Open House 2015

Open house was a great success. Thank you to all who came to visit the classroom. It was extraordinary to meet you all and we are excited for the adventure through grades 3/4. 

"Ohana" means family

Being new to this district and school, I have learned so many wonderful things about the Islands. Each and every day a situation or experience leads me to this wonderful feeling of family. Today was one of them. 

We have started our whole school reading buddies, where we mix the students up and they take charge in their reading and share what they have learned. Today grades 3/4 were honored to work with Mrs. Parker's Kindergartners. I have not yet seen this class work so hard to help someone accomplish a task. The Kindergartners were so proud when they left our room because of the support given by their older peers. We were definitely Golden Eagles today at North Hero School.  

Hakuna Matata

...homework...

Parents/Guardians, you will have no worries for the rest of your days if you make sure to check your students' O.W.L Binder and assignment book each and every night. I understand life can get in the way and that's O.K! Your child does an exceptional job doing their part in writing what needs to be done and they are always eager to read! Please do your part by browsing the binder and assignment book for any important notes and homework assignments. I love seeing your signature acknowledging you've done so! 

Every night I assign 20 minutes of reading which isn't anything new for these third and fourth graders. For my third grade math class (if I assign homework) it will be one worksheet for the whole week, due back on either Thursday or Friday (depending on how intense the workload for the class work is that week). The rumors are true, I do not give homework on weekends! It is in my best interest that spending the weekends with family, friends and enjoying being a child is very important. This does not mean your child CAN'T do any reading or math facts, I simply do not assign it.  

With that, Hakuna Matata families, for there are no worries. 

STAMINA!

 

Third and Fourth graders have been practicing how to use stamina while reading. We use stamina to read, write and practice math. Stamina is doing anything for a long period of time without getting tired or giving up! Our motivational piece has been our tracking how many minutes we can independently read. We started off our chart at six minutes. Today our goal was ten.

::drum roll please::

Today on this magnificent Monday, we reached 28 Minutes! This surpasses our goal of 10 minutes. We are very excited to continue our reading! 

- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"You've got a friend in me"

Along with practicing our independent reading, we have also been practicing our buddy reading. During this time, students are placed with a buddy and are asked to read and have a discussion about the books (or parts of books) in which they had read. Students were given prompt cards to help assist in their book discussion. The students really look forward to this time of day because they are excited to share with a friend what they are learning or reading about. 

Third Grade Math is "Glyphtastic"

Currently in third grade math we are learning about analyzing data and what it can represent. Today we sorted our 'People, Glyph, Legends' where each symbol represents a way we like to learn math. For example a yellow hat represents working well with one other person, brown means in a small group and red represents working well alone. 

It was amazing to hear the discussions being held by these third graders. Their interest kept growing the more they tried to figure out was to sort and graph the glyph people. 

Four star writing!

All week during our Writers Workshop, we have been working on a personal narrative about our Summer Vacation. We are now all on the revising stage where students can spice up their writing and make it more engaging for readers. After long rereads and editing to ourself, we partnered up and read our writing piece aloud to a partner. Amazing discussion began to happen! 

Tomorrow we will be working on publishing this piece... And next week we will celebrate our success! 

Amazing things are happening in 3/4.

Today was an amazing day for book discovery. We began our reader's workshop by discussing ownership. As the teacher, I wanted our students to have ownership in the classroom. We started off by taking all of the books out of the community bookshelf. The students were asked to organize the books based on genre and/or theme. The discussions these students had were rich with vocabulary based on the genre. It was a very fulfilling moment for the students to feel that they took leadership within our classroom. This community building has been one of many activities we have done in order to learn to work well with one another. 

After having the discussions about the books we jumped into book shopping. Each child has there own book box (pictured below) where they have books at their "Just Right Level." Today the students were able to have a range and choose books they were interested in. Later this wee we will talk about a Just Right Book so our students can feel more comfortable and confident in reading.