There's No Place Like Home

There's No Place Like Home

Begin with the End in Mind:

• Monday, December 10th - Our regular weekly schedule resumes!!!
• Mondays and Tuesdays - English/LA
• Wednesdays and Thursdays - Math
• Friday, December 21st - End of 2nd grading period (where is the time going?!?!?)
• Monday, December 24th - Monday, January 7th - Winter Break

Fourth Grade Math:

We are continuing our investigations into making sense of fractions. We finished up the scenarios with the Frockling Frogs and their jumps. They worked individually to finish their Frog jumping scenarios on adding machine tape. They are getting better at folding their adding machine tape first into thirds to get their benchmark feet and then figuring out how many folds they need to do to make the fraction. During our work, I completed a  mini lessons on how to take mixed fractions and turn them into improper fractions and visa versa.  

Fourth Grade Language Arts:

We are beginning the process of writing our How to/Procedure papers. We discussed writing good leads and how to start a story or expository text that grabs the reader's attention and makes them want to read more. I read examples from books to motivate them and you will be amazed! We also talked about writing a good conclusion. Many times students want to take their organizers and just start writing. We took time to look at the "Hamburger Method" for writing a paragraph. These graphic organizers are very helpful. We will be referring to the acronyms--ARMS and CUPS to revise and edit our work. Revising ARMS stands for Adding words, sentences, details; R: removing words, sentences and unnecessary details, M: move sentences to fit better; S: substitute words for juicy and detailed sentences. CUPS is used for editing: C: capitalization, U: usage: making sure there is a noun/verb match; P: punctuation and S: spelling. The children will peer edit and write their final copies on nice paper. Writing is a great way to build community and sharing work is always such a wonderful incentive for their hard work.   

Second Grade Math:

After conducting our crash tests, we planned to spend Thursday reflecting and writing about what happened. Not our favorite part of math. Unfortunately, we will have to push our "Think Deeply" question until next week. Scheduling is still in flux but hopefully after the Holiday break all will be in place and we can get down and dirty into our work.
This "Think Deeply" Question will require the kids to think about how the Meerkats (Dru and Teller) in the scenario could have different answers for their distances but still both be right (if Dru's measured 14 half-inches and Teller's distance was 7 inches, who it right???). Open discussion will lead us to mathematical inquiry about concepts but also, foster our communication skills. We are continually making the connection that synthesizing information and data, discussing the findings AND reading and writing go hand in hand in mathematical thinking. We will continue to work on how mathematicians, engineers, actuaries and the like use writing to not only share their findings but communicate and process what they have learned. All of these crash test experiments are setting the foundation for us to begin the Egg Passengers Experiments!

Second Grade Language Arts:


This is my active group of thinkers! Monday we had fun analyzing the poem Eldorado by Edgar Allen Poe. We talked about the meaning of poem. I briefly mentioned that Poe wrote the poem during the Gold Rush in California. We discussed the feeling of the poem and how the Knight spent his whole life searching for the Lost City of Gold (Eldorado) never to find the treasure. Some of the boys even acted out the poem to dig deeper into comprehending the verse. After digging deep, the children looked at pictures of other knights and completed a Venn diagram in their Reading Journals. The children compared and contrasted the images. I brought in pictures of St. George and the Dragon and Joan of Arc. We discussed a bit of the history of each of these knights and talked about how some knights are fictional characters while others (Joan of Arc) truly existed. The kids were making wonderful connections to historical events they knew about and they were discussing other stories they have read with Knights as main characters. As a wrap up to the poem, we talked about how the journey is often more important than the destination, particularly in the case of the Knight in Eldorado. The deep thinking and connections astounded me! ***As a side note and to prepare parents for what is coming: We will begin reading the chapter book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, after break. Due to the very nature of our limited time together, there may be times when the children have to bring the book home and read chapters for "homework". Doing some of this reading at home will help our discussions about theme and characters be that much better. This is not, however, meant to stress your child. Let's keep in constant contact about how the reading outside of High Ability time is going. We want to make this experience one we won't ever forget. Reading thoughtful, inspiring texts not only helps us learn reading content, but builds bridges to better relationships.

Third Grade Math:

Due to our E-learning day, our third graders only had one day interacting with our math curriculum. We finished our "Think Deeply" where we discussed using good benchmarks for helping us estimate. We wrote and some of us drew pictures of good benchmarks we can use to measure objects in our world--like the width of our desk. We quickly transitioned into reading about the Myth of the Yeti. Don't be surprised if your child googles pictures of the Yeti's footprint. In the story I read, there were two measurements described--an altitude of 17,000 feet and a distance of 300 yards. We began a short discussion about how we might determine these distances. We used benchmark examples like a football field and we talked about measuring from sea level. This excitement is setting the stage for creating our own classroom Yeti! The kids were coming up with wonderful creative ideas not only for measuring our Yeti but for displaying him in our classroom with snowflakes! Great discussion!

Third Grade Language Arts:
We continued to work on Interactions. The girls got right to work after we reviewed the generalizations of an interaction: accidental/purposeful; negative/positive; and fleeting/deep and lasting. Using PQA, and working in pairs, the girls began to think about times and ways interactions can be positive/negative or fleeting or deep. They wrote their answers on a handout. They also received their Interactions and Me Journals. I am sure some of you saw these on E-Learning day! It is in these journals that the children will write all homework and in-class writing assignments. There will be procedures for documenting their writing such as using a new page for each assignment and labeling and dating the entry. The first entry will be to pay close attention to an interaction they are involved in outside of school. They will describe the interaction and it's reciprocal effect. They will then elaborate on the concept of the interaction in terms of the generalizations we have been talking about. To wrap up the lesson, we talked about human/animal; human/human and animal/animal interactions. The literature they will be reading in this unit are fantastic stories with all types of these interactions. It is my hope to build positive, purposeful and lasting interactions with these learners! 

Please allow me to introduce myself:

"There's no place like home"

Hello! This is the hardest part of the blog for me. I find it hard to talk about myself. It's more fun to post about what YOUR kids are doing!😊 I have been a teacher for almost 30 years now! Wow! It seems unbelievable to me, too. I've enjoyed teaching kindergarten through college and everything in-between. When I started my family, I took time off to be a mom.  My family and I moved to Chesterton in the winter of 2010 and we have enjoyed raising our daughters here. We love hiking the dunes, playing music together, traveling, watching movies and basically spending time together. We have one doggie, Gizmo, and three cats--Drip, Drop and Alfie--who love to keep our house mouse free. 

I feel like I am home here at Brummitt. I appreciate the warm welcome and I am so grateful to be here. Thank you for allowing me to work with your children.