I apologize

Sorry for the delay in this week's post. I unfortunately have had some technology issues with getting the blog to post and emails to send. I have a huge amount still sitting in my outbox. I will try to work my way though all of them this weekend, just to make sure there is nothing I am missing. However, I apologize for the delay.

If you didn't already see, our class is famous. Thanks to Mrs. Hahn, Mrs. Hayes, and Mrs. Ternes, our class was in great hands today while I was home with a 102 degree fever. It was a nice surprise to see on the Prairie Crest Facebook page.

Here are some of the things we did this week (and last) : 
 
Morning Meetings- We have spent a lot of our morning meetings building our classroom community. We are working on describing and working through examples of what it means to show respect, be responsible, and to be safe. Through this process we have read a lot of great books and the kids are making connections and using these words in their everyday vocabulary. This week we also discussed having empathy. We discussed the non-literal meaning of placing yourself in someone else's shoes to see their side of something. After that we worked on using I messages as a way to communicate our positive an negative feelings in a way people will hopefully be able to better understand. For example, I feel proud when you follow directions the first time I asked because we were able to get a lot done. Thank you! or I feel sad when you tap on my desk because I can not hear directions. Please stop. This week we also discussed having a positive attitude and coming to school ready to learn.

We are Respectful:

Keys to a successful year: 

Ways we can be responsible: 

 Our class acknowledgement crest:

Math- This week we completed Topic 1 in our Envisions curriculum. Topic 1 covers place value of numbers through hundred thousands. This included taking a look at numbers in standard form, expanded form, and word form.

The class is getting really good at transferring their thoughts from the board into their red math notebook. Soon we will start to transfer problems from the book to our red notebooks. 

Reading- This week we read  Cinderella. This story follows the similar story of Cinderella from Disney. This was great for using our schema to compare and contrast with this version of our story as well as make connections with other fairy tales. We started to take a look at story structure and something we can find in every fairy tale- conflict and resolution. 

Writing- Last week we worked on creating super sentences and how to build a better sentence by adding details. We used these lessons to also try and reinforce that a sentence begins with a capital letter, ends with a punctuation mark, and has lower case letters in between unless there is a proper noun, such as a name or specific place. This week we learned about subjects and predicates. They really enjoyed using subject and predicate dice to make some silly sentences. 

 
Science and Social Studies- In social studies we have been learning about communities. It started off discussing the differences of a city, suburb, town, and farming community. Then we discussed how they were all interdependent on each other. From there we took a look at the three branches of government. We used our new schema to learn and discuss the jobs as well as the similarities and differences in local, state, and federal government. On Thursday we took a look at the Bill of Rights, which is the first ten amendments from the U.S. Constitution. After learning about the Bill of Rights and what each of them stood for we created our own classroom Bill of Rights to help us know regulations and boundaries within our classroom. 

 

Additional Note: Last week students took their MAP tests in both reading and math. We are waiting on a few students to finish taking the test so I can collect scores. I can't wait to see where their benchmark scores place them and start writing some goals on where we want to go in our learning this year! After spending two days back to back in the computer lab last week we enjoyed some down time, and a popsicle. YUM!

We also rearranged our desks. I try to do this about once a month to give everyone an opportunity to work and be grouped with different students in our classroom. (I took the picture during our read to self time)

 Last but not least: With the roller coaster of weather this week and record highs only being in the 50's please make sure you send a jacket or sweatshirt with your child to school. We are using the “feels like” temperature of 50 degrees from KCRG to guide us in utilizing the visual.  If students see this picture in the window by the office they should wear a jacket outside to recess. 

 

Have a great weekend! GO CYCLONES! :)
Mrs. Jodie Yuska