Halloween Is Upon Us!!

 Rain is in the air.. I mean fall. Let’s hope there isn’t too much rain this weekend for trick-or-treating. Brummitt was very excited this week because it is the week before Halloween. Students were all talking about how much fun they had on their fall breaks and all the exciting adventures they had.

 I even saw some of my students this week at the Halloween event at the Chesterton High School. They all looked so nice in their awesome costumes. The students were ready to get back to learning and having fun.

 Since it is the week of Halloween we decided to incorporate learning with some fun theme activities. Each grade got to have fun while practicing skills and learning some new ones. Next week at Brummitt will be parent, student, and teacher conferences.

 We will have early dismissal on Wednesday and Thursday. There will be no school on Friday November 6^th. I will meet with all my classes next week, but some might be shortened due to early dismissal.

 This week we continued learning about Life Skills with Caring which goes hand in hand with Respect. Students who respect those around them also are the ones who care about everyone they come in contact with.

  Many of our students are so caring each day at Brummitt, they take the time to make sure their fellow students are happy and will help them when they see someone in need. I know that each student cares about their classmates and wants the best for them. If a student is down or not happy I see other students come over and check with them and take the extra effort to give them the support them need.

Idiom of the Week

An Idiom is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements. This week’s was …. He’s all tied up. This was a huge hit. All the students loved the picture because the boy looks so funny. I was still hoping for a student to turn in a picture but no luck this week. I will not give up hope that some student will be brave enough to draw a picture for one of these. 

Hint for next week- it involves listening skills. …. I have the picture posted already so the students can see it in case they want to draw something or print out something to turn in. I will still give a prize to the student who turns one in first and second.

Language Arts

First Grade:

 This week we learned about poems with some fun Halloween poems. We also read a story, well watched an author read a story, called I’m Not Afraid of This Haunted House. The students loved watching her read it because she could change her voice for each character as she read. I also read another book called, At the Old Haunted House. We completed a story map about the book and discussed how a story map works. I want the students to feel comfortable using story maps when they read to help them understand each part of the book and what is important. We also discussed the connections in each book and how important they were to the story.

 Each student found different connections because they each liked different parts of each book. On Tuesday we finished talking about different Halloween connections from each story and also completed our Halloween bats. The students finished the class by playing story dice. They both got to roll and tell an epic adventure. It was so much fun listening to them create stories about adventures. Next week we continue to work on connections with a new secret message via telephone cipher. We will also start to learn about a silly way to speak and learn a song to help us understand it.

Here is Halloween Mad Libs we created together!

Spooky!

KayLynn and Andrew come out tonight! It’s Mother’s Day and they are ready to fly. So watch your numbers when singing or treating, they want your apples! Witches like pumpkins and Ghosts like green beans.

While dancing on doors for all your people, watch the house down the house. It’s scary with bat webs and broken necklace. Wow!!! It’s where the owls and dogs live! Run home and hide those carrots!

Second Grade:

 This week was all about poems. I wanted the students to learn more about poetry with a few fun Halloween poems. I also wanted them to see how different poems can be, depending on the author. The students also got a chance to watch a video on a story called, I’m Not Afraid of This Haunted House. The students got to listen to the reader change their voice and pace for each character. 

 They also got to use a story map to go over the important parts of the book for them. This will help us as we continue to make connections in everything we read. I want the student to feel comfortable writing about things and breaking down connections since we will be starting our novel soon. They will need to understand connections that characters make and find the connections in each chapter. We also took time to start some cool Halloween writing prompts. We also played I have who has....  Next week we will finish up poems with “The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll, and complete a reading analyzer about it.

 

Third Grade:

 This week we took a break from Myths to go over parts of speech and common and proper nouns. I had the students complete a sheet on which are common and which are proper nouns first thing on Monday. Most students did great. I only had a two not understand the direction, but once I explained where they went wrong they understood what they missed. It was good to see so many students able to complete it quickly and know exactly what to do. Then we had some Halloween story fun, we watched a video of the book I’m Not Afraid of This Haunted House. 

 The students loved hearing the characters being brought to life by the reader and how she changed for each one. Then the students broke into pairs to complete the fun part which was to find each numbered pumpkin throughout the room with a line from the book. They then had to find the person, place, thing, and idea. This could be pretty tricky. Some totally excelled at it and others needed a little help. I knew it would be challenging but they were all up for the task. On Tuesday we finished up the pumpkins and they went over each one discussing their answers and why they came to those conclusions. Once completed they all got to work on their Halloween writing. 

