Thinking Thursday!!

Last week the Brummitt Bash was a huge success. The students had so much fun and everyone looked so cool. I loved how much time and effort students put into coming up with some great costumes. I didn’t get enough pictures of all the great costumes, but I did take some photos and they are at the end of this week’s blog for you to enjoy.

This week is Fall Break so I am posting the blog early since we will not have school tomorrow. I hope everyone enjoys the day off and does something fun and exciting.

Next Monday local author Bob Moulesong will be visiting Brummitt to meet the students. I am sure they will enjoy his visit. He is the author of The Adventures of Rugs and Magic: The Door in the Floor.  I am sure the students will enjoy meeting him and listening to him read from his books. I look forward to seeing him too.

Next week Brummitt will be having the Jar Wars. This time it is girls against boys. Make sure to collect that change and bring it in next week. Good Luck Everyone!!

 Important Dates:

October

Fridays Student Council “Spirit Day”- wear spirit wear or Brummitt colors (maroon & gold)

20 End of 1st Grading Period

21st No School Fall Break

24 Author Visit

24-28 Red Ribbon Week

Red Ribbon Week:

Monday- I Elect to be Drug and Bully Free! Wear red, white and blue!

Tuesday- I Have the Power to be Drug and Bully Free! Dress like a Superhero!

Wednesday- Don’t Get Tied Down with Drugs and Bullying! Wear tie dye!!

Thursday- I Give Drugs and Bullying the Boot! Wear boots and western wear!

Friday- The Drug and Bully Free Force is with me! Star Wars Day! Shirts and characters

This week we continued with the Life Skill of Respect. Mr. Cammarata spoke about respect this week on the morning announcements. He gave some great advice on being respectful to all around you and also why respect is so important in our lives. He shared a story about why respect is important in a friendship and why we need to listen to our friend's thoughts and feelings. The story talked about George and Emma and their friendship and how not listening to each other lead one child to not feel respected by the other. He gave the students a lot to think about and why respect is so essential in all our relationships. On Thursday he shared another story about twins and how they can be alike but very different too.  I am also making sure that the students realize how respect can make us feel. If we all show each other the time to care and listen it makes all the difference in the classroom. Students want that respect from their classmates when they talk and share their ideas and feelings and it is so important to making a class work and be successful.

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 …. It costs an arm and a leg. Everyone got a huge kick out of this one because every student said they had heard it at least once and most of them had heard it many times. They all agreed that many parents use this to describe the cost of toys to them. We all laughed at the picture and how it looked. We also talked about times when we have heard this from a parent's mouth. I let them know that I have totally used this to describe the cost of Legos many times to my children. They loved hearing that story. I also had a great illustration brought in this week by Caroline. She created a powerpoint slide to describe what it means. She did a great job and earned her prize from the cauldron. I hope we can keep the momentum going with more students completed pictures. We shall see. I will keep my fingers crossed that someone will take on the challenge. Here is a hint to help you out: it involves eating and words. I posted the picture for the next week today so students can stop by and see it before the weekend.

Language Arts

First Grade:

This week we continued our lesson on a cool secret language. The students learned all about Pig Latin. They were really excited to learn a new language that they could speak to each other. First we went over how to decipher words written in Pig Latin so they knew what they were. Then I showed them how to encipher words into Pig Latin. They were so excited to get to work. They complete a sheet and got to write out a sentence into Pig Latin.   

 We ended Monday by listening to a famous song by Leadbelly. He wrote a song in Pig Latin and I wanted the students to hear it. They were all so excited to try to figure the words. On Tuesday they got to chance to take the lyrics from English and encipher them into Pig Latin. They worked really hard because they wanted to try to sing it with him. They had so much fun singing the song along with Leadbelly and then he speeds up with the music and they were laughing, having fun, and singing along.

Here are the lyrics in Pig Latin:

Ome-cay ere-hay

Et-lay e-may ell-tay ou-yay omething-say at-thay ou-yay

oughta-way ow-knay!

 Then we decided to try something else. The students took their homework from last week on connections they found outside and they took one or two of them and encoded them into Pig Latin. They all worked really hard at the end of class to finish, but some weren’t able to get it all done.

