Math Choices

We are spending this week reviewing and preparing for our upcoming math test that we will take on Friday.  Today we split up into 3 different groups.  One group worked on Ten Marks while another played 101-201 Bingo, and then one group got to work on white-boards with me. 

I think we are ready to test on chapter one!

Pencils

Yesterday during the launch of Work On Writing one of the students brought up fine motor skills.  They suggested that we will be working on writing to make our writing neater.  I decided to take that moment to show a neat trick I learned, thanks to Pinterest, that will help them hold their pencils correctly.

We began by folding a piece of tissue in to small rectangle.

We placed that small rectangle on our hand and clinched it with our last three fingers.

We were left with our index finger and thumb to hold our pencil.  Voila!  As long as we hold on to the tissue then we can only use our index finger and thumb to hold our pencil.

JLT Elections

This morning was filled with many speeches, catchy songs, and clever poems.

We held our classroom JLT elections to determine who would represent our class for the year.

We heard from Grayson, Jack, Mary Bradford, and Hannah.

Then we heard from Jake, Molly, Annalaura, Alyssa, and Sam.

The students each voted and, following a run-off, we had 2 winners.

Congratulations Sam and Mary Bradford!!

Welcome to the club!

Both Johnathan and Alyssa had the privilege of signing THE JEANS today!

Book Talks Galore

We have learned about a few fabulous books this week.

Shamaree shared with us about Hamsters.  He even brought his hamster, Gibby, in to share with us.

Hannah shared a book called The Gold Cadillac.  It was about the Civil Rights Movement.

Samira shared her book, Clementine, with us.

Mary Bradford encouraged us to read one of her favorites, Loser.

And Lawren shared Bad Kitty For President.

I have enjoyed hearing about each of these wonderful books.

Math

Wednesday mornings are super busy for us.  The kids enter the room, quickly place their things where they belong, and then we head back out the door for Art and Library.  By the time they return, it's math time. We began math with our first multiplication test for the week.  While the multiplication test was being given a few students decided they wanted to go out into the hallway and prepare for their sound test that we took today.

I LOVED hearing them work with one another.  They were using FABULOUS elbow buddy voices and working so well together!

Our math lesson today was a continuation of adding and estimating.  The students and I have discussed several times how they typically work quickly through addition problems because they seem very easy. The truth is, most students miss more addition and subtraction problems due to careless mistakes than any other type of math problem.  We are working on SLOWING down as we add so that we can avoid these careless mistakes.

Each student received a number cube today and generated 3, 4, 5, & 6 digit numbers to add together.  The students also had to estimate each of these numbers and add them.  This activity was pretty much the same thing we've been working on all week, but the number cube made it a little more fun for them.  It's amazing what one small thing can do to excite them about math!

It was a HOOT!

Jake presented a fabulous book talk on Hoot today.  Jake told the students that the book "is a HOOT!" trying to encourage them to read it for themselves.

Jake also did something extra for his share and created a news cast by using iMovie.  He was GREAT to see what a little extra hard work can create :)

Happy Birthday!

Today is our friend Ron's birthday.  He brought cookies and a juice box to share with our class so that we could help him celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Ron!

JLT Time!

We had several awesome posters come in for JLT elections that will be held Friday.

How will we ever decide who to vote for?????

Learning to Write

Today we began our first mini-lesson on writing.  We thought it would be best to put first things first and review how to correctly write a sentence.  We decided that every sentence needs 4 things:  1.)  a subject/noun 2.) a predicate/verb 3.) a capital letter at the beginning 4.)  an end mark

We spent 15 minutes working on a free write which means each student was able to write about ANYTHING they wanted to as long as they wrote the ENTIRE time.

We used our handy-dandy name generator to select 3 students to share their stories with us.

Sam shared about Snail Bob and a crazy marriage proposal.

Nykia shared about her teacher from last year, Mrs. Morris.

Hudson shared about his trip to Enterprise, AL to play in the All-Star State Championship Tournament.

Book Shares

Book shares have begun!  Joshua did a fabulous job Friday as he presented our very first book share for the year!  He taught us about a neat book, Inifinity Ring.  There are probably 10 other students in the classroom reading this book right now.  It was a HOT seller at the book fair.

Sam presented his book today.  He shared a little about Mike Lupica's book Million Dollar Throw.  I think some of the girls were even interested in this book following his share.  Way to go, Sam!

 

Annalaura presented her share on the SOUE, The Bad Beginning.  I LOVE this series and am so excited to have several students in my class this year that love the series, too.  Annalaura's presentation peaked several students' interest as they searched for an extra copy of the book today during Daily Three.  Thank you for sharing, Annalaura.



Brothers, Sisters, and A Smarty

Our daily data this week was about our family.

We learned that we have 1 only child in our classroom, 4 people with only a brother(s), 11 people with only a sister(s), 7 people with both brothers and sisters, and 7 more people in our classroom have a sister than a brother.

We also wrote a probability statement about our data.  A few of our statements were:

1.  It is likely that more people in our school have a sister than a brother.

2.  The number of sisters in our classroom is greater than the number of brothers in our classroom.

3.  If we received a new classmate, it would be unlikely for them to be an only child.

Finally...We crowned another smarty.  Congratulations to....

ZOEY!!!

Xylophones, Kalimbas, & String Beams, OH MY!

We have LOVED our unit on sound.  The kids have played and played and played.  Yesterday we learned about how length affects the pitch of an instrument/sound source.

We played with several instruments and arranged them from highest pitch to lowest pitch.

We played with a xylophone,

a waterphone,

 a kalimba,

  and a string beam.

We also recorded all of our results in our science notebook as we always do.  

Once we finished working in our science notebook we took some time to make predictions about instruments and their pitch based on their size.  We listened to the flute, clarinet, bassoon, tuba, trumbone, bass drum, and snare drum.  

Ask your child what they learned about length and pitch!

The Book Fair

The reading fanatic in me gets just as excited about the book fair as the students do.  The students have spent so much time shopping at the book fair.  They have come away with many wonderful books, and some wonderful toys :).  There have been several parents and grandparents that have donated money to our classroom so that I could purchase a few books.  I was able to purchase 9 books for our classroom library from your donations.  THANK YOU!

Our new books are:

The Lemonade Crime

Signal

Masters of Disaster

Notes From The Dog

Dork Diaries:  A Not So Popular Pop Star

Face To Face With Dolphins

Tim Tebow

The Underdogs

Hogwash

Floors

Horns & Wrinkles

Out Of My Mind

Whew, What a Monday!

We had a busy MATH day today!  We did lots and lots and lots of math. 

As always we took a multiplication test, and today Mary Bradford got to sign the jeans!  Way to go!

Mary Bradford also celebrated her birthday this past weekend.  She brought a cookie cake to share with us today.  Happy Birthday Mary Bradford!

Our Watch D.O.G. for the day was Scott Bailey, Jake Bailey's dad.  Mr. Bailey was here to help students in our school with reading and math.  He also spent a lot of time in our classroom helping in various ways.  At the end of the day he taught us a new dance called the Interlude by Attack Attack.  The kids LOVED it.