They got to choose from many different writing prompts to tell a Halloween or creepy story. I must say I was very impressed at how creative they were with the writing.  I have typed up a few for you to enjoy. Next week we will move back to Myths and the students will complete their group presentations on their myth. I look forward to hearing their detailed discussions.

 Here is one of the Zombie Stories by Pandora:

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain was roaring outside Elsa’s room as she watched The Boxtrolls and ate chip.  Suddenly, the lights went out! Elsa was scared as she got up from the chair to see what had happened. Then, there was a strange knock on the door!  Elsa did opened the door. He sighed with relief; it was just her friend Payton. But as Elsa threw open the door, she screamed in terror.  Payton was covered in sweat, and her blanket was all ripped to shreds. “Payton…” Elsa stammered, “Why is your face all blue?”  “MREHHGGRRNG!!” she moaned in reply, and began screaming into the house very loud.  “Zombie!” cried Elsa, and she ran down the hall like a mad jaguar.  She grabbed a knife for protection and turned to face the zombie at the door.  But to her surprise, the zombie was laughing! Then she saw 4 other friends huddled outside laughing together.  Angry, Elsa slammed the door.  It was all a joke! After her heart stopped beating so fast, he began to run.  What a crazy night!

Here is a writing prompt completed by Sami:

I was home along on Halloween night.  My parents said I was too old to go trick-or-treating, so they stuck me with handing out the candy.  It was getting dark and I hadn’t had anybody come to the door for at least fifteen minutes, so I thought it was time to turn off the lights and head upstairs to my room.  Boy was I wrong!  Just as I opened the door to my room, I heard the strangest noise.  It sounded like…
a ghostly whistle and I thought I heard a doorbell but when I went downstairs and nobody was there.  What could it be?  I started to go back to my room.  I heard feet walking behind me and then I saw it opened the window and I heard a noise like the whistle.  Then I heard it again.  It was getting closer and closer and closer and I turned around I saw a green glow coming from my bedroom.  I got closer and then it opened the window again but this time I found out our house is haunted.  I heard the ghost say, “Haunted, it is haunted.”  I said, “What is haunted?”  It said, “Your house, of course.  What else would I be talking about?  I am coming for you.”  “Why?”  “You are my favorite.”  “Whatever.  If I give you candy, will you leave me alone?”  “Maybe, if you promise not to tell anyone about me.”  “I might not if I can put you in a jar to freak my little sister out.”  “OK.”  Then I heard a doorbell.  I went running down the stairs.  Please be a trick-or-treater.  It was.  I screamed.  It was a kid in a ghost costume.  I gave them candy really fast and shut the door.

Fourth Grade:

This week we had two students who still needed to finish their interview presentations. They completed their presentations on Monday. These interviews will help the students to start to think of great ways to interview and research before we start our biography projects. Please make sure that your child turned in their interview worksheet and written report. I am still missing one or two. After we were done we decided to have some Halloween fun with a spooky and creepy writing prompt and some funny Halloween mad libs. 

 The students came up with some really cute and funny words for their mad libs. I have a few written below. I also got to read some great stories. Make sure to ask your child what they wrote about and what is funny or scary? Next week we will go start our lesson on Greek and Latin root words. This will give the students a chance to learn more about where words come from and what it all means. I have a very magical activity for them to try.

Here is one created by Ava:

Trick!

Boy, I was jumped this Easter! I went to the Walgreen’s down the Theodore to find a treat. What I got was a red surprise in my bag of cats. I reached in my dog to see what it was. I felt it all purple and blue WOW!! What could it be? A dude or October I had no clue. Too my surprise when I flew it out, it didn’t move or skip at me. It was a green spider, the stuffed kind!

Hopefully Bats there will be no more scaring and just treats!

Math

First Grade:

 This week the students got to complete some cool Halloween math activity where they added double digits and once they found the answer they had to use the key to see what letter it is to spell out the words in a secret surprise message. They were all very excited to see what the secret message was. Ask them if they liked solving the problems. It was very exciting for them to see they could add double digits. Then we had enough time on Wednesday for some students to complete their bats and others got to play a Halloween math game called, Catch the Ghosts.

