Action Verbs and Strong Verbs

Today we took a look at Action Verbs.  We discussed action verbs like running, writing, and drinking.  We took each of those verbs and came up with better/stronger verbs that are synonyms for the words.  For drinking we used words like slurping, gulping, and sipping.  For writing students came up with printing, scribbling, scripting, and outlining.  For running the other word choices were sprinting, jogging, galloping, and skipping.  We talked about how strong verbs help writers paint word pictures and create mind movies for their readers.

Realistic Fiction

Today in reader's workshop we began a genre study.  Today's genre focus was on Realistic Fiction.  We learned what makes Realistic Fiction different from other genres and we discussed several pieces of literature that are examples of Realistic Fiction.

 Each student is also beginning to get excited about recommending books to others.  Students can use this poster in the room to recommend books to their classmates, or they can use a recommendation card and place it on a particular student's desk if they know an individual that they think would really enjoy a certain book.

Prehistoric Indian Cultures

This week we began learning about the first explorers in Alabama.  There are 3 prehistoric indian tribes we study at the beginning of our Alabama History study and they are the Paleo, Archaic, and Woodland Tribes.  We took a look at their cultures and how they are similar, how they changed, and how they compare to our cultures today.  We are learning that even though each culture is unique in it's own way, they are each very similar, too.

Science Notebooks - G.L.O.B.E

Today we began working in our science notebooks.  We began my preparing our title page for our first units.  Our first units will be G.L.O.B.E (global learning and observation to benefit the environment) and Science Notebooking Skills.  Students decorated their title page by illustrating what G.L.O.B.E and science mean to them.

Map Skills

This week we began working on map skills.  We are learning about lines of latitude and longitude, the Equator and Prime Meridian, Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Hemispheres, all 7 continents, and our cardinal directions.

Coby - Student of the Week

Friday Game Day

Each Friday in math I plan to give a short quiz covering the material learned during the week.  Following the quiz students will be able to play math games that go along with the skills we learned during the week.  We will continue to add games to our "game day" list throughout the year so they will have a lot of variety and review.
This weeks game to be introduced was Close to 1,000.  Close to 1,000 focuses on place value and also addition and subtraction.  Students really have to pay attention to the place value of each digit in order to get the best score possible.

Close to 1,000 Rules

 Game Board

Players

*Ooops - they're upside down* :)

More players

Games in action

Estimation

In math on Thursday we learned how to add and subtract by using estimation.  My favorite quote from the day was, "WOW!  Why didn't they teach us this in 1st grade?  This would have saved me so much time!"  LOL.  They are so funny!

Once students learned how to estimate and add/subtract they practiced several problems by working with their neighbors.

Good Morning Leon Sheffield!

Each morning our school runs a morning show called Good Morning Leon Sheffield.  As GMLS comes on there is typically a song and video of students and classes in our school.  This year we decided to have all of the students come out into the hallway and wave to the camera.  It was really neat having all 366 students lining the hallways of Leon Sheffield, waving, and smiling!

Tuesday and Wednesday Catch-Up

Culture Brainstorm

On Tuesday we began a class brainstorm list about culture.  Each student told me what they know about culture and they even added the different ways people can express themselves to our list.  We got a lot of great responses and a great jump start to our first IB unit.  My main question to the class during our brainstorm was, "Are cultures and countries the same thing?"  Ask your child what they think about that question!

Reading Goals

As we began reading workshop on Tuesday afternoon we took some time to set 2 goals for ourselves as readers.  The goals could be for improvement in comprehension, accuracy, or responsibility, and a goal could also be about what type(s) of books/genres they may wish to try.  Ask your child what his or her current reading goals are and how they plan to achieve them.

Spelling Menu!

