Into The Mix of Week Six.



We've had another successful week. I can see each day your children growing stronger and stronger socially and academically. It's been amazing seeing our good citizens blossom, spreading kindness, encouragement, and love all throughout our community.

This week, I really saw the vast needs and differences we have in our classroom and how precious it is when we all jell together and function as a team. Also, this week we celebrated our new Good Citizen of the week, Kate, published our How To paragraphs, began writing friendly letters, finished up hundreds,tens, and ones, introduced even and odd numbers, and touched on geography! WOW! Here is a glimpse of our week.

Our Good Citizen Kate!



Tristan, our chief editor this morning! Tristan knows how to ask open-ended questions to get our morning message edited!

Just a bit of collaboration!

We are finishing up our unit on short vowels this week! Here you will see our family groups on a word search! Each family group took turns nominating a scribe to write the short vowel words that the rest of the group found in their Fall books. Most of these texts were WAY higher than where our readers are at right now but they were still able to search and find short vowel words that they know!! It went beautifully!

See us in action here.

It must be fall!

This is what our Friday spelling tests look like.

How To Paragraph

We have been working on using transition words to help us put our writing in order! We've all just about published!

We have ALL worked extremely hard on our writing this week!

Our library has been renovated! Everything is still lexile leveled but with the help of our librarians and our amazing room moms, we have an easy to read system at our hand! Our readers now have even more ownership over their learning!

For all our auditory/kinesthetic learners, Thursdays we practice spelling orally with a friend! These guys have got it!

Working hard in workshop!

Sometimes we just need a little snuggle break...

and sometimes we need to dance!



Growing Wise in Week Five!

This week things got real. Summer is long gone and we've got our brains buried deep in number sense, paragraphs, good citizenship, and responsibilities.

Here is a look at our week!
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Fun With Tens & Ones

My two favorite parings are learning & moving. This sweet little game (Speedy Musical Chairs) is new to our community and we are so excited! In an effort to solidify our understanding of tens and ones we are moving and grooving! This is for all our kinestetic learners! Enjoy! (click here)


Another way we like to practice our tens and ones, speaking to our visual and written learners, is through the use of white boards! Enjoy! (click here)

Dance Around Words

In this game we have 5 sounds around the room written on white boards. There are 5 groups  that must work together and give words to their scribe who writes words with the sound. When the music stops, they must switch!

Our Good Citizen

This is generally what our good citizen poster sharing will look like. I won't be able to put videos up for every good citizens poster share, BUT, I wanted you to see how we use the posters to promote critical thinking and open ended questions. Good Citizen Poster Share (Click here)

Our Good Citizen!

Now You Teach!

My goal is to work myself out of a job! We've got some gifted teachers in this classroom and I LOVE to use their strengths. Through the course of this year, I will be promoting independent learning by making your children the teachers! Here is a perfect example of what that looks like!

Team Based Learning

I love to introduce new sounds through games and team work! Here is a very intense example of our race to /d/ from earlier this week. As you can see, we get very loud and excited about learning.

OPEN For Business!

 

This is such an exciting week because our classroom library is officially OPENED!!!! We can read to little buddies in comfy and cozy chairs and check out books that are just right for us!

What are you going to teach the world?

After watching this video from our Kid President, I asked this BIG question on Monday morning. In an effort to think globally and into the future I want to get brains turning about what kind of impact they can make on the world. We used this question as a journal entry. Their ideas were AWESOME! As loud and rowdy as we like to get, we also like to be still and reflect. Journaling (click here)

Birthdays!

We had two birthdays this week and both birthday girls brought in some wonderfully healthy snacks! Thank you moms for taking the time to keep our community healthy and strong!

 

Salsa Rhyme Write

This week we are working hard on rhyming short vowel words! Here we are doing a Salsa Rhyme Write switch! Student's get a card, start making rhymes and when the music stops they have to switch cards with a friend and start all over! Click here to see!

Here is another way we are practicing our rhymes!

Just a few of our matches

Sharing animal journal entry with family groups.

Chief Editors At Work

We know how to be good citizens!

I Adore Week Four!

This has been the best week yet! We are making massive strides! I am amazed by your learners! They are becoming scholars, studying math, words, and social skills with enthusiasm and bright eyes. We have given out more jobs and continued learning the ways of Editors, Authors, and Mathematicians. Here is just a bit of our wonderful week!
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We've got Brain Breaks coming out of our ears! Here are you silly dancers getting their wiggles out.
Barking Brain Breaks (click for video)

 We like to move it move it! (click)

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I can make the world a better place...

As we continue to grow as a community we are learning about ways to be good citizens within our classrooms, in our neighborhoods, and around the world. In an effort to increase our global awareness, we are learning about different needs around the world and how we can help! We have had rich discussion about feeding the hungry, giving shelter to orphans, speaking to the Japanese government about "unkind" hunting  of dolphins, and devising plans as to how to get water to Africa.  Just to name a few. 

One way we thought we could make the world a better place was by "painting" a mural, bringing art to our community. SO, in our hallway is our final product, our mural. Though it's been crafted with markers, tape, and paper, the message is still the same. Our mural depicts a puzzle piece world held together by things that we think are beautiful and or could make the world a better place. All around the world we stand, with our think bubbles floating with selfless ideas for how to make the world better. This class is truly full of love and compassion!

                                 

We started this project by getting a pep talk from Kid President. After we were all pumped up, we started to discuss ways we could make our community a better place through good citizenship. Then, we began expanding our thoughts after watching this video.

Then...We got busy!

 The artists + a few who left early.

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 Authors at work. We are breaking in our new primary notebooks!


This is how we plan.

 

 

We have all published our Fall writing! (picture to come) Come visit our hallway to have a nice informational read about Fall!

 

We like to use the white boards to practice making words.

We took a break from classroom learning to take our NWEA tests.

 

Our newest bit of excitement happens on Fridays! We get to vote for the following weeks Good Citizen of the week! Everyone votes for a friend who has been an excellent citizen of our community. All voters have to write who they are voting for and give a GOOD reason why they are voting for that person. This is a source of great excitement for everyone!

Probably one of the highlights of our week! Your kid's got a double dose of vegetables on this day! Mr. Kime brought me a nice and juicy green smoothie and your healthy eaters wanted to try some! They LOVED it! Mrs. Kime Shares Her Green Slime (Click for video)


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We have also been working on writing detailed sentences. We are turning aburrido (boring) sentences and making them into yummy picante (spicy) sentences with lots of detail and flavor!

 



In this video you can take a look at our learning style. We are currently learning how to be editors. We have editing tools and mixed up messages! This is a whole class lesson. The message was on the board first thing in the morning for the editors. They were instructed to copy the sloppy message and then edit it with their editing tool. THEN, as a class, we did this > Editors In Trianing (Click for video)