LATE START January, 29

Although it was a shortened day, I feel that we got quite a bit accomplished. In Math, we practiced multiplication and we got at least 4-5 more people securing their understanding. One student seemed to struggle with knowing her facts, not the process so keep practicing those basic facts at home! We continued our work board work in Reader's Workshop and we spent over an hour working on our historical fiction personal experience narrative planning and research. Tomorrow, we will begin drafting the actual story tomorrow and learn how to tie in the history with the fictional story. We completed our day playing a states game on the ipods. I realize that some of our kiddos seem to be geographically challenged when it comes to the other 49 states, capitals and important features. It might be something to look into reading about at home.

Tuesday, January 29

Oh happy day! We finally got the ok for outdoor recess...unfortunately, it began raining about 5 minutes after we got outside so we ended up with another day of indoor recess. This lack of outdoor recess is making us all go a little stir crazy so we've had some extra reminders to settle down but it is understandable. Hopefully, they'll get some outside time this evening and get some rest in the morning which should make things a little better but with it being Late Start... Oh well! Anyway, in Math, we learned the traditional way to solve multiple digit multiplication problems. Most grasped this way of solving the problems but some still need some more practice and instruction but it looks like we will be heading in to division next week! Mary met Mr. Sequin today in The Beaded Moccasins. He is a french trader and the students learned how Lake Erie got its name. We continued our work board work for Reader's Workshop and followed the Plot Rollercoaster for where in the plot students are in their independent reading. Most are finding that they didn't make much progress on the coaster from yesterday to today and we discussed that in longer chapter books, it takes a while to get through the plot of a story. In Writer's Workshop, students continued their research on their historical time period as well as continued planning their story. They have some really great ideas and I am looking forward to reading these when they finish! Be patient though because I'm thinking it might take us a little longer than other writing pieces have taken. Guess what?! Ohio finally became a state!! We have finally reached 1803 in our Ohio history! Now, we should have smooth sailling because there isn't as much turmoil in the last 200 years than there were in the first 1800... 

Don't forget that tomorrow is LATE START!

Monday, January 28

What a glorious day in Room 110! In Math, we practiced and practiced and practiced multiple digit multiplication. We worked with the value of numbers using the partial products method. This is kind of the long way of doing it but makes the traditional way much easier and helps them to see what and WHY we are doing things. Tomorrow, I will be teaching them the traditional way to multiply numbers (like we learned and know) so practice, practice, practice this week! That is really the only thing that is in this unit of study so we will not be spending too much time on this. Have your child teach you the partial products method... this is the best way to see their understanding. Ask them questions as you work together. They will feel like pros! The Beaded Moccasins was a little gross today as Mary learned what really happens when deer hides are tanned to make leather! Yuck! I did give a warning ahead of time though. In Reader's Workshop, we talked about plot and the plot roller coaster of stories. We are going to be changing reading groups up next week so this week, for work board, we have more of a task list and students will be working at their own speed to get things completed. In Writer's Workshop, we began the planning and research portion of our historical fiction personal experience narrative. Students may have brought books home today or may want to research on the computer some to help with their writing. Finally, in Social Studies, we read and discussed about the frontier wars in Ohio. We talked about the causes and effects of these battles and treaties. I saw some a-ha moments too! Ask your kiddo why they speak French in parts of Canada...

Friday, January 25

Yesterday, the students did great with an afternoon substitute. In the morning, for Math, we had a Multiplication Wrestling Tournament with brackets! The ultimate winner was... Natalie! Today, we worked on estimating products so that we can tell if our actual answers are reasonable or not. For Read Aloud, we caught up with Mary Campbell and how she chose to gather strength. In Reader's Workshop, we read silently and then played spelling and writing games on the ipods. Some needed more time in Writer's Workshop to finish their setting story while others that were finished continued to play games on the ipods. We completed the day with finishing our Weather Assessment.

Wednesday, January 23

Another brrrr chilly day with indoor recess. In Math, we completed a basic facts test, practiced extended facts on dry erase boards and then we WRESTLED!! Ask your child about our tag team matches... :) Instead of Read Aloud with me today, we went to the library where Mrs. Dorr talked and read to the them about the author coming in March, Charles Smith, Jr. I am very excited for this visit! In Reader's Workshop, we read and researched about historical time periods and worked on vocabulary we received from other languages. In Writer's Workshop, we continued with our setting pieces. We finished the day getting closer to Ohio becoming a state by reading about settling Ohio! Almost there!

