Brummitt's High Ability Blog Spot: Spring Is In The Air!!

This week in Brummitt we had a lot going on. The jump rope for heart fundraiser money was due.

Spring pictures were this week and report cards went home.

On April first lots of students were talking about all the fun things they saw and little jokes that they played.

Next week the Brummitt Book Bowl is on Monday. There is also the kindergarten round-up on Thursday April 9^th.

April will be a great month filled with lots of fun activities and surprises. We are still working on our Life Skills and this week we are working on Patience and Joy.

I want the students to learn how important patience is when working with other students and working on teams.

I think they do a great job working together on teams and are very patient with each other. I want to teach them to feel and know joy and to have joy in their lives every day in some way.

I think that they really want to help others to feel joy by helping and being there for each other.

This week the students had so much fun working together and enjoyed their time helping and laughing and having fun. It was a great week.

Language Arts:

Kindergarten:

This week was very exciting because the students were really happy to get to know each other and me. We spent Monday getting to know each other and talking about connections. The theme for this year in language arts is making connections. I wanted the students to start to understand that we can make connections all around us. We discussed connections and played a great game with the story dice.

The students got a chance to tell a story based on the picture cubes. They told the most interesting and imaginative stories. On Tuesday we put together a puzzle and talked about how connections are needed to solve the puzzle. The student also learned the connections song and we dug deeper into making connections and looking for connections.

We used chart paper to start to write out and draw some connections they already knew and could see around them. Next week we will work more on connections and how to look for them all around us. They will also learn of different types of connections and how they differ.

First Grade:

This week we finished up with rebus puzzles and the dime store with an excellent book The Fantastic 5 & 10 Cent Store: A Rebus Adventure by J. Patrick Lewis. The students took turns reading and had such fun figuring out what each word was. On Tuesday we started on Hieroglyphs. The students were so excited to learn about this and learn to decipher the pictures to find their meaning.

We discussed what they knew and thought they might know already about hieroglyphs. We created a chart with what we know, what we want to know, and what we have learned. We filled in the first two sections and will fill in what we learned once we go through some of the lesson. We read an introduction book to help us learn more called Hieroglyphs from A to Z by Peter Der Manuelian. This gave us some background on Egypt, the Rosetta stone, and hieroglyphs. Next week we will dig deeper into Egypt, the culture, hieroglyphs and the meaning and uses behind them. I look forward to see what the students create once they learn how to make their own drawings.

Second Grade:

This week we finished reading The Tale of Despereaux. We discussed the story and how the characters have changed so much throughout the book. We talked about which character made the most changes and if it made them more interesting. We also went into a deeper discussion on the light and dark in their worlds and how that affected and changed the characters in the story.

We also discussed how someone can be a hero and not at all be what the reader would expect. We made some connections between the characters in The Journey of Edward Tulane and The Tale of Despereaux. We agreed that these books both have complex characters that make huge changes to become better in the end, but they must first learn from all their mistakes. Next week we will work more on comparing the books and start a new book.

Third Grade:

This week we finished reading Alice in Wonderland. The students were really excited about finishing the book and knowing how it ended, however they still wanted more. We finished the Alice Word Search. Next week we will complete an Alice Crossword Puzzle and write more in the journals about Alice.

We will discuss the book and how Alice changes throughout the book. We will discuss all the complex characters and which ones really made them think. The students will fill out a plot map on the book so they can find the most important parts and discuss why.

Fourth Grade:

This week the students got to watch a video on the author Mac Barnett who wrote the book we started. Here is the link: https://www.ted.com/talks/mac
_barnett_why_a_good_book_is_a_
secret_door?language=en

He was a presenter at the TED conference.

They students loved learning about him and all his thoughts and ideas on being an author. We then started to read his mystery novel The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity: The Brixton Brothers. The students got to listen to the first chapter on audio book while they followed along.

On Tuesday they got to write in their journals making their predictions on what was going to happen next to Steve and his best chum Dana.

Throughout the book you will see me write funny references since Steve reads lots of books about a couple of teen brothers who are detectives called the Bailey Brothers.

He learns lots on detectives, solving mysteries, bad guys, how to catch bad guys, and how to escape if ever caught by bad guys.

The lingo the Bailey Brothers books use is pretty funny, so make sure to ask your children what they think of the book and everything that happens.

Next week we will continue reading the book and answering questions on the book and making more predictions.

Math:

Kindergarten:

This week I wanted the students to feel comfortable in the classroom and learn something about me and about each other. Wednesday I told the students about me and I wanted to learn about them. So the students got share something about themselves. We started right in with some Math with graphing.

The students completed the cool piggy math graph. It gave me a chance to learn about them while they got to color and talk.

After we created a graph on the whiteboard each student got to go up to fill out the graph on what animals they have at home. They loved getting to go up and fill in the graph and write on the board.

On Thursday the students got to use their own little whiteboards to complete the problem of the day on addition. The students also got to fill in their own graphs on information about themselves. Next week they will compare answers and fill in a giant graph with everyone’s information.

First Grade:

This week we worked more on measurement. We completed worksheets on inches vs. centimeters. We figured out how long each string was and if it was one or the other. We also discussed the difference between each. The student wanted to play a cool fun math game on the whiteboard and practice math facts. We decided to play a cool game called Junk Pile. This allows her to compete with other students online to see which can pile up the most junk without it falling over by answering math facts questions correctly.

She loves this game and it is pretty awesome watching her pile stuff up using logic to make sure it doesn’t fall over. This game also gives her a chance to practice the math facts. Next week we will continue working on measurement.

Second Grade:

This week we worked on more math patterns with Pascal’s Triangle. One of the most interesting Number Patterns is Pascal's Triangle (named after Blaise Pascal, a famous French Mathematician and Philosopher). To build the triangle, start with "1" at the top, then continue placing numbers below it in a triangular pattern. Each number is the two numbers above it added together (except for the edges, which are all "1"). Here is a website that explains it in more detail: http://ptri1.tripod.com/ We completed a worksheet on the triangle. The students also wanted to practice math facts so we decided to play a cool game called Junk Pile. This allows them to compete with other students to see which can pile up the most junk without it falling over by answer math facts questions correctly. The students love this game and it is pretty funny watching them pile stuff and using logic to make sure it doesn't fall over. This game also gives them a chance to practice the multiplication math facts. Next week we will continue working on math patterns with more on Pascal’s Triangle.

Third Grade:

This week we continued work on decimals. We decided that the only fun way to learn this was to go back to Mathtropolis and the Super Math Team. They are a group of super math heroes that need the students help to solve the problem to catch the villains. Each super hero has attributes to help with the math that is needed to solve the problem. The students seem to really like getting to read the funny comics and solve all the problems.

This week was The Decimal Olympics. We only got to meet one day because I had to attend training on Thursday. Next week we will work more on decimals. We will finish up the comic and play a fun game with decimals.

Fourth Grade:

This week we finished up working on coding. Some students were ready to have some computer math fun. So they went to the math races website and worked on the division math facts by racing each other.

One student would create the race and others would enter his race and complete division math facts racing against each other to see who would win. Bryce was the overall winner. He dominated the race track.

The students loved challenging each other with the math facts and racing. They also played some other fantastic math computer games. Next week we will go back to order of operations.