Mon. Nov. 1st:          School Board Meeting

Tues. Nov. 2nd:        E-Learning Day 

Wed. Nov. 2nd:        Parent-Teacher conferences 

Nov. 24-26:              Thanksgiving Break!

LANGUAGE ARTS

1st Grade: We continued working on our Pig Latin and finished deciphering a worksheet that held the words to a song.  I pulled up Led Belly’s Pig Latin Song on my computer and we sang along to this silly song!   Once we finished singing and dancing to with the song, we came to the consensus as a class that the first couple versus were the only ones easy enough to memorize! We had enough time on Tuesday for each child to tell the class about their Halloween costume in Pig Latin!  It was so fun to see the ahah moment when Pig Latin clicked with a kid and super fun to converse in our secret language!  Appyhay alloweenHay!  

The kids finally got to bring their shields home!!  

2nd Grade: We continued with our book study of Despereaux.  On Monday I read chapters 21 and 22 aloud.  Afterwards, we discussed the reading and it was fun to hear the girls take on the book.  

They all agreed that they LOVE the book!   On Tuesday they did a Quick Check and then we discussed more quotes from the book that allude to light and dark.  We added to our Light/Dark chart.  The girls were assigned Chapters 24-28 for Monday.    

3rd Grade: We continue our study of Myths and Legends.  This week we delved into grammar.  After finding the different types of nouns in Iduna and her Apples, the kids were given a worksheet where they had to place the nouns into similar categories. We discussed different jobs that a noun can play.  We divided sentences up into subject and predicate and then looked at subject nouns and objects of the preposition.  We also watched a School House Rock about prepositions. 

4th Grade: We started a biography study on Monday.  The focus of this study is for the students to pick a biography of a person that is considered a change maker.  I pulled multiple biography books from the library and we briefly discussed the individual people.  I will have to admit as a history buff, I loved the  kids' enthusiasm.  Often, they offered their own facts about the change makers.  If they did not know about a certain change maker, they wanted to learn more.  In the end I asked all the kids to vote on three change makers that they would like to study.  I took the two people with the most votes and divided the group between the two.  The kids choices were Leonardo Da Vinci and Albert Einstein.  I am so excited for them to learn more about these change makers!  They finished up Tuesday doing a vocabulary map with button buddies.  Each grabbed a sticky note with a vocabulary word that used the stem bio.  As a pair they picked which word to delve into and completed the vocabulary map.  

MATH

1^st Grade:  My first graders finished up the My Shape sheets and I sent the sheets home.  We then started discussing our next game which is called GRUPO!  GUPO is a game dominated by shapes. Each GRUPO set has 40 cards and each card shows a picture of a different shape. To play the game the kids will get into groups of 3 or 4.  A 3X3 grid of cards is laid down by a dealer.  The player chooses two cards that match.  In order to get a match, the cards need to have four matching elements.  The elements look for are same number of sides, same number of vertices, made up of the same shapes, contained the same shapes, or had the same shape name, for example a quadrilateral.  The player must tell the other players about the four similarities.  If the player is correct, he keeps the shapes.  However, if the other players say they disagree and there were not four similarities, the cards are put back down. I modeled the game on Thursday and the kids will play it in groups next week.

 

2^nd Grade:  We began working on transforming shapes through movement.  The kids practiced transforming a shape through a slide, flip or turn.  To start I used a large triangle and demonstrated how it could flip, turn or slide.  Next the kids were given a worksheet that showed two shapes that had used one of the three transformation moves.  They had to decide which move would land the shape in the same spot that was shown on the worksheet.  They practiced on three increasingly hard worksheets.  I will have to say the kids took to this lesson like champs!   

 

3^rd Grade:  We finished up working on patterns within tables.  The boys were giving a unit checkup.  The checkup helped me see where they might need a little more instruction before we moved on.  As a class, we went over the problems that they struggled with.  I am noticing that they are all struggling with explaining in writing how or why they solved a problem or equation a certain way.  This is not unusual for Math kids.  They are great at solving problems but find it much harder to explain how or why they solved it a certain way.  We will continue to work on our Math writing and as the year progresses, they will find it easier and easier to explain the why behind solving a Math problem. On Wednesday we just dipped our toes into discovering patterns when looking at multiples of numbers in a base-ten hundreds chart.  We will continue with the charts next week.

 

4^th Grade: We started the week with a new puzzle one which entailed charts, numbers and variables. Like the magic trick, this puzzle used variable but unlike the magic trick which used a variable that changed, the variables in this puzzle represented a specific number.  The kids were given a chart with both numbers and letters.  There was a number total at the end of each row and column.  The idea was for the kids to use the information they were given to figure out what numbers the variables represented.  They broke up into button buddies to solve the puzzles.  It was amazing to see how enthusiastic the kids were about these algebraic problems!  They all rocked the charts and when it was time to make their own charts I was blown away.  Most groups used four variables!  They were so excited that all asked me to see if I could solve the homemade puzzles.  What a fun day.  We followed this day by putting into words the methods they used to find the variables.  Writing in Math is still a challenge for this group and after the fun they had the prior day, it was a little bit of a let down to have to write.  I keep emphasizing that it is important to know the “why” behind solving problems.  We broke up into the same button buddies.  Only one group finished so we will continue with the Think Deeply next week.