Tuesday, January 22

Brrrr! It sure was a cold one today! We had a very out of the ordinary day because we were all over the place performing our Reader's Theaters on Martin Luther King, Jr. We completed our MAP assessment on the computers but other than that, had a very loosely planned day. We caught up on Social Studies review work, completed a TFK on Martin Luther King, Jr., practiced some math facts, sorted our word study words, read silently and worked on some writing. Tomorrow will be back to the daily grind!

Friday, January 18

TGIF! This week seemed to go pretty quickly but was packed full of information and learning. In Matrh today, we went over our assessment from yesterday and then went on to learn about extended facts. It is super important for our students to know their basic multiplication facts! This unit will be learning how to multiply multiple digit by multiple digit numbers and the only way to be successful is to know and understand the basic facts. The ones that struggled today were the ones that didn't have their basic facts memorized. In Read Aloud, the young boys of the tribe learned how to be strong by jumping into the frozen Cuyahoga River every morning for months. This puzzled the students as to why they would want to do that. In the next part, Mary shows that she has strength too. Maybe they will feel the understanding after that. We then finished our checkpoint writing assessment and practiced our reader's theaters. 

Thursday, January 17

Great day in Room 110! We took our Math Assessment this morning and I think we are doing better. I truly believe that the majority of the class completely understands fractions and probability. Unfortunately, I don't think all of them show it very well on assessments... 12 students "passed" with a 72% or better while 10 did not. I don't like that 10 students still aren't showing proficiency but I feel we need to move on. I will continue to put fractions into my weekly plans and probability will continue to pop up in data analysis and many other areas as well. Please feel free to continue to practice fractions and probability at home as well. The afternoon was a little out of the ordinary. We began our checkpoint writing assessment which is an assessment every 4th grade student in HCSD gets for teachers to assess their progress in writing. Today, they read the text and created pre-writings on "What It Means to Be a Citizen." Tomorrow, they will complete the writing. For Reader's Workshop today and tomorrow, they practiced their fluency by working on a Reader's Theater about Martin Luther King, Jr. We will be performing these for some classes on Tuesday. They asked why we had Monday off of school and I thought this was a good way to show them!

Wednesday, January 16

Yay! Mr. Potato Head has eyes and a nose! Anyway, in Math, we continued to practice and review probability and fractions. I saw some light bulbs flick on as well as others growing brighter and am hopeful that it shows in the assessment tomorrow! Please help your child practice fractions and probability tonight. They are still learning what it means to study and practice for Math tests. In Read Aloud, someone the same age as Mary tried to befriend her and although she longs for companionship, she is not quite there yet with the acceptance of her place as a member of the tribe. In Reader's Workshop, students read and caught up on work for the beginning of the time and then met for their Book Clubs. Some kiddos are gaining the independence and joy for these meetings while a few others still need some help to see that reading can be enjoyable and entertaining. In Writer's Workshop, we began a fictional narrative for a specific setting. When finished, we will be hanging these up and trying to match them to the settings they were written for. Finally, we ended our day with Guidance. Mrs. Vidic read and discussed virtues.

Tuesday, January 15

So I spent the day assessing students on their reading with non-fiction text but I was only out in the hall and could hear that the students did well with the substitute. Her comment was that they were an "active group"--I'll take that. I think that could be why I am so exhausted at the end of each day... In Math, students practiced probability with spinners, dice, letter tiles, and word problems. They practiced fractions with making specified shapes using color tiles. Tomorrow, we will continue to practice and then I will assess on Thursday. I want and think they should be able to apply their knowledge of fractions and probability with all of the extra practice so I will not be giving a review sheet with this one. Check out the standards that came home in the homework packet if you have questions as to what they are responsible for. In Read Aloud, they learned a little about Martin Luther King, Jr. as many of them had been asking why we had Monday off of school. We will also be doing a reader's theater of his famous speech. (In assessing today, I found that a lot of students' accuracy has improved but we still have pretty slow readers--we need to work on speeding up their cadence and this should help with that.) In Reader's Workshop, they read independently, worked on an OAA passage and continued more with the setting they worked with yesterday. Today, they imagined the kind of characters and problems could be possible in their setting. Almost everyone finished publishing their personal experience narrative today in Writer's Workshop! I can't wait to read them, although, from the titles, I'm not positive that I want to as some sound really gross, i.e. Foot Hole, Bloody Hand, etc. In Social Studies, they reviewed what led up to Ohio preparing for statehood. We should be a state sometime next week! Man it took a long time to get to 1803...

