Earth Day with Snow!!

 This week was very exciting here at Brummitt. On Monday Mr. Stiles ran the Boston Marathon. We kept track of how he was doing during the day and he did very well. He improved his race from last year. It was very exciting to know someone who was running. All the students really liked it. 

 In all the Language Arts classes, students did an awesome job working on the post assessments and most students are already complete. These assessments are more to measure the curriculum and how it fits with our program and not how the students are performing.  We know the students are doing GREAT! 

On Wednesday we celebrated Earth Day with snow which was a huge surprise. Over the weekend I attended the Earth Day celebration at the Porter County Expo center. 

I saw some of my students and I also got a chance to vote for Mrs. Curiel’s 2^ND grade class’s awesome and creative rain barrel. My son Wolfe loved it and cast his vote for it. Great job to all the 2^ND graders for all their hard work!!

This week was also Secretary’s Day and we are sending a huge Thank-You to Mrs. Gonzales, Mrs. Young, and Mrs. Vrska. We love these great ladies that make the school run so smoothly without them we would not have such a great school.

We are still working on our Life Skills and this week we are working on being Resilient and Resourceful. Students are doing a great job with being resourceful when taking their assessments and completing any of their projects in class. 

They do a great job to figure out how to solve the problem without having to be directed on each step. The students are learning to be more resilient in class and I know they will show the courage they need to do their best each and every day.

High Ability groups for next year are pretty much set except for second grade.  If they are currently in for kindergarten, first or third grade then they will continue in the high ability program next year.  

 Second grade tends to be a bit of a shake up year, now that we have recent data due to CogAT.  No decisions have been made for second grade.  The High Ability committee will wait for the rest of the data to be in before making the final decisions.  I will let you know at the end of this school year as soon as I know.  

 Language Arts:

Kindergarten: 

This week we continued working on connections. We reviewed the different types of connections again: intellectual, physical, emotional, or social. 

 Students thought about how connections are made and we discussed their toys that they brought in last week and we talked about how they were connected to them.  I explained to the students about how you can write to convince the readers of your opinion. We also talked about the difference between facts and opinions. Each student got to write about facts about an animal and opinions on an animal. 

First we talked about facts on lions and penguins, and then we moved to their opinions. On Tuesday we finished up writing animal facts and opinions. We also reviewed the differences again. Next I introduced the concept of persuasive writing. We reviewed the hamburger model and they started to design their first hamburger model by making one. 

 

 The students thought of an opinion to try and persuade others and then began filling in their hamburgers.  Next week will continue working on the hamburger models and go into more depth about introductions, supporting reasons, and conclusions.

 

First Grade:   

 This week the students continued with 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. They completed the assessment first thing on Tuesday and we had time to continue with the Hieroglyphs lesson. We continued reading the book: Hieroglyphs by Joyce Milton. We read the sections on Determinatives, School Days which gave us a look at how students learned, and Becoming a Scribe which taught us how people were chosen to learn about hieroglyphs and the art behind creating them. 

 The students really enjoyed learning about the life of a young student in Egypt. They were also very interested in the gesso boards. These were what the students used to practice writing on. Ask your child they will tell you all about them. Next week we will continue with hieroglyphs and everything Egypt. I am working on having the students create their own sandstone hieroglyphs. It will be really exciting to see if I can figure it all out and make them work. We will also read more about Egypt, writing, and how the tombs were created.  We will also read a book called Seeker of Knowledge by James Rumford.

 

Second Grade:

This week we continued the post assessments for Language Arts. It took much longer than expected, but I think it is because each student wants to take their time to do their best in answering every question. We took both days to work on it and still have more to finish. 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 see how creative they can be.

Third Grade:

 This week the students kept working on their post assessments for Language Arts. It went much smoother this week. The students worked really hard to do their best in figuring out how to answer each section. They wanted to make sure to understand what each section needed and kept at it till they finished. 