On Tuesday we also learned what our spelling menu item choices are.  Here is a list of menu choices in case you need to reference them at some point.  They are also listed on the classroom website.  www.dcs.edu/webpages/lupton

Writer's Workshop
Getting an Idea

During writer's workshop we have a mini-lesson that focuses on a new skill and then we spend about 30 minutes practicing that new skill.  We keep all of our notes from mini-lessons in our writer's notebooks and then we have our writing sample behind our mini-lesson notes.  Today's skill was 'Getting an Idea'.  Good writer's need to know how to come up with an idea for writing so today we spent a little time getting a jump-start on a list of ideas.  We began brainstorming topics we could write about and came up with quite a nice list!

This is a picture of student's writing using their new list of ideas.  Today they were able to choose their own topic to write about!

The City of Ember

Main Characters & Setting

Compare & Contrast

We have been reading The City of Ember for about a week and a half now and we have been introduced to quite a few characters.  Today we took some time to create a poster to hang in our classroom to remind us of some of the main characters.  We also took a few minutes to discuss what the setting of a story is and to talk about the setting of The City of Ember.

The City of Ember also goes along with our culture unit.  The people of Ember have a very different culture from us.  We also learned that there are a few things that are similar between our culture and their culture.  Through this thought we learned that although there are many cultures that are all very different, they are also all very similar!

This is our Venn Diagram we constructed to compare and contrast our world and our cultures vs. the City of Ember and their culture.

Reader's Workshop

Expanding Our Vocabulary

Today in Reader's Workshop our focus was ways to expand our vocabulary.  We learned there are many ways to learn new words but the most important thing to remember is that when we come across a new word while reading we should find out it's meaning!  To practice this skill as an entire class we read a short non-fiction, informational book about butterflies.

While reading the book Butterfly we came across the word chrysalis.  Many of us were unfamiliar with the word chrysalis so we had to use a strategy to determine the meaning of the word.  The strategy we were able to use while reading this book was to look at the pictures around the word to help determine the meaning of the word.  We were able to look at the picture below and determine that a chrysalis is similar to a cocoon.

Other strategies we learned we could use are:
-ask an adult
-look up the word in the dictionary
-use context clues

Students then used their reader's notebooks as they read to record words they were unfamiliar with. Their challenge was to find out the meaning of the word by using one of our new strategies. We learned lots of new words through this activity today!

Reading and IB Planner + Picture Day!

Reading Skill

Today's reading skill was a comprehension strategy. We learned how to check for understanding as we read by retelling or summarizing what we read. We practiced by reading

Tornadoes is a non-fiction, informative text that we read as a class.  Once we finished reading Tornadoes we summarized what we read to see if we understood.  Students then practiced this new skill during their independent reading time.

Students spent about 20 minutes reading independently before getting their reader's notebooks and summarizing the pages the read on their IDR task sheet.  We will continue to work on this still tomorrow.

IB

Today we also began our first IB planner which is called Expressions.  Expressions is a planner that focuses on how we express ourselves.  We will take a close look at cultures and how they vary around the world.  We will begin each unit by making a folder for that particular unit.

We will also copy down the main parts of the planner so that we know what we're going to be studying. I think it is also important for students to understand the format of IB and learn the vocabulary associated with each planner.  Often times students have never heard of a "Central Idea" or a "Line of Inquiry" and both are a large part of what makes up an IB planner.

Picture Day!

Picture day is Wednesday, August 24th!  Don't forget to dress your best and smile big :).  We will take pictures in the morning so you may wish to bring a change of clothes for the remainder of the day.  Remember, this is the picture that will go in the yearbook.  

August 18th and 19th

Reader's Notebooks

Thursday we spent the day learning all about our Reader's Notebooks.  We discussed every sheet in our notebook in detail and even wrote our first entry on our Reader's Response sheet.

Robotics Training

On Friday I spent the day in a Robotics Training at Calhoun.  Mrs. Corson and I sponsor the robotics team at Leon Sheffield and, until Friday, had received no training.  We taught ourselves a ton last year but we still were anxious to improve and learn more for this year!

We were given this book

and these pieces

and told to construct our robot. 

 This is what mine looked like!

It kind of reminded me of Wall-E.

This is what my robot did...

Using a computer program, I programmed my robot to travel forward for 3 seconds, rotate the lever to hit the ball, make an applauding sound, travel backwards for 3 seconds, and then say "brilliant!".

