Halloween Monday

Wow, what a crazy and FAST day today was!

The party was a LOT of fun and the costumes everyone had was great! Pictures will be coming soon. Parents: If you have any pictures, please email them to me so I can get a slideshow put together asap! Thanks so much for all of your hard work decorating and your support with snacks and games! We couldn't do it without you!

Book Orders Due Tomorrow (Tuesday)!

Calling all book orderers!

Book orders are due tomorrow by the end of the day! Online is the best way because you don't have to find those paper forms AND our classroom gets a free book... win win!!

There are some great books and a wonderful opportunities to start holiday shopping early (I know it's weird to start thinking about it now but it's a good idea to plan ahead... Halloween is in one week after all and those holidays are going to be here before we know it!)

See you all tomorrow!

Autumn Mobiles

Autumn Mobiles

Click on the link above to see a quick Animoto video showing our first art project - Fall Art Mobiles! They turned out great and add an autumn festiveness to our classroom!

WANTED: Post-it Notes!

Finding Nemo in sticky notes, anyone?

I'm not asking for quite that many stickies but we are sure in need of some in Room 15. We are using our stickies to record our thinking in our books and mark important information to deepen our thinking. Right now each child only gets 2 stickies per book which is terrible! I feel like I am telling them, "Please don't think very much on this book!" So, we are in need of sticky notes of any size, shape, and color (and actually the wider variety the better!). If you're out and see a great deal and are thinking of us, we would be SO thankful!

Wednesday.... already?!?

Well I swear, I have been blinking and the day is over! It's going to be Thanksgiving before we know it!

Today was a very quick day to say the least! Roots of Empathy in the morning, all the way to our student council assembly in the afternoon so we could vote for our 5th grade class president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. Whew! Great speeches today!

This week we are working on long I words and are trying a new way to practice those spelling activities. We are using word sorts for students to really notice and learn spelling patterns in the week and gain more exposure to words that follow the same pattern. Each day during our word work time we are doing a different activity that relates to our word sorts. Monday we get our new words and explore with them, Tuesday we draw pictures that go with the sorted words (only 10 pictures are required), Wednesday is sorting with a partner, Thursday is finding words in books, and Friday is a partner practice quiz and our official spelling quiz. The students so far have really been doing well at noticing those word patterns and the activities have REALLY helped their reading with words that have the patterns we are focusing on.

This week we also started grammar during our writing time. This week we are discussing nouns and how to make nouns plural. This Friday we will be having a quiz on plural nouns to see how much we remember from the week. We will be working through parts of speech (at least the major ones like nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) and then we will work on improving our writing grammar which is a big area of improvement for the students.

Here is a great idea I'm thinking of for next week when we do adjectives to tie in Halloween since it's on the mind of EVERYONE! :) Thank you Pinterest for the great idea and Mrs. Lemons for your constant inspiration!

Adorable... right!? I can't wait to see what we come up with!

This week we are going to start finishing our first personal narrative which is really exciting as well. Most of the stories are so wonderful it's going to be great to publish and finally celebrate such a great accomplishment for everyone!

Book orders came home yesterday. Does anyone else LOVE book orders like I do? It's like a party whenever those white and red boxes arrive full of brand new books and I LOVE seeing the joy on every kid's face when the book orders are handed out. It's an instant love of reading which makes my teacher heart happy! Remember there is the option of ordering online to help our class earn more free books and points. Thanks for your support for our classroom and for your student's reading!

A Quick Reminder

I'm on my way to training so more posts will be coming tonight but I wanted to send a quick reminder that picture day is tomorrow!!

It will be individual pictures only and money is due to me (or done online) by tomorrow. We will have pictures first thing in the morning before recess so get those pearly whites ready for a big smile!

Monday!

Well another Monday has passed us and wow was it a fast one! Must have been eventful weekends because everyone was so tired today! :)

Since we have a shortened week we don't have a celebrity of the week and we won't have a spelling list since we want to make sure we have plenty of practice time. Enjoy the week off of spelling and get ready for more long vowels next week!

Today we finished our fall art mobiles and they turned out GREAT! Pictures coming soon!

