Ugh!

Man, today was rough! I don't know if we need to get outside for recess or what but I think I stopped every five minutes to get them from talking! Even when I was up in the front of the room teaching! Our goal today was to be more purposeful with everything we were doing. For example, after our meeting, we said the Pledge and then were to go get our ipads and come back for read aloud. A small handful did this, however, the majority of the class, did not do this with purpose-they talked with their friends and went to their bags, etc. We'll try again tomorrow.

We began our day completing a Learning Styles survey for our morning question, "Tell me Tuesday." What are your child's preferences? In meeting, we shared for 30 minutes! what we did yesterday. In The Beaded Moccasins, Mary and Mrs. Stewart continued west over the Appalachian Mountains with their captors. She was told that she was going to replace their leader's granddaughter who had passed away. We read independently and in Reader's Workshop, discussed poetry. We even had a few minutes to write some poetry before continuing our work with our opinion writing. In Math Workshop, we worked with multiplying fractions with whole numbers. We showed what this looks like using equations, area models and number lines. We ended our day completing our chart describing the who, what, when and where of Native Americans in Ohio.

Back to the grind...

We are getting back into the grind of school. I'm having to pull some of them along with us, but we're all moving on! :) It was a crazy Thursday schedule but that gave us some time to complete our spelling screeners before Mindset. We are going to try something different, as a grade level, for spelling so the screeners help us to split the kiddos into groups based on their spelling needs. We are still concentrating on the patterns of words so they won't necessarily have "lists" and "tests." In our morning meeting, we went over the class surveys and they agree there should be less talking in the class so today, we had semi-assigned seats to begin the day. This helped a bit but we still need to use more self-discipline and control for when to talk and how loud our voices should be. In The Beaded Moccasins, it was Mary's birthday! We are still getting to know Mary and the setting so we've stopped a lot to better understand the time period. Yesterday, we worked with carding wool and spinning thread and today we learned about churning butter. We are also focusing on the similes the author uses to help us understand. After some time reading independently, we listened to the poem in StoryWorks, "Ode To My Shoes," and answered some critical thinking questions about the poem. In Writer's Workshop, we looked at our opinion writing we did before break and compared it to the 4th grade checklist to make sure we are making the transition to 4th grade opinion writing. After lunch and indoor recess and quiet time, we completed a one-pager about fractions. Pretty much, they were given a blank piece of paper and they needed to fill it up, artistically, with everything they know about fractions. Since we are all at different points in our learning, I wasn't sure where they all ended up before break. This will help me to better grasp where they are and where to go from here. Although it was a little overwhelming at first, they did ok. I think we'll need time tomorrow to finish but your kiddo might be working on this tonight. We ended our day reading about the Native Americans of the 1700's.

Happy New Year!

I made it through my first day back! I'm pretty swollen, sore and tight but I did it! We had a good day~very chatty, but the first day back is always chatty. We started the day with "Snaps" of our winter break and shared them during our meeting. We shared a lot during our meeting, actually! I really enjoyed chatting and catching up. Next, we completed a 2017 Year In Review. In order to set goals and improve, we need to first know where we are. This review helped get our minds right on the basics of our 2017. We started a new book for Read Aloud, The Beaded Moccasins by Lynda Durrant. This is a historical fiction book about Mary Campbell who was taken captive by Native Americans in the 1700's. We are still being introduced to the characters, setting and time period so we haven't even gotten to her capture yet. In Reader's Workshop, we met up with our literature groups to make sure we were all caught up with our reading-which most of us were not... After lunch and indoor recess, obviously, in Math Workshop, we used what we knew of fractions to understand the markings on a ruler and then measured ourselves to the nearest quarter inch. We then made a line plot of how tall we all area and drew conclusions about our data. Next, we read a quote:

and discussed that we should measure our growth (academic, sports, etc.) on our past, not each other-just like we measure our height. We even hung up a paper and marked our heights that we can look at as a visual for remembering this. It's hard to not compare ourselves to each other, especially once you get old enough to understand, but we are going to try! We concluded our day reviewing our understanding of the mound builders.

Bittersweet

Today was very bittersweet for us...we had a fun day of out-of-the-ordinaries and our holiday celebration, but it was my last day so...

