February Fun

Working in pairs, students read a book about Abraham Lincoln and wrote the main idea of each section on a post it note.  

We are loving our new audio hub and headphones from Donors Choose.  

This is what math class looked like on Valentine's Day.  We estimated how many hearts were in a box, how many were in a foot, and how many it would take to fill a cup.

Then just for fun, we triedto balance as many as we could on our fingers and make the tallest tower we could.

Mrs. Woods brought a really neat bingo set for us to play.  We used candy hearts as the markers. 

 So many treats!!

This is what was left for each student to take home!!  They'd already eaten quite a bit of sugar!

Mr. Strauman created a stand so that the iPad can be used to project just about anything on to the Promethean.  Here some students are trying to complete a tangram challenge. 

We are using dominoes to practice our fact fluency, graphing and critical thinking skills.  Every teacher loves a three for one activity!  We added the dots on the dominoes, graphed the totals, and then tried to draw conclusions about why each student had more 5, 6, 7 than any other number.

Fortune tellers make practicing parts of speech fun!

Bridges

The challenge:
Put two books 1 foot apart.
Build a bridge between the two books which will support 10 pennies (placed in the center)

Your only bridge building materials - About twenty 3 x 5 index cards

The students worked in pairs or groups of three to complete the challenge.  They only had about 15 minutes. At the very end, a few students figured out to fold the cards for support.  Even thought not all groups built the bridge, they accomplished my main goals -- working together, communicating, thinking outside the box.  We will have challenges like this more often this semester.

Money

We are working on counting pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.  We are also working on solving word problems using those coins.  To help students remember what each coin looks like and is worth, we have been using poems, chants, hand motions and lots of repetition!  Here is one set of coin poems we use:

Rainforest Research

We spent one week studying the rainforest.  Student learned what made an area a rainforest.  They learned about the 4 layers of the rainforest.  They learned why rainforests are being destroyed and why rainforests are important.  The next week, students were given Chromebooks, a list of websites, a list of rainforest animals and time to explore.  After a while, each student picked one animal he/she wanted to research.  Students had several questions to answer about their animal -- what it looks like, how big it is, what it eats, how it survives in its environment, etc.  They set off to find the information.  Students did a great job independently finding the answers to their questions.  The next step was to create a poster which gave the highlights of what they found while researching.  Then, students wrote a paragraph about their animal.  Finally, students gave a short presentation about their animal using their posters as a guide.  Posters will be coming home in a few weeks.

Martin Luther King Jr.

We learned about Martin Luther King Jr. this week.  Each day during our reading centers, students who were at the computer center typed sentences about Martin Luther King, Jr.  Students re-read what the students before them had written and tried to come up with new facts.  The following list is a master list, combined from all four computers, so there are some repeats.   It is unedited and uses students' original spelling.  Not only are students reflecting on their learning, they are also practicing keyboarding!  Even better - after centers, I can quickly skim what students have written and see what they have learned and know if there are any misconceptions I need to clear up.

• MLK Jr. got shot. MLK Jr. worked at a church.  
• He gave a speech .  He had a dream and a speech.
• He   was   a leader                
• He changed  the law.
• A white person shot him when he was 39.
• He was born 1929.
• Rosa parks  refused  to  give  up  her   bus  seat.
• He   gave a speech.
• He got shot
• Honest
• Somebody threw a bomb in his house
• He had a dream
• A leader
• Born in 1929
• He gave speech
• Good man
• He is nice
• Became a minister
• He had a speech
• He gave I have a dream speech
• He got shot.
• He worked at a church.
• He  was born in 1929.
• He decided to become a minister.
• He gave a  speech
• He belived   that if   people worked together  they could
• Someone  throw a bom at his  house
• He said I have a  dream
• He  could   not   play  with   white   Cilldren.
• He won a noble prize
• He had a loving  family.
• He changed the law.
• His hous  got blown up. Each year we
• He was shot.
• His house was on fire.
• He gave a spech.
• Someone threw  A   bomb  `at his house.
• He was born in 1929
• He did a speech that was called  I have a dream
• He won a nobel prize
• He had a loving family.
• He can  play with  black people
• His first  job was at a church
• He acted
• Led a march in 1963
• His brothers house was blew up
• He was shot.
• His house was on  fire.
• He was super nice.
• Some one throw A bome at his house
• He was born in 1929
• He won a nobel prize
• He had a famous speech
• He had a loving family
• He stoped riding the bus
• He foled his drem
• He acted
• He led a march in 1963

Winter Acrostics

One day we had 5 students absent.  I did not want to go on with my planned writing lesson with 20% of my students missing, so we did a quick acrostic poem activity instead.  The students were so creative!  Here are a few samples:

2015

I cannot believe it has been almost 2 months since I posted anything.  I hope everyone had a relaxing break and that 2015 is off to a great start!

The most exciting news to share is that our classroom has gained 4 computers for students to use.  These computers came from the high school computer lab.  I also had a Donors Choose project funded.  From this project our classroom received ten high quality headphones and an audio hub.  The audio hub will allow up to 6 students to listen to the iPad at once.  They will be able to listen to texts read to them.


We spent most of December learning about Polar Regions -- the Arctic and the Antarctic.  We learned about the differences between the two areas and how animals survive in them.

The kids did a great job with the Christmas program.  They looked so nice, too!

The students earned December's class compliment celebration -- a popcorn party!  I was one of four staff members who volunteered to pop popcorn for the school. It gave our microwave quite a workout

The students worked really hard on Christmas present for their parents/grandparents.  We hope you liked them!

Two days before break we had a hot chocolate reading party.  I put a video of a fireplace on our promethean board.  We turned the lights off and students read while enjoying their hot chocolate.

The students had a lot of fun decorating cookies during their Christmas party.  

The staff had an Ugly Sweater Contest that day.  Mr. Strauman tied for first place. He had ornaments in his beard!