Wow is it cold out there today. I am glad the sun it out. This week at Brummitt there was lots of fun activities for St. Patrick’s Day. I saw lots of classes celebrating and tons of students and staff dressed for the day. I-Read testing was completed in third grade and CogAt testing was completed for second grade.
Students will now be monitored at the end of each school year for high ability. This is new. Next year, there will be new students added, many will remain, and some will be removed. It's common to have a flow "in and out" of a gifted program. The High Ability Team is excited about the continuing process of our services. Not only is Duneland's process of high ability identification becoming more spot-on, but the new curriculum is geared towards meeting the needs of gifted children. We've also just purchased a new math curriculum that we'll be using at each grade level next year. The future of the HA program is bright!
Kindergarten HA
After we return from Spring Break, kindergarten joins the HA line-up! Students
identified through CogAT will participate in Language Arts (Mon.-Tues.), Math
(Wed.-Thurs.), or both. I can't wait to learn and have fun with these young
students!
High Ability Summer School
Searching for educational enrichment this summer? Consider Duneland's High
Ability Summer School! With the theme of "Time Travelers in Ancient
Egypt," the 13-day program in June will focus on reading strategies and
literature comprehension. It is open to current 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade HA
students. The orange sign-up flyer will go home with your child(ren)'s report
card. Take advantage of this wonderful opportunity!
This week the 4th grade had their School Spelling Bee and the winner was Manal. Congratulations to her and she will move on to the District Spelling Bee.
Important Dates for March:
March 18th make sure you wear your Sports team jersey, shirt or clothing for the Student Council’s Sports Day! Also on March 18th is the end of the 3rd grading period. March 18th thru April 1st is the Jump Rope for Heart Fundraiser. Money will be due April 1st.
Spring Break will be March 21st – 25th and I know everyone is looking forward to a week off from school. I hope the weather is as nice as it has been this week.
Fridays are the Student Council Spirit Days so be sure to wear those school colors.
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 …. Don’t open a can of worms. I am happy to say I had a student bring in a picture and it is really cute. Olivia gave us a very cool drawing illustrating the idiom. She got her prize too. The students really could relate to this one because they all have heard it before at home or at school. We all had a great laugh looking at the boy freaking out.
After Spring Break I hope the students keep the momentum going and someone completes a drawing or finds a picture. Here is the hint: it involves sand and your noggin. Good luck and I hope someone decides to draw this one or find a cool illustration online.
Language Arts
First Grade:
This week we continued our journey through ancient Egypt and learning about their life and Hieroglyphs. We discussed what we want to learn and what we already know so far. The students learned about research and we started by researching online and watching another video on ancient Egypt.
On Tuesday two students were out. So we worked on a website learning about the land and cities of that time. Here is the link created by a professor from the University of Manchester:Egypt After break we will continue to learn about Hieroglyphs and how they were created in ancient Egypt. We will also learn about scribes and their role in Egypt.
Second Grade:
This week the students continued with the intense game of Jeopardy covering The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. They are really having fun trying to be the best and know the most about the story. I gave them some real stumpers this week.
They were all like, wow, I totally forgot that tiny detail. Once they all started playing it opened up a great discussion about the book and how we each interpreted certain details. Next week we will continue our game. We had a tie this week between Jackson and Lena for top ranking. Next week who knows who could take over and pull ahead to become the champion of Jeopardy?
Third Grade:
This week the students finished up the grammar we started on The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning. We went over the parts of speech again. We also had a discussion on verbs and tense. They were ready to try a cool activity in small groups.
The students were in small groups and brainstormed different living or fantasy living nouns. They came up with some great singular nouns like chipmunk, unicorn, Pegasus, and wolf.
Then they took the best noun and came up with verbs that would work with it. They created a chart that covered all present singular verbs. After Spring Break we will share our charts and talk about plural verbs and past and future tense.
Fourth Grade:
This week we continued our discussion on Tecumseh’s life and American History. The students learned about primary and secondary sources.
We also had an open discussion on why it is important to know the difference when using them. We read the speech: Shawnee Chief Tecumseh’s Address to General William Henry Harrison.
We talked about the speech and what kind of source it was and what it meant to history. We completed a worksheet about sources. After Spring Break we will continue to learn about sources and when to use them and compare them.
Math
First Grade:
This week I got back to normal with my first graders. We all got to meet and we continued working on learning about time. The students used their clocks to figure out when things started and ended.
They each had to figure out when an activity would end and show it to me. They all did a great job working out the times and changing their clocks to reflect it. We also completed some cool clock riddles where the student had to figure out the time based on what the riddle was asking.
After Spring Break we will start a new unit on measurement and weight.
Second Grade:
This week we finished our last few Sudoku puzzles. Then we moved on to a very interest logic puzzle called The Eight Queen Puzzle. It was developed by a chess plyer and been worked on by many mathematicians. There are eight queens placed on the board and no queen can be in the same row, column, or diagonal. You have to figure out where the last two belong. It is very cool to figure each one out. Then the last thing we got to work on was our first problem on the beginning of The Rhind Papyrus.
These puzzles are based on the puzzle-type word problems that were found in Egypt. Papyrus was the material the Egyptians used as paper during ancient Egypt. Here is the first one we solved:
Seven cats each caught seven mice that each caught seven bugs. How many cats, mice, and bugs are there altogether?
After break we will continue with these and working on multiplication to help. There will be times when the calculator will need to help us out. P.S. the answer is 399.
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 Equilateral Triangle. In geometry, an equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides are equal. Some students did an excellent job on this one and some had to reread the problem before they answered it the right way. They all understood once they reread and knew how to solve it. I think sometimes they just get so excited they don’t read closely before they answer.
Third Grade:
On Wednesday we didn’t a get a chance to meet because the students all got to attend the presentation about the Jump Rope for Heart Fundraiser. On Thursday we continued with the Sweet Multiplication and had some students complete it. Congratulations to Samantha, Jack, and Elsa for making their goal and completing the 12’s. The students also continued working on their chapter about Exponents. It is a new thing for most of them so they are taking their time and working through each problem. After Spring Break we will continue with percent and solving the word problems.
Fourth Grade:
On Wednesday this week the
students finished up the chapter called Balance
It. They all completed the genius
level and worked on Oh, No I have to
Change the Recipe! On Thursday some of the students finished up that
chapter and started the next chapter The
Magic of Multiplying. They were working really hard to get things done so
they could move on to the next chapter. When we return from break the students
that were finishing up Change the Recipe should have it done and ready to move
on to the next. I think the rest will be working on the Magic of Multiplying
for a while.
Have a Great Spring Break!
Mrs. Lutterman
Here are some photos from March and February that I forgot to post:
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