This was a very cool training!  Mrs. Corson, Mrs. Poovey, Mrs. Farris, and myself all had the best time!  We made some really neat robots and programmed them to do some really cool things.  The training continues Saturday morning at 9.  I know we're going to learn a lot more then!

 A Sneak Peak At Next Week's Spelling Words

This week's spelling skill is suffixes.  We will be looking at words with the following suffixes:

-ous, -ful, -ly, -ment, and -less

joyous

useful

lonely

dangerous

hopeful

movement

playful

careless

freely

painful

helpless

statement

hazardous

gladly

marvelous

fearless

treatment

suddenly

shipment

harmless

Reader's Notebooks

Today was a busy day and once again, I didn't take too many pictures.  I'm going to try to do better, but a few shots a day may be as good as it gets to do the constant movement that goes on in our classroom.
We did daily morning work for the first time this morning.  The students did very well with both the math and language skills.  We had another morning in math, followed by art, and then a trip to the computer lab.
In the computer lab each student took a STAR test so we could get an idea of their current reading level.  I had a conference with each student about their reading level and we discussed what 'just right' books would be for them.  Each students' goal is to be reading a 'just right' book or a slightly challenging book.  I asked each person not to read an easy book because easy books are not going to help them grow as a reader!

This is the sheet students will keep in their reader's notebooks that will help them keep track of their reading level.  We will try to test for a new reading level every month or two so each student can constantly push his or herself to become a better reader.

This is a reading log students will keep in their reader's notebooks.  This log is different from their daily reading log that is initialed because this log just keeps track of what book they are currently reading, what the genre of the book is, when they completed the book, and whether the book was E (easy), JR (just right), or C (challenging).

This sheet will also be kept in reader's notebooks.  This sheet will be used to help us locate information in our notebooks that will help us become better readers.  We are going to keep handouts in reader's notebooks to help us with comprehension, fluency, accuracy, understanding genres, and much more!

We will be continuing to add other pieces to our reader's notebooks over the next week.  We will also practice using these notebooks in class together before students work completely independently with them.  Once all of the pieces are in each notebook and your child understands their book, he or she will be bringing it home to share with you so you can see what it is we are working on at school :).

After a long day of work, work, work we finished our day with a little recess outside.  

Glyphs and Writer's Notebooks

Today was our first day to meet for math.  We will meet every day from 9:00 - 10:00.  Today in math we learned what will be expected in class, we made a glyph, and we played multiplication kickball with Mr. Holmes' math class.  I forgot my camera at home today so I had to take video.  Here is a video of the kids working on their football glyphs.

We also learned about writing in class today.  We set up our writer's notebooks and reviewed what we know about sentences and paragraphs.  After our review we wrote about our first day at school.

Our First Day Of School

We had such a great first day of school!  This morning the students quietly walked down the hall and into the classroom.  They learned that they should immediately make their lunch choice, then unpack, then finally sit down and read the board.  We will work on perfecting our morning routine throughout the week, but I have a feeling they're going to do a fabulous job tomorrow!  This morning once they unpacked and got seated they began working on their welcome packet.  The first day of school is always a quiet one.  Everyone is trying to get comfortable in their new "home" for the year and they're a little nervous about what they can and cannot do.  I snapped this picture during their quiet working time.  I'll take another one in a few weeks and we'll see if they still look this hard at work :)

 I always like to take a group picture on the first day of school.  This is my lovely group of 4th graders!  Man do they look smart :)

 Of course they wanted to do a silly picture :)

 By the time we got to lunch they were loosened up and talking to one another.  They seemed to really enjoy their first day at lunch with their friends.

 A few other things we did today :
1.)  We learned 1 fun thing that each student did this summer
2.)  We played outside
3.)  We went to Spanish
4.)  We set up and learned about or D.O.T. Book
5.)  We learned how we would go to the cafeteria and leave the cafeteria
6.)  We began reading The City of Ember
7.)  We organized our desks, crayon boxes, and cubbies