Monday, January 14

Today was a little abnormal in that I was out this morning to take my daughter to an appointment but the learning was still the same--they had a great substitute! In Math, they worked on creating all the possible combinations of probabilities. For example, if they had 4 different color shirts and 4 different color shorts, what are all the different combinations? According to the sub, this went great. I was back at lunch only to "remember" that I had a meeting to plan library and technology for a little while in the afternoon... :)  Students read more Cinderella books-this time about a dinosaur and one about big foot. I'm sure they had a lot to say about the settings here. Then, in Reader's Workshop, they read silently, described certain settings using all different parts of speech and completed a reading OAA passage from a previous test. In Writer's Workshop, they continued with the writing process on their personal narratives. Some are very behind and might need to work a little at home. This CAN count for their writing homework. We got new words in Word Study and in Science, we made before and after pictures of Earth's Surface with rapid processes.

TGIFriday, January 11

Today, in Math, we worked as responsible learners and determined which skills we really needed to work on and practiced them. For some, we made fractions of the class. For others, we created spinners, predicted results, found actual results and then compared the results. Some students used dice or pennies to find probabilities too. We continued to looke at similes in Beaded Moccasins as well as looking at the author's craft with the inner monologue of the character and how the author used italics to show that the character was thinking to herself. Mary has just reached the Cuyahoga River and I was able to show students pictures from the cave where Mary stayed as I visited it quite a few years ago in Cuyahoga Falls. They thought that was pretty cool! It always make a story more enjoyable when you connect to it. In Reader's Workshop, we continued to increase our cadence and stamina with independent reading. Most of us are finished with our personal narratives and were able to free write today while others continued with the writing process. All of these need to be finished by Tuesday so some students brought them home to work on over the weekend. In Social Studies, we performed our skits and commercials. Good job kiddos! Most of them showed their understanding of the times as there were only a few slipups like cooking in an oven... :)

Wednesday and Thursday, January 9-10

I was out yesterday afternoon for an appointment and there was a substitute. In the morning, for Math, we practiced fractions and probability. We figured out fractions of a square, created our own and solved others' as well as played various fraction and probability games. According to the sub, the classroom behavior was not good in the afternoon and it seems that from her notes, she will not be returning anytime soon-if ever. The students agreed that their behavior was not great and so today we went back to the basics. Maybe we got a little too comfortable and our behavior mirrored that. So, today, we spent the majority of the day in our seats, working mostly, independently. We also kept our shoes on instead of getting comfy and ate snack two times instead of whenever. Boys also have had difficulty with playing in the restroom so now boys may not use the restroom as a group. Hopefully, these changes will change the behaviors as well, as it did today. We had a wonderful day! Tomorrow will be the same and we may slowly get back to the way things were as long as the behaviors continue on the positive. Academically, students read different versions of Cinderella to focus on the setting and its importance to a story, built their stamina by reading independently and met with their book clubs. They also continued writing their personal narratives and in Social Studies, they got into groups to create skits to show what the new settlers experienced.

Today, in Math, we did an experiment and practiced creating and comparing predicted results to actual results. We have a few more things to work on so our assessment over probability and re-assessment over fractions will probably be later next week. We followed Mary on her journey with the Delaware in Beaded Moccasins and tried to improve their cadence and words per minute as well as stamina with independent reading in Reader's Workshop. (Ask your kiddo about cadence and stamina...) We continued with the writing process for our personal narratives in Writer's Workshop. In Social Studies, we practiced our skits and will be 'performing' them tomorrow.

Tuesday, January 8

Today was a great day! We got a lot done and a lot of learning was happening. In Math, we worked with probability by creating and using spinners. We had to use our knowledge of equivalent fractions to create the spinners and then use our understanding of  'fraction of' to find expected results of the spinners. After some extra explaining and more practice, I think we got it. Mary started feeling more like the Unami tribe after Hepte gave her leggings and beautiful moccasins in Beaded Moccasins today. We also found quite a few similes while reading and wrote these down on paper moccasins to be hung around the room. In Reader's Workshop, we continued to build our stamina while reading independently. Today wasn't as great as yesterday but hopefully, their stamina will increase as the week goes on. They also concentrated on the setting and its importance while reading. We continued to work on our personal narratives in Writer's Workshop. Most are in the rough draft or first copy stage of the writing process. These need to be descriptive and I'm sure they will need to elaborate and add details during revising. Settlers are moving into the Ohio territory in Social Studies! We read together and discussed the steps needed to make the state of Ohio and read about what life is like for those new settlers. They are excited about taking this understanding and using it to "show" this description tomorrow in a short story, skit, advertisement or commercial.

