Information Overload Friday

Happy Friday!

You can tell that Fall is in the air with the weather this week. Hopefully everyone is able to get outside for a bit each day. I have noticed that the kids are getting what I like to call the Idgety fidgeties... where they can not focus as well as a few weeks before.  The cure for the idgety fidgety disease is running around outside and using that extra energy! I know we can all use a few days off for good behavior. Thank goodness Fall Break is around the corner!

Don't Forget:
The Brummitt bash is TONIGHT from 5:00-7:30.    

 

 
Come on out and join in the fun! Check out all the cool games and I even heard there will be a Haunted school bus if you aren't too faint of heart.

           Also, before I go any further; as I sit here sniffling, I wanted to ask for some donations. If you have extra tissues lying around  we can use a box or two.  We have begun the cold season!   Also if anyone has any small Ziploc baggies snack or sandwich size they are not using. I would appreciate it!



Now moving on to what has been going on in our classes!

Language Arts

First grade used a new cipher this week. This was the telephone cipher where they used the numbers on the keypad and arrows pointing at letters to decipher the code. The message was "We can speak a secret language." We then started learning the language of Pig latin. They learned how to make the sing song language by moving the consonant that is before the first vowel sound to the back of the word followed by -ay. For example dog becomes og-day We reviewed vowels and vowel sounds as well as consonant and syllables before we tried any new words.   We discovered that first grade becomes Irstfay Adegray. We have also been checking out our names in the new silly language!  More silly fun language to come next week!


Second grade: We finished our predictions about our novel and read chapter one of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.  The kids were hooked after I read the first chapter! They have an assignment to read chapters 2-4 and do a reading analyzer over chapter 3. They need to read and be ready to move on to more reading Monday.  I cannot wait to hear what they think!      Many of them have already read the assigned chapters and have returned their books and reading analyzers! Great job being responsible learners! The students also worked on their dictionary skills this week. We learned how to fill out a vocabulary map! Students then worked in pairs to look up the word  journey. We talked about the guide words at the top of the page and how they can help you, as well as how to find what part of speech the word is, and what a source sentence is.

  

                                                    

Third grade: This week we had a catch up day to finish our interaction journals using the hamburger model. We then moved right into learning How to Speak Dog. This helped us see how out pets are trying to interact with us when they act a certain way. We will continue to learn more about pet interactions next week. Most of our students have dogs at home so this activity is helpful for them to see what their pets are asking for and how they act when upset or happy.

Fourth grade did not meet for Language Arts this week due to the

Overnight camping at the Dunes and then my other student was out for illness.  We will start reading and finding facts about our people for the biograophy assignment next week. I will be happy to get all the girls back in class!


WORD NERD ALERT!! Tyler is the word nerd of the week! He knew that a bibliophile is a person who loves books!

This week we have a riddle:

I am taken from a mine, and shut up in a wooden case, from which I am never released and yet I am used by almost everybody. What am I?  Good Luck word nerds!

Math

First grade made new polygons out of triangles, and squares and rectanngles. We counted the sides and vertices. We remembered that there are always the same number of sides and vertices in a polygon. We practiced our big math words like Quadrilateral, hexagon, pentagon. and vertex. Students traced their shapes and marked the vertices and then wrote down what shapes they made their shape from and how many they used. For example, My shape has 6 sides. It is a hexagon. It has 6 vertices. I made it from one rectangles and two triangles.

  The next day we classified the polygons we made by how many sides they had and how many shapes were used to make it. Then we compared them to each other. We looked to see if any were the same polygon. One student noticed that 3 of them were the same size rectangle, but she noted that 2 of them were made with the same shapes, but one used different shapes to make it. I then asked if any other polygons were created with the same exact shapes. There was a triangle and a square both made of 2 large triangles.  We talked about how some shapes are exactly the same and can be turned or "flipped" to make the same shape.

Second grade continues to work on symmetry. We made triangle designs with squares the we cut on the lines of symmetry.  Some students had difficulty placing the shapes and not overlapping them with others. Designing the triangles without already having a pattern proved confusing and difficult for most.

We talked about the square having quadrants and how two triangles can create a symmetrical square.  I asked the kids if they knew what the word CONGRUENT meant. If they took the time to look it up they would get a prize from my prize box.    On Thursday we practiced working with congruent shapes to make new shapes and traced them. They seemed to enjoy this more than making symmetrical patterns.

Third grade started thinking deeply about growing patterns. The students worked in small groups to solve a problem that Courtney was having while trying to seat goldfish at tables in her  deep sea café.  She needed to know how many goldfish can sit at each table. The kids worked hard using the strategies that we learned last week.

They enjoyed getting out of their seats and moving around the room.  Thursday they worked individually on a think deeply question and turned it in as an assignment. This group sometimes struggles with getting started since they come to me right after recess. This week they did an awesome job being ready to work!

Fourth grade:

The story continues . . .we read the story about Tori and Jordan going into the attic and looking through a trunk. They found a newspaper article about their great-great-grandfather and how his favorite bullfrog had won two blue ribbons. It  went on to talk about how one jumped a total of 19 2/3 inches. The kids are really excited to have our frog jumping competition! We continued working on more improper fractions using adding machine tape as our fraction strips. The kids were really understanding how to convert from a mixed number to a  improper fraction. It was a bit harder for them to go from improper to mixed numbers.  We folded our adding machine tapes into thirds the first day and then Thursday we made more strips working with fourths and  more improper fractions. We will be making our Origami frogs, and on Thursday we will hold out high ability frog jumping contest. Check back to see who the big winner is!

Congratulations to Riley and Tyler for both knowing the number in the pattern was 20! Way to use your noggins!
This weeks brainsqueeze  is:

HOW MANY FEET ARE IN ONE YARD?

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday to Troy! He turned 10 this week!! Hope your birthday was a slam dunk!

 

 

Events coming up:

 

10/23-10/24- Camp Goodfellow

10/27- No School Fall Break

11/1-11/2 Early dismissal (conferences)

11/3- No school

 

 

Mrs. P