They will have time next week to complete it. Then they will say what their connection is in Pig Latin and everyone will have the chance to guess. We will also talk about connections and start our next adventure to learn all about writing a paragraph. 

Second Grade:

On Monday we reviewed the parts of speech and dissected a sentence to see what each word was and to find the phrases and clauses. The students did a great job reviewing the parts and we discussed why each is important. Then we reread the Chapter 4 of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. The students then took some time to complete the reading analyzer on this chapter.

 On Tuesday the students used the grammar from the book to learn and review the different parts of speech, but I wanted to show a quick video to help us review what a prepositions are: Link

Then they completed a worksheet where they dissected sentences from chapter 4 and figured out part of speech each word was. We had a class discussion about the four level analysis and how we could use it in this activity.

Last, the students got to work with a partner to share their reading analyzer from chapter 4. They discussed each part and how and why they answered them. Next week we will continue to work on connections and the book. The students will revise their predictions and write in their journals about what they think about it so far.   

Third Grade:

 This week we continued to work on tall tales. The students picked up where they left off on their tall tale. They completed a retelling story map and got to share it with other students. They got to tell their tall tale to their partner and then they switched to someone else.

Then we talked about nouns and they completed a short worksheet where they found the proper and common nouns. On Tuesday we continued with our grammar and finding nouns with a fun Halloween activity where they look for quotes from the book I’m not afraid of this Haunted House and find the nouns and put them into categories of person, place, thing, or idea.

They loved looking around the room for pumpkins and seeing what nouns were in each sentence. They had a lot of fun. Once everyone was done they shared their findings and we talked more about the parts of speech. I also took a few minutes to show one of my favorite videos by Schoolhouse rock: Link

 Then we completed a Venn Diagram on the board covering myths or legends, tall tales, and fairy tales . The students got to find what was similar and what made them unique. Then we talked about change and how each of the stories showed change. They all had very interesting ideas and theories on change in their stories. Finally we watched a video on tall tales.

Fourth Grade:

On Monday we continued to work on biographies with an activity for the students to read a short biography and complete a biography organizer on. The students got to choose a short book to read in class and complete the organizer. They all took the time to read the book and fill out the organizer with change in mind. I want the students to feel comfortable with biographies and with change.

All the books had important people in history that went through some sort of huge change in their lives. The students got all of the class on Monday and a little time to work on it if they didn’t get it done on Tuesday while we watched a short video on adjectives. Since we are also working on grammar I wanted them to have the refresher with the Schoolhouse rock video: Link

 They all loved it. It gave them a fun chance to think about adjectives and when and how we use them in writing. We then reviewed a sheet on adjectives and discussed how important they are in writing. I also reminded them to make sure they are using them when they start their Biography projects. We took a few minutes to find out who already has a person they want to complete the project on and the other students that are still searching for their right fit will have till October 25th to let me know.

 Finally I gave each student a word to complete a vocabulary map on. All the words relate to the graph family and some relate back to our projects in some way. I had them work using a dictionary or their Chromebooks. They got to choose what works best for them. We will complete this first thing next Monday since we ran out of time. We will also discuss the books the students read this week and why they are important and what change meant to them.

  I will also go into more details about their projects and what they are expected to do to complete them. I will be giving them time to class to complete things, but if they can’t get it done in class they will be required to work on it at home. They will also all have to read a biography on their person.

Math

First Grade:

 This week we continued to work on heavier, lighter, and about the same with a another activity. We decided to look at all our bags to find which is the lightest and which is the heaviest. We also wanted to see if we could find two bags that are about the same weight. We investigated all the bags and felt them to see if we could figure out which were heavy and which were light. We found the heaviest one with ease. It was our bag of 24 Halloween erasers. The lightest was more difficult because we had some pretty light items, but we finally found it. The sheet of stickers was pretty light, but once we only had 3 bat stickers in the bag it won for the lightest bag.  Next was the task of finding two bags that weigh about the same.

 The students once again put on their thinking caps and investigated that the bag of Frankenstein stickers seemed like it weighed the same as the bag of Bride of Frankenstein stickers. We used the hanger scale to find out they were all right. The weighed about the same even though they had different amounts in them.