They really liked playing the game because they had to know even and odd and where each ghost lands in the number line. On Thursday we continued where we left off because we ran out of time. They really enjoyed getting to use their math skills to play a fun game with each other. We changed boards and players to keep things interesting. We also tried a logic spider web game but we stuck to the easier game since it was our first time playing. Next week we will go back to working on our chapter packet about money and problem solving. We will see if we can complete it and make sure each student understands how to solve the money problems.

 

 

 

 

Second Grade:

This week we took a break from the money chapter and had some ghostly Halloween math fun. We completed a cool pumpkin with a 100 chart to start off and then we decided to see if we could complete the hard Halloween math that the 3^rd graders were trying and they did a great job. The first was a haunted house with funny multiplication problems. Once we conquered that we moved on to complete the recipe for the witch of the Bat’s Stew. 

 This also entailed figuring out the multiplication problem to see what we needed, like how many spider legs and how much pond water was needed. It was so fun to work through these to see all the humorous ingredients used. On Thursday we decided to shake it up with Gonoodle.com to start with a fun cat dance party. It is a cute website that helps students get the wiggles out and get ready to work. You can also try it at home. Then we wanted to complete more multiplication so we worked a Halloween Scavenger Hunt, where we had to go around the room locating purple spider cards and answering the word multiplication problems. 

 Everyone enjoyed searching for the 12 cards and trying to solve each problem. This was a great way to really make them think about each problem and what the answer is. Plus, they get to walk all over the classroom and carry a clipboard and look all professional. Next week we will finish up the money chapter packet and see how many levels we can master.

Third and Fourth Grade: Math Vocabulary Comic Relief

This year I am starting something new we will be doing each week on Wednesdays. I have the Math Vocabulary Comic Relief board. Each week when the students come in on Wednesday they will go to look at the board and grab their problem. They will have five minutes to read and solve it. This week was Denominator. Denominator is the number below the line in a common fraction; a divisor.

For the third grade they all needed to read the definition card to see what it meant before they could solve the problem, but once they did everyone figured it out very quickly. I think they all even laughed at the comic. For the fourth grade it was a good review and they all knew what they answer was as soon as they read the problem which made me very happy. They all also found the comic amusing.

Third Grade:

 This week was all about having some eerie Halloween fun with math.  I wanted to start with an activity on Wednesday that got everyone out of their seats and moving around. We also completed a Halloween Scavenger Hunt, where the students had to go around the room locating purple spider cards and answering the word multiplication problems. I think they enjoyed searching for the 12 cards and trying to solve each problem.  

 At the end of class we also played Halloween I Have… who Has… which was really funny to see which cards each student had to finish the line. They were all using character voices and we all were laughing and giggling at the lines used. On Thursday we had more fun with multiplication with a haunted house worksheet. Then they completed the ingredients list for the Bat’s Stew. Once everyone was done the student broke into groups to play a logic game called the spider’s web. 

 

 Make sure to ask your child how they did and if they kept from coloring next to each other? Next week we will get back to work and back to business with the next level of our chapter.

Fourth Grade:

This week it was time for some frightening Halloween Math.  The students were ready to have some fun and they created some fill in Zombie Stories. The students worked in pairs figuring out different words to make a funny mad lib story. 

 One student would ask for a noun and the other would come up with a word. Once they read them and we all got to laugh at the funny stories, they were ready for some logic games.

 They played spider web. They played in groups of four and had to find the most point value part to color without touching one they already colored while blocking other people from filling in too many spaces. They had a blast trying to figure what they needed to win.  

 Here is one of the Zombie Stories:

It was a dark and stormy night. The bat was roaring outside Weston’s room as he watched Batman and ate hotdogs.  Suddenly, the lights went out! Weston was silly as he got up from the hot tub to see what had happened. Then, there was a scary knock on the closet! 

 Weston quickly opened the door. He said with relief; it was just his friend Mason. But as Weston threw open the door, he yelled in terror.  Mason was covered in chocolate, and his underwear was all ripped to shreds. 

“Mason…” Weston stammered, “Why is your face all white?”  “MREHHGGRRNG!!” he moaned in reply, and began burping into the house very slowly.  “Zombie!” cried Weston, and he screamed down the hall like a mad lion.  He grabbed a toilet for protection and turned to face the zombie at the door.  But to his cautiously, the zombie was laughing! Then he saw 999 billion other friends huddled outside laughing wildly.  Weird, Weston slammed the toilet.  It was all a joke! After his phalanges stopped beating so fast, he began to throw up.  What a crazy Halloween!

Have a Spooky Halloween!!

Mrs. Lutterman