to everything we have planned in the next few weeks and I hope the students will have a great time before the school year ends. 

Language Arts:

Kindergarten: 

This week we continued working on connections. We discussed different types of connections again: intellectual, physical, emotional, or social. Students thought about how connections are all around them. We read Knuffle Bunny again and we decided to read the sequel Knuffle Bunny Too! They loved that she is in school now and has the opportunity to bring Knuffle Bunny to school to meet the other students and how shocked she was that Sonja had a Knuffle Bunny Too. 

 The bunnies get mixed up and the Dads are up with the girls in the middle of the night returning the right bunny to each girl. In the end it brings Trixie and Sonja together and they become best friends. The students really like finding all the connections in the book and they got to complete a worksheet on a character called I am describing their character and everything that makes them who they are. 

Tuesday the students got to bring in a special toy to discuss. Here are a few pictures of their special friends. Next week the students will write about their toy and start to learn about how to persuade someone to agree with your opinion about something. The students are really excited to talk about their toys and learn more about connections.  

First Grade:   

 This week the students got to start their post assessments for Language Arts. It took longer than expected, but they students worked really hard to do their best in figuring out how to answer each section. Next week we will work on some more post assessments and I hope we will finish them up so we can go back to working more on hieroglyphs. We will continue reading the book: Hieroglyphs by Joyce Milton. This book is broken down into sections and each section covers an important topic about hieroglyphs, their history and ancient Egypt. 

We will read the next few sections on Determinatives, School Days which will give us a look at how students learned, and Becoming a Scribe which will teach us how people were chosen to learn about hieroglyphs and the art behind creating them. Students will also have an opportunity to create some hieroglyphs of their own. The students will love the chance to create something they designed themselves. We will also read a book called Seeker of Knowledge by James Rumford.

Second Grade:

This week we got to start the post assessments for Language Arts. It took longer than expected, but I think it is because each student wanted to take their time to do their best in answering every question. Next week we will work on some more post assessments and I hope we will finish up the next section on connections so we can work more on comparing the books and write a persuasive paragraph on why one book is better than the other and support their reasoning. I look forward to seeing how creative they can be.

Third Grade:

This week the students got to start their post assessments for Language Arts. It took longer than expected, but the students worked really hard to do their best in figuring out how to answer each section. Next week we will work on some more post assessments and I am hoping to finish them up so they won’t need to worry about taking any more testing for the rest of the year in high ability. Once we complete them we will go back and work more on Alice in Wonderland. The students will complete a plot map before we watch the movie so they will be able to compare the two. I look forward to seeing what they think of the movie and which they like more and why. Maybe I will even surprise them with a few cute Alice themed things. We will have to see how long the assessments will take but we will make sure to watch the movie in the next few weeks. Since we only meet for a short time it will take a few classes to complete. I know they are excited to see what is different.

Fourth Grade: 

 This week the students got to start the post assessments for Language Arts. Some students were in class both days because of pre-testing in their regular classes. They will have extra time later to complete the sections they didn’t get to complete. It took longer than expected, but I think it is because the students want to take their time to do their best in answering every question. Next week we will work on some more post assessments and I hope that we will be able to finish as much as we can before I-Steps begin.

 If we don’t get finished we will not work on it during the testing because If we meet during testing I want them to relax and have fun. After we complete assessments we will continue to read our mystery novel The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity: The Brixton Brothers. Students will continue to explore all the possibilities of what Steve will do, who are the real bad guys, where is The Maguffin Quilt, can they find it, will Steve break the code, and will they find Mr. E? Soon all will be revealed. I am really excited to see what predictions the students make and if any of them are right.

Math:

Kindergarten:   

 This week we worked more on graphing. The students got to go up and help fill in a graph created on the board on which movie they liked the most. The choices were hard: Lego Movie, Penguins of Madagascar, The Croods, and Frozen. 

 It was an upset with five for Lego movie. We completed a worksheet on graphing working together to see the different types and styles. On Thursday students started to create their own graphs from beginning to end. They drew the lines, boxes and decided what they would be graphing. 

Some students chose video games, animals, movies, fruits, food, pets, and many others. Next week we will see what students liked the most and which they liked the least. I look forward to seeing all their creativity to complete this venture.  We will continue with graphing and having fun.

First Grade:  

This week we worked on liquid measuring with a worksheet comparing amounts. We worked together to figure out each problem to see how many of one will equal another amount. It was lucky we had the gallon man to help us solve each problem. 

Since we completed everything on Wednesday we had time on Thursday. I checked out the I-Pads to complete some math facts. We also got the electronic whiteboard up and running to play junk pile. I decided to use it as a review of time. 

I'm glad we did because we really could use the refresher. Next week we will move on to learning about weight and scales. I look forward to hands on trying to work the scale and letting them explore all the items they can weigh and compare.

Second Grade:

This week we worked on more math patterns and finished up The Latin Square. We also started working on some cool Sudoku puzzles. The students really like being challenged to solve the puzzles.

Here is a link to help explain the history of Sudoku: http://www.

sudokudragon

.com/sudokuhistory

.htm

Here is a brief description:  The history of Sudoku puzzles likely has its roots in the mathematical concept of Latin Squares.

Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, in the 1780's developed the idea of arranging numbers in such a way that any number or symbol would occur only once in each row or column. Latin Squares is used in statistical analysis. Sudoku rules add the restraint that each region may only have the numbers (or symbols) occurring but once.

 Howard Garns, an architect from Indianapolis, is credited with creating this rule when he developed the puzzle we know as Sudoku. On Thursday we worked on the puzzles and for the last half of class I got the I-Pads and the students got to play Junk Pile on sumdog.com Next week we will continue working on math patterns with more on Sudoku. 

 

 

Third Grade: 

This week we continued work on decimals. The students got to work in teams to complete the worksheet. The worksheet covered rounding decimal numbers to the nearest hundredth and tenth, and students worked together to find the answers. They all thought it was pretty easy until they actually got to working on it. 

They all had a few fails, but after a few tries they all got the hang of it. I think they really enjoyed the challenge. Thursday they finished up the sheets and I checked out the I-Pads so we could work on challenging each other with some cool and fun games on 

http://www.arcademics.com/

The students really enjoyed practicing their math facts and working on decimals. The fun decimals games were puppy pull and puppy chase. 

 It was so much fun watching them challenge each other to work harder to solve the problems. Next week we will continue to work on decimals.

 

                                                                                                    

Fourth Grade:

This week we continued work more on Order of Operations. It was a rough week since we only got to meet one day. The students all got to attend the District Book Bowl and Spelling Bee on Thursday. I decided to challenge them with a few problems on the whiteboard. The problems were really thought-provoking and the students definitely had to work at top level to figure out each step. Some students were on the right track and caught on, while others forgot one step which would change the outcome altogether. I saw some students lose hope, but once they saw where they missed a step they were much more confident. I think this week was a great lesson to most of the students to take their time when working on such perplexing problems to make sure to catch each step to get the precise outcomes. Next week we will see who will be up for the next quest to see if they can solve the problems with the concise Order of Operations. I will also ask all the students to write their own problem to challenge each other.  We will see who comes up with the best problem.

Have a Great Weekend!

Mrs. Lutterman