Happenings

• January 17th: MLK Jr. Day NO SCHOOL
• January 28th: Virtual Variety Show applications due
• February 11th: Virtual Variety Show
• February 18th - 21st: Winter Break/NO SCHOOL

Progress Reports for Second Grade:

Mrs Koedyker is working on sending home letters to all second grade parents in the district.  It'll give parents a better understanding of how their child previously qualified for High Ability.  It will also give you a good idea as to how students qualify for High Ability in third grade.  Meanwhile, here's the link to Duneland's High Ability webpage.

1^st Grade: This week the kids were introduced to lipograms.  A lipogram is a text that is composed without using a certain word or letter.  We began the week by reading the book E-Mergency by Lichtenheld and Esra Field-Meyer.  In the book the letter E gets hurt and was replaced by the letter O.  That made for some silly sentences.  We then completed a worksheet that asked the kids to replace a word that contains a letter E in it with a similar word that does not have an E in it.  We did this together on the board.  On Tuesday we came up with a sentence to describe what happened in the begging, middle and end of the book. Once we had our sentences the class voted on what letter to leave out.  Next, we rewrote the sentences replacing the words that contained the voted-on letter with a word that meant the same but did not use that letter.  The kids did a great job figuring out words that meant the same without using the banished letter.  Finally, we started a worksheet that asked the kids to create sentences describing the beginning, middle and end of the book.  Next week we will use these sentences to create lipograms. 

 

2^nd Grade:  (Please scroll to the top of the blog to see a special note for 2nd grade parents)  We continued watching The Tale of Despereaux.  The only difference is this time I only gave them each six sticky notes!

 

3^rd Grade: The kids that were gone last week and did not get to present their posters presented.  Afterwards I passed out another grammar sheet.  They paired up and worked together the rest of class.  On Tuesday, I passed out a copy of the fable, The Ants and The Grasshopper.  Once they read the short fable, I paired them up again to discuss questions I had posted on the board.  I walked around to make sure they were on track and offered advice when they were stumped.  At the end of class, we discussed the fable together.

 

4^th Grade:  We have finally gotten to the point where the kids began to create their visual timeline.  Last week both groups finished typing the timeline up.  I printed them out and this week they cut out each date and event. 

They also searched pictures of their subject and created a header. 

We took a trek down the hall to pick a color of butcher paper to use as the background.  Once back to class I explained how the timeline should be ordered.  Smaller spaces for events that were close together and bigger gaps for longer times between events.  Once the kids pasted the timeline down, they got to work on the pictures.  One group finished pasted pictures and the other group will paste them next week.  Both groups created their timeline titles and will also paste those down next week.  The kids are rocking the visual timeline and were excited to see all their hard work from the past months come together in a tangible way.

 

1^st Grade:  On Monday, the kids were asked to create their own one loop game.  Each kid drew an attribute card.  Using the attribute, they needed to draw three shapes inside the loop that contained the attribute and two shapes outside the loop that did not.  Some of the attributes were easier such as circles or big/small.  Others were a little harder to draw like obtuse angles and hexagons.  A few that chose the harder attributes needed a little guidance but for the most part, they all did a great job creating the puzzles.  The kids came in very excited on Tuesday!  Most of them remembered to bring a stuffed animal and I brought extra animals for those that forgot. I started class by discussing different attributes of a stuffed animal.  We talked about size, color, type of animal and types of eyes.  Then I had all the kids come up and place only the stuffed bears inside a circle and asked them why these animals could all be together.  They quickly decided bears.  I then asked them where all the other animals belonged, and all said outside.  Next, I added a second circle creating a Venn Diagram, and asked them to put all the brown animals inside the second circle.  Some bears moved over and a few animals from outside the circle made it into the new circle.  I then asked them if any of the animals belonged in both circles.  We decided that the brown bears could exist in both circles, so we placed those in the middle where the circles overlapped.  We continued playing the game for the rest of class.

 

2^nd Grade: (Please scroll to the top of the blog to see a special note for 2nd grade parents)  We continued our study of 3D shapes.  When the kids came into class, five stations were set up with 3D shapes.  The kids were given a worksheet which asked them to figure out the number of triangles, squares, and rectangles in each shape.  I also had them tell me the number of faces. They completed with time to spare so I passed out a multiplication facts worksheet with 2x and 3x.  They cruised right through the worksheet. On Tuesday we finally got to use the 3D shapes that the kids made to make bubbles!  When the kids came into class, they were asked to predict what shapes they would see inside the bubbles.  Then we started dipping.  Some of the predictions were correct and others were way off.  What a fun class!     

 

3^rd Grade: The boys started the week with Arrow Math.  The lesson asked the boys to use what they knew about charts to figure out what the arrows meant and how they could be used.  To start they had to see that instead of 10 rows like the hundreds charts, they only had 7 rows.  We talked about what arrows pointing to the left, right, up, or down could mean.  The boys had to see that the arrows showed movement within the array.  They caught on fast and finished the worksheet by the end of class. 

Since I meant this assignment to take two day, on day two of class we jumped into long division.  We worked together on the board and then I set the boys free to solve multiple long division problems.  They are still working to remember the steps but with a little more practice they will have it down.  We will continue working on long division in our spare time.

 

4^th Grade:  We delved back into our Math books and started working on solving problems with two unknowns using drawings and guess and test. We started with a word problem that asked if Hannah has 8 animals all dogs and birds and the total legs of these animals equals 24, how many of each does she own.  The kids needed to make an organized list, which I will admit they weren’t too excited about.  I explained to them that we were using Polya’s problem solving steps: understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, and look back.  I let them know that I knew some of them could solve these problems in their head, however, it was important to understand the process. Using an organized list and guess and check will help them when solving more complex problems.  We spent both days working through the problems and will spend a little more time on them next week.  * Since I spent the entire classes walking around and offering support I did not have time to take pictures.