Week of March 5th, 2012

What an exciting week it has been!  This will be a picture heavy post since there have been so many big events happen since last Friday.  I'll start off with the Dr. Seuss assembly.  We had various local celebrities come to Chavez to read Dr. Seuss books to us.  Our special guest was David George of Channel 15 News.  One of the coolest things was that he was the one who read Green Eggs and Ham to the WHOLE SCHOOL!  Then, he came up to our classroom and read Oh The Places You'll Go to just our class.  We felt very spoiled.  A few of our favorite mascots showed up too!  David George even gave our class a shoutout on the news that night!  Did anyone catch it?  The following are some pictures from the assembly and David George reading to us!

As you can see, we had an awesome morning last Friday!

Following our exciting guests, we had our final Junior Achievement class.  We did an activity in which we each had a role in creating a car and we made a web to demonstrate how everyone was needed to make and sell the cars we drive.  Following the activity, we had an informal graduation ceremony.

Our last big event of Friday was reading with our second grade learning buddies during their read-in.  The buddies had a blast reading Dr. Seuss books together and played games!

WHEW!  That was a lot, but Friday was super exciting and I know everyone likes seeing themselves doing awesome things so I couldn't leave anything out.

Now onto this week...

Literacy:

Writing:

We finished up our realistic fiction stories.  The students worked really hard and we're excited to read them.  Students will even have the option to share next week!

Word Study:

We worked on triple blends this week.

Reading:

We performed our Reader's Theater Wednesday!  Everyone did so great!  Students had awesome expression, nice fluency, and maintained great volume.  

As you can tell, we had a ton of fun doing these!!  Now, onto our mystery genre book clubs!

Math: 

We are still working on fractions, particularly ordering them from least to greatest by finding common denominators or thinking about reference points.  We'll be moving into computing fractions next week!

Social Studies:

We're finishing up our rough drafts for our U.S. history time lines and moving onto creating our final products.  Thank you again to everyone who has sent in supplies.  We're having a lot of fun in this final stage and seeing everything coming together.

IMPORTANT:

I would love to see what the students like to do outside of the school setting.  If you would like to, you may send any schedules or dates for concerts, performances, special events, or games that students may be participating in to my email (koeble@wisc.edu) or in paper format to school with your student.  I hope to make it to a few things this semester.  Thank you!

Have a great week!!

Week of February 27th, 2012

Happy March!

(Merry March if you prefer the alliteration!)

Here's what is going on in Room 223 this week!

Literacy:

In reading, we are continuing to work on our Reader's Theater scripts.  We can tell students are working hard to use expression and volume while maintaining fluency and volume.  Keep up the great practicing!  We can't wait to perform them for each other and our Learning Buddies next week!  We'll be starting new book clubs in two weeks.  They will be mysteries!

In writing, we are finishing up peer editing and starting to write our final copies for our realistic fiction stories.  They are looking fantastic and we can't wait to share them after they are due on Friday, March 9th!

In word study, we worked on L-blends.  Next week we will be working on triple blends. 

Math:

We continued to work with fractions this week.  We have been learning about mixed numbers and improper fractions and how to change one into the other.  After practicing all week turning mixed numbers into improper fractions and vice versa, we played fraction bingo!  Students filled their game board with a variety of mixed numbers.  Then, I called out improper fractions and they figured out what the mixed number equivalent was.  It was a ton of fun!  We will probably play it again as a review.

Social Studies:

We continued to work on our U.S. History timeline research packets this week.  Some of us started the rough draft process as well!  Everyone is working so hard and we're so excited to see how they turn out!

Extras:

Friday, March 2nd is Dr. Seuss' birthday and we have an assembly and special guest David George of channel 15 coming in to read to us!  Here is the poster our class made that hangs in the lunch room:

It looks awesome and it was all hand made by our own students in our class!

Pictures from the assembly to come in the next blog post!

Something we are doing at Chavez is called a "Cool Tool" in which we work on some aspect of our school.  These past few weeks we have been working on "Leaving No Trace".  The first week we worked on the lunch room, then the hallways and this week the bathrooms.  Our class is doing a great job!

Have a great weekend!  Hope to see you all at the dance tonight!