 Almost everyone got everything completed except for a few who were out sick at some point during assessments. The students that were out will find time to finish in the next week or so. Next week 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 have a rabbit up my sleeve and have some fun tricks. 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 continued with the post assessments for Language Arts. Some students weren’t in class both days because of pre-testing in their regular classes. The students that missed last week for pre-testing got to complete their exams this week.  Almost all of the students have the tests complete between last week and this week. 

 The only ones that didn’t were because they were out sick a day or two. I will give them time to complete it next week. They all put in such a great effort to do their best. I am so proud of how hard they worked to do their best. Next week 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. Each student got to work more on their own graphs to get them complete. Each student also collected their own data from the other students and entered it into their graph. All the students got to complete a presentation of the data they collected and the results. 

 They had such a great time getting up in front of the class to discuss their graph and talk about why they chose their subject. On Thursday we completed everything and I promised the students we could play a fun math game on the electronic whiteboard. They played as a team against other schools. 

We tried one game called creeper but didn’t like it very much. Growing the plants wasn’t much fun, but the math questions were challenging. The other game we played that they really liked was junk pile. They got to answer math questions and if they got it right they placed a piece of junk on their pile to see how high they could stack it. 

 We won against all the other schools. It was fun and they really enjoyed using teamwork toward a common goal. Next week I let them know if they work really hard on all we cover they will have a chance to play as a team again. They are really looking forward to the next junk pile challenge. I will also introduce them to word problems and we will work together to solve some exciting word problems.

 

 

First Grade:   

 This week we worked on weighing things and the difference of ounces and pounds. We discussed what weighs more and looked at a video describing weight and how to weigh something depending on its size. We worked together to complete a worksheet on weight and then compared each answer to see what weighed the most and least. We worked really hard on Wednesday because the computer was calling us to play some math games and use the electronic whiteboard to weigh items and compare. Thursday we used the computer and electronic whiteboard to go over scales and weighing items. We also had some time at the end to play every student’s favorite game: Junk Pile. It was a close game a few times, but we did well in every round. The math questions covered weight and measurement. We also played a round covering math facts and word problems. Next week we will continue to work on weight and using a scale.

Second Grade:

This week we continued work on math patterns with Sudoku puzzles. The students were very challenged with the next set of puzzles. They had a blast trying to solve each one. On Thursday we worked on our math facts and multiplication with the sumdog.com website. They just love playing all the interesting and unique games, but by far their favorite is junk pile. 

 They also saw a problem on the board that one of the 4^th graders wrote for the order of operations. This piqued their interest so as we worked on the electronic whiteboard playing junk pile we also went over order of operations and how to solve those difficult problems. They were really excited to try a problem so challenging. 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 pairs to complete the worksheet. The worksheet covered rounding decimal numbers to the nearest thousandth. I think they are getting the hang of how to complete the sheets and understanding decimals better. 

They did so well on Wednesday that I decided to reward then on Thursday by checking out the laptops. We worked on decimals and our math facts by competing against each other in the races again on http://www.arcademics.
com/.  They had a blast practicing their math facts and working on decimals.

The cute and exciting racing games on decimals 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. 

One last note, when the students were using the I-pads they worked together to create a little movie trailer on iMovie, I promised them I would figure out how to post it so the parents could see. Here it is enjoy!  

Fourth Grade:

This week we continued more work on Order of Operations. This week went much better. The students are starting to get the hang of how to complete the problems. I gave them two really tough and complex problems to solve. They got stuck in a few places and might have been getting off track, but they pulled through to correct it and complete it. I know the problems are really difficult but I want to make sure to challenge them. They were really excited when I let them know they will be able to write a problem of their own and solve it. They will be able to turn it into me and I will check it before the class will have a chance to solve it. They can write the problem any time before next week’s class, and turn it into me. We didn’t get to meet on Thursday because they had the exciting adventure to the Dunes. I look forward to seeing all the amazing problems they come up with and solve. Next week we will continue on Order of Operations.

Have a Great Weekend!

Mrs. Lutterman