Guest Blogger Evan

The Thanksgiving Rehearsal 
Today we got to see the 1st graders Thanksgiving Concert rehearsal.  My favorite part was when they sang It's Thanksgiving! The kids dressed up as different family members.  It was awesome!
~ Evan

To Do List

Teachers often joke about how much they love Post It notes.  I'm passing that love onto my students so they can take more responsibility of their work.

We are learning to prioritize.  What work do I need to finish right away? 

On finish it up Fridays, students have time to self assess. 

These are the questions we ask ourselves. 

Did I finish all essential assignments?

Did I use my time wisely? 

Did I try my best? 

It feels really good to cross things off as we get them done.

Students enjoy deciding what to do first.

We use effective effort so that we can reach our personal goals!

Publishing

Publishing is the final step in the writing process. We feel so proud of our typed pieces.  As we publish we are learning to type. Practice is the only way to improve this important life skill!  We are also learning about how to change fonts, bold and italic, how to save, and how to print. 

Guest Blogger Owen

On Friday our class had a Halloween party. We had activates like scratch art and toss a pumpkin and   spooky hands. We also had some snacks.  At lunch we ate cob web funnel cakes. It was a very fun Halloween!

-Owen

Guest Blogger Ben

We want to thank the room mothers and all the parents for a fun party.

Here we are playing pumpkin toss.

In this picture someone is wrapped up like a mummy.  I wonder who it is.

-Ben

Guest Blogger Taylor

November Enrichment Work

A lot of people already did lots of enrichment work. This is the November enrichment and it has a lot of Halloween and Thanksgiving choices. This is one of the enrichment choices that someone did in my class. She loves bigger and she did a candy graph on a poster board. I think that she did a good job with the enrichment work.

This is another enrichment work and it is the same one as above. It is the candy graph but smaller. They both wrote the names of the candy and used bar graphs. But Kayla made hers horizontal and Tessa's is vertical.

This enrichment choice was a collage. She did two collages. One with recycled cups and one with leaves. I think she did a creative project.

-Taylor

To see the enrichment menu look at our homework page.

Team Jordan Update

Reading

Students searched for details to determine the main idea. Students worked in pairs and independently to improve their comprehension skills.  We loved this weekly reader about how spiders are helpful to humans. Ask your child if this article changed their opinion of these eight legged creatures.

Today, I was excited to introduce Raz-Kids.  Everyone seemed happy to give it a try, knowing it would improve their reading skills.  Also, the boys and girls seemed enthusiastic about the book choices.  I look forward feedback about this wonderful resource.  For homework this week, children will listen, read, and take a comprehension quiz on Raz-Kids.   Your child should spend 20-30 minutes nightly working on this assignment. 

Writing

In writing, children are polishing up their personal narratives.  We have worked on leads, word choice, organization, sensory details, and the writing process.  Children have made several revisions to enhance their work.  We have also reviewed editing.  During the editing phase of writing we focus on spelling, capitals, and punctuation.  We are becoming very familiar with dictionaries, thesauruses and word lists.

Math

We wrapped up subtraction with a test today.  Our next chapter will be  about solving real world problems using addition and subtraction.  We will use bar models.  Bar models can be tricky for students and parents alike.  I like to think of them as comparison models.  Bar models help us figure out how to solve difficult problems.  In third grade we move away from drawing a picture to illustrate the situation instead we create a model.  We will ask, what do we know?  What does this problem want us to determine?  How can we figure it out?  Did we complete all the steps needed? 

Science

The children all did a wonderful job on their first test.  It is obvious that they learned a lot about plant growth and development.  They also know why plants are important to human survival.  Many children also mentioned that plants just make the world prettier.  I have to agree with them.

Social Studies

Now that we are finished studying plants we will be diving into our social studies unit about the first people in Massachusetts, the Wampanoag.

Homework

I have added the November Enrichment Menu to our Homework page.  Homework this week is reading on raz-kids. I may add to the assignments based on what I see happening on raz-kids. 

Our Halloween Party is Friday. Thank you to Mrs. Billing, Mrs. Kelter, and Mrs. Riley for planning this upcoming event.  We are all looking forward to it!

Thank you for your continued support!

Mrs. Jordan