Since we don't have spelling homework this week we have other homework that will be coming home this week. Today students have writing where they need to finish re-writing their discovery drafts of their personal narratives. Parent input is GREATLY appreciated for students. As a group we are having a really hard time understanding that the first draft we write is not perfect and needs to have adjustments made, whether that be spelling, paragraphing, grammar, etc. The kids seemed outraged when I suggest that they re-write a clean draft so we can continue editing this week. Once we started editing, though, they realized how much could be adjusted and changed.... and we haven't even started paragraphing! :) Baby steps and we will get there together!

We have also started working on alphabetizing and this week we will spend a lot of time working on dictionary skills. Dictionary skills are really important at this age to build vocabulary and have the ability to find words in a reasonable amount of time. Since the dictionaries are alphabetical we start with alphabetizing. Most of us did a fantastic job today and I was surprised how much they already knew! I can see this will be no problem for us which is great to hear! We are started building vocabulary next week and those dictionaries will be a lot of help for us!

Wish List

I've had a lot of families come to me and ask, is there anything Room 15 needs for extra supplies. First of all, you all are too generous to me! You're making our classroom such a wonderful place to teach and learn. Secondly, I often draw a HUGE blank when I'm not thinking about something we need so that doesn't help anyone! :)

So to help everyone out, I added our classroom wish list to the right hand sidebar so that if you're ever wondering I will constantly be adding and adjusting things on the list so I never have to give you that blank look again! :)

Thank you for your wonderful support and involvement so far this year! We've been off to a great start so far thanks to all of you!

Seiji Celebrity of the Week!

Seiji was this week's Celebrity of the Week! He chose to bring in so many special things to share with us. This one is a necklace his grandmother made...

and this is a necklace he got in Hawaii! Boy, did we love hearing about Hawaii!
You did a wonderful job this week Seiji!

There won't be a new celebrity this week since we are on a short week... no school Friday for a professional development day for teachers so enjoy that long weekend everyone! To make sure it's fair and everyone gets a full week we won't have a celebrity but on Thursday the new celebrity will be chosen... who will it be? :)

Roots of Empathy

Wednesday we started a new program that will last 28 weeks this year called Roots of Empathy. The program teaches the students how to become empathetic, respectful, and builds a classroom community. We even have a "class baby" that will help us through the process and once a month our real baby will visit the classroom so we can learn with him. We will get to see him learn and grow from 2 months old to 11 months old to find out how much changes in 9 months of life for a baby. We are all so excited to meet baby Leo this week!

The class is taught by Miss Lilia our school counselor. She has a green blanket that is only for baby Leo so we practiced staying off the blanket so Leo can have his space. This day we only used a doll to pretend what it would be like when Leo is here.

Miss Lilia taught us our greeting and leaving song for baby Leo and we got to practice so we are ready for his arrival this week!
Great job Room 15 for being such respectful and attentive listeners!
We get to meet baby Leo this week! I can't wait to see what's in store for us next!

Rhiannon Celebrity of the Week

Well.... I am so behind that I still have pictures of Rhiannon from her Celebrity of the Week (**cough, that was two weeks ago, cough**). Ahem, so here we are!

Rhiannon chose to bring her GIANT stuffed bear to share with us! He was definitely a favorite in the whole class!

That's a BIG bear!
Friday for Celebrity of the Week all the students get a poster signed by their classmates to take home!

Fall Art Mobiles

Whew! I can finally start to play catch up on the posts I've been hanging onto this week. YIKES!

Last Monday we started Art for the first semester. We got to start our fall art mobiles by using liquid starch and tissue paper to create a layered, fall-colored tissue paper base that we can cut into next art session to make our mobiles.

Look at those artists at work!

They all did a GREAT job listening and getting a thick layer of tissue paper down with a variety of fall colors. I can't wait to see how they turn out tomorrow!

Uh oh...

Guess which teacher has 2 thumbs and is TOTALLY slacking on making blog posts to all of my wonderful parents... THIS GIRL!

This week has totally slipped away from me and I have a TON to post! I will work hard on getting it up ASAP! Meetings and training every night made getting to the computer pretty much impossible! So sorry!!