We worked on our morning choice activities and i-time and then after a musical rehearsal, we came back for an Hour of Code! We discussed and discovered what "code" and "coding" are and then had a blast during our hour! We also discovered that this was one area where they were so much better than me! :) Then, to continue with theme, we got into groups and read lots of picture books, found the theme of each book and then found some common themes in the books. They did an AWESOME job with theme, which is a tough concept, especially for kiddos! I hope that I didn't really ruin picture books for them, but opened their eyes to how beautiful and amazing these books truly are. Almost the entire class ate lunch with me in the room today and then had indoor recess. They wanted to continue coding during quiet time but needed to complete their M4T assessment. After, it was celebration time! We completed a STEM challenge to build an igloo with 100 bricks of ice (marshmallows) and 50 beam (toothpicks). With it feeling so cold with all of that ice, they need some hot cocoa! So, I brought in my Keurig and made them all hot chocolate! Luckily, the presents I bought them were delivered at 2:30 so we were able to do a modified book game with choosing books and stealing?! Every student got a book though! It might not have been their first choice (there were some popular books!) but I hope that everyone got something they'll enjoy. Our day concluded with mandatory hugs for the teacher! :)

Recess!

So, the kids have been staying in with me for lunch and recess this week since I won't see them until after the new year, after Friday. However, today, I told them that I had some work I had to do, out of the classroom, and that they'd have to choose to stay in for lunch or recess but I couldn't do both. They chose lunch. Big mistake! They were freezing! I took some pictures of them once inside because they were using rugs and the yoga mat to cover up! It was a sight! Some even tried to warm up using Lucky's heat lamp! :)

It was a crazy Thursday! We had a school community meeting at 9:25 and then went to the media center for a buddy book introduction with Mrs. Dornburgh and then we made blankets for patients at the James during our mindset special (small things make a big difference!). Once we finally returned to our room, we read two more books for understanding theme: The Heart and the Bottle and Red: A Crayon's Story. They are so mad at me because they think I've ruined picture books for them because they say they're all sad...I said that they are finally understanding the deeper meaning of these books and how they are bigger than just entertainment. We read independently and then got our December StoryWorks to peruse and read for entertainment-they'll be working more with it next week. After quiet time, in Math Workshop, we learned about line plots and how to make and read and analyze them. They feel pretty special too, because after this year, this will no longer be a 4th grade standard, so they are the last 4th graders to learn it! They discovered that it wasn't as easy as they thought. We'll keep practicing tomorrow. Finally, as with all other crazy Thursdays, we ended our day with rehearsal. The musical is next week!

Brrr!

Wow-it got cold! Hope you are able to stay warm this evening!

After morning choice and i-time, we practiced our musical in Music and in our morning meeting, we shared what brings us joy and played a game called, The Wright Family with a little prize today! In read aloud, we read, The Woman Who Named Things and Chopsticks and dug deep to identify and understand the theme of each. After reading independently, we worked with our StoryWorks paired text for "Christian the Lion" to find the common theme of the two texts. In Writer's Workshop, we looked in our writer's notebooks at previous story ideas to see if we could develop any of them for opinion writing. We also created a list of topics we feel strongly about so we have some ideas for when we write opinions. Unfortunately, because of the earlier rain, we had indoor recess. After quiet time, in Math Chaos-I mean, Workshop :)-some took the Unit 3 Post test, some took the Unit 4 Post test, some took the Unit 5 Pre-test and others practiced equivalent fractions and comparing/ordering fractions so they can test tomorrow or Thursday. After the chaos, we worked with Ohio Studies Weekly, an informational magazine to help learn about Ohio. Today, we read and learned about the early people of Ohio and completed a crossword puzzle. We practiced skimming the information and using the headings to help us answer questions.

Enjoying each other!

We had a good day today. I am cherishing the last few days I have with them before I leave for my surgery. I know it doesn't seem like I'll be gone long but when you tack on winter break, it's going to be 3 1/2 weeks until I see them again! I'm going to go through withdrawal! :) So, since I don't have any lunch time duties this week, they have the option to eat lunch and stay in for recess with me.

In Art, Mrs. Bowers shared that she's having some difficulty because some are not finishing and then she's just not able to get around to everyone. I shared this understanding with them as fractions (because, why not?!) and each student is 1/30. If there are 60 minutes in an hour, each student gets 2 minutes every hour of my time. Now, some need more than 2 minutes and others need less but as we learned earlier in the year, "Fair is every student getting what they need in order to be successful." I think understanding it from this perspective helped them to realize that even though I'd like to devote all my time to each of them, I have to prioritize and help them as needed. In meeting, we shared one thing from our weekend and played category challenge with pets. In read aloud, we are working on digging deeper in our understanding and identifying theme, so we are reading picture books this week to understand theme and author's message/purpose more. Today, we read, Snappsy the Alligator and Faithful Elephants. Hopefully, your child can tell you the themes of these books. We spent a large chunk reading independently and in writer's workshop, we created some boxes and bullets to gather ideas for topics for opinion writing. After quiet time, in Math Workshop, we began by looking at fraction of sets and then split up into 2 groups to continue our understanding so some kiddos worked with Ms. Hanlin in math today. We ended our day working on our brochures.