 Once we had it all completed we decided it was time to talk about our findings. At the end of the class on Wednesday we took time to read the fax we got from Zani and Imi asking for help on their next project. They want to create a weight game for students to play and they need our help. On Thursday we picked up right where we left off on our talk frame to help us collect our thoughts and ideas  on how we can help them. We had a class discussion on what it takes to be a great writer and we talked about our ideas on how to explain and play the game. The students all were great listeners and speaker as we had our discussion. They did a great job expressing their ideas and sharing them with each other. The students completed the first part of the writing activity by drawing their picture. Next week they will write out their thoughts and ideas from Zani and Imi to send to them.

Second Grade:

This week we continued to work on the crash tests. This time I let them work with just a partner to collect their data and enter it into their sheets. I think this gave them all a chance to complete each step and share their thoughts and ideas with someone in a smaller setting. I then had them share books even though they weren’t working together because I wanted them to be able to stack them as high as needed. I only had a few dictionaries so I had to borrow a few to get us the number we needed. They all were very excited to try the tests again with all they had learned from last week. They did a great job. On Thursday we finished up the tests and took all our data and entered it into a class spreadsheet. Then we had a class discussion about everything we found. We also reviewed what it takes to be a good writer. We then had a class discussion on what we will do to help Dru and Teller to find the right car. Next week we will write a response to Dru and Teller on what our findings were from our tests.

Third and Fourth Grade: Math Vocabulary Comic Relief

This year we will continue to complete these 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. Once they have their answer they can turn over their paper and raise their hand and I will check it. This week was all about the mean.  The mean is the average of the numbers. It is easy to calculate: add up all the numbers, then divide by how many numbers there are. In other words it is the sum divided by the count. This one was great because they all thought they knew what they were doing, but only a few got it the first time. Once they went back to read what the definition was they all went, “Oh!” and quickly figured out the right answer. I am glad they all figured it out on their own once I let them know they didn’t have it right. They all did a great job figuring out what step they forgot and corrected it. Great way to problem solve on their own. There were some students that had it all figured out the first time and they were all smiles that they knew the way to solve the problem.

Third Grade:

This week we continued our adventure to find out if the Yeti exists. Last week we completed most of our Yeti, this week we worked on his neck, head, arms, and hands. This part was really tricky because we wanted to make sure to get the head size correct and the hands correct to make the drawing look its best. We made sure to measure twice before drawing everything up. We also talked about the Yeti and some of our theories of why he might not want to be seen by humans.

Next week we will answer some think deeply questions about our process for creating the Yeti and write about what worked and didn’t work. Here are a few more Yeti facts I found online which is makes his existence more confusing:

-The Yeti is an important part of history, legend and culture of the Sherpa, the communities that live at an average altitude of 12,000 feet in eastern Nepal.

In these cultures with their folklore they make the Yeti to be a scary and feared creature. It is believed they did this so children wouldn’t approach wild animals.

-Some believe that Yeti is just a fear that has been built inside the head of mountainous people to make them stronger and more fearless in the harsh weather.

-In 1921, after the western explorer and politician Charles Howard-Bury led a British expedition to Mount Everest, the Yeti became more sensationalized and we know his facts were very sketchy on how he described the creature. With all the press and interest in the Yeti his character had changed through the years.

Fourth Grade:

This week The students got an opportunity to write with a Think Deeply question.

They were asked to explain to a friend who was absent what a parallelogram is and they needed to draw a picture. Then they had to explain if a square is a parallelogram and defend their answer with facts.

 We reviewed what the expectations are for writing in class and we completed the math messaging board to give them some idea of what I was looking for in their writing.

The students were really nervous at first to start writing, but once I explained that they had all they needed to answer the question in their journal already, they were off and running. On Thursday they completed another Think Deeply question about squares and rectangles. We discussed what they needed to complete this one and they all talked about what was important in answering the question. They all took some time and finished up the question before class ended. I am so proud of all their hard work with writing in math. They are all trying really hard to answer each question and give all the facts to help support their thoughts and ideas. I know they are giving it their all. Next week we will start a new lesson and get to have some fun playing a really cool math game about shapes.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Lutterman