Monday, January 7

Hello! Today was a pretty productive day. In Math, we continued to practice our problem solving skills with fractions. I gave them some tough activities and they proved to be really tough. Some children had some trouble with perseverance though and would have rather just given up. Some of the papers are in their orange folders if you'd like to use them toward math log. In Beaded Moccasins, our newest read aloud, Mary Campbell was captured by Delaware Indians to replace the Sachem's granddaughter! It is a really good book and helps to solidify the concepts we are learning in Social Studies as well as helping us to understand historical fiction. Students are reading longer independently this week. We are reading longer books for Book Clubs and with longer historical fiction or other fiction books, they need to read for a longer period of time to gain the information needed to understand what is happening in the book. I am also trying to build stamina up as they are used to only sticking with one thing for about 20 minutes or so. They have a tic-tac-toe activity log to help guide them with their independent reading. In Writer's Workshop, we discussed personal narratives and students are going to be writing their own this week. Finally, we completed some Social Studies, discussing the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. These are tough concepts for kiddos to understand and I'm doing my best to help solidify their understanding. Any insight you can give at home is much appreciated to help with this understanding.

TGIFriday, January 4

In Math today, we played some fraction games in the computer lab. We went through eSchool to get to Illuminations to play Equivalent Fractions, Fraction Models and Fraction Game. They really liked the last one. If you would like to try any of them out, you can access them by going to illuminations.nctm.org. From looking over the assessments a few times, I feel that they mostly understand the basic concepts of fractions but lack the application and problem solving so I also had them working on these skills through some problem solving worksheets. We will continue this work next week too. We finished our Year in Pictures during Reader's Workshop and met for Literature Circles with book groups. They are reading fictional chapter books and kind of in charge of how much they read and what they are discussing. These books are at their INSTRUCTIONAL level therefore they may need some help with understanding certain words, concepts or situations. In Writing, we reviewed our previous Word Study generalizations and focused on the patterns and generalizations using Rainbow Spelling. Anytime we can use crayons is great! Knowing these generalizations is important as they are going to be held more responsible for using them in their writing. After discussing weathering and erosion yesterday and again today in Science, we imitated this process using soil, sugar and sugar cubes. Students did a great job with distinguishing between the two terms. They also were able to make the connection of imitating the processes because the processes actually take years and years.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

In Math today, we fixed our assessment on fractions. Only a handful "passed" the assessment. I did some re-teaching and gave them a second chance to complete the problems they missed. I will grade these tonight and send them home tomorrow. Hopefully, they will do better this second time around...unfortunately, the ones that needed to, didn't spend much more time fixing their mistakes. We'll see how it worked for them! Please look for them to come home tomorrow. We are also still working with probability and homework for the week is to play a game. Tough, right?! In Reader's Workshop, we continued working on our 2012 in pictures. We need one more day to finish these. For Writer's Workshop today, I had the students write about Math. Some did an amazing job. I told them that I was looking more at their writing and spelling than their math but some truly struggled with writing about math. I will look these over and make some notes but I found that some are not putting forth the effort they need to be successful. We finished our day with a video about Weathering and Erosion for Science. We will be doing some more work with the changes to Earth's surface tomorrow and next week.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013!

Wow! I can't believe that it is already 2013...time flies when you are having fun! We are almost halfway through this trimester and I feel like we are a little behind in a few areas-especially Science and Social Studies. Oh well... nothing we can do but keep on keeping on! Today, we began the day reminiscing about Christmas and what we all did over break. I wanted to get this out of the way so we didn't share all day long. For the most part, this worked great. In Math, we worked with fractions in the form of probability and chance. We talked about outcomes using playing cards. Some kiddos play cards more than others and therefore had a little easier time today. In Reader's Workshop, we read a Time For Kids about 2012 in review in pictures. We will be making our own Year in Pictures too! Some students had a lot of important events that happened in 2012 where others found it a little more challenging to find these landmark events of the previous year. In Writing, we discussed and wrote resolutions and ended our first day back with Guidance.