February 27th-March 2nd

Hello Team Blowey Parents!  I hope you all enjoyed the February vacation!  Hopefully the transition back to school days will be as smooth as butter!

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Today students are going home with a packet of math games (directions and recording sheets if needed).  These are what they can do to practice their math goals at home (math facts should still be practiced as well).  We have learned how to play all of the games here at school and the students have had a chance to become familiar with each of the games.  Unfortunately, I cannot send home all of the materials needed for some of the games.  For example, 100 connecting cubes for each student.  However,  you can be creative and use materials you already have at home.  If students need connecting cubes, try cutting up squares of paper to use instead.  If students need play money, try using real money.  If students need counters, you can use anything like rocks, shells, paper clips, pennies, etc.  I hope you have fun!

Students are also taking home their team jerseys today!  They came out so well thanks to all of the hard work from the students and the parent volunteers who would able to help us out last Friday!  I told students that they may take them home and where them whenever they would like.  As a fun day, students were told that we could all wear our jerseys this Friday!  (No worries, I already washed all of the shirts for you so they are ready to go!)

The new homework policy began today.  For students who do not bring their homework in on Monday, they will miss out on their earned time that day.  If students have not practiced their goals at home, they will be spending their earned time throughout the week working on the goals that they should have been practicing at home instead.  Doing the homework is not a choose.  Instead, students get to choose HOW they will be practicing at home.  Once a student circles a choice on the menu, it's like they are making a promise to me that they will do that activity at home.  The only time it is ok to deviate from that choice is when your family chooses another way to practice the goal instead.

This week in...

LANGUAGE ARTS:  Students have been introduced to their new reader's notebooks.  This is a notebook that has been created so that students will be able to practice their independence even more so in the classroom.  Inside, students have found a CAFE strategies menu, a reading log, a goals sheet, a 5 stars rating sheet, and a reading response sheet.  Students will also be graphing how many books they read each month.  Students will be practicing how to use this tool throughout the week.  To help with this, I will be doing mini lessons revolving around each piece of the reader's notebook.

Monday:  Students were introduced to the parts of the notebook.  Today, they had time to practice how to put books on their reading log to show and prove that they have read the books inside their book box.  They also had time to practice using the graph for the number of books they read each month.  Some students also had the time to sit down with me and chart their own individual reading goals inside their reader's notebook.  By the end of the week, every student will have had a chance to sit with me and chart their goals.

Tuesday:  Students will be talking more about what it means to expand your vocabulary and some more strategies to help us go about it.  Many of the strategies students have already been introduced to, but now with the help of our reader's notebook, students will have a visual of all of the strategies we will talk about this year.

Wednesday:  We will be talking about one way to use post-its to help us comprehend what is happening in a story.  This skill is especially helpful when reading chapter books.  Basically, students will have the chance to practice "talking back" to their book by writing their thoughts down on the post-it and then placing it in their reader's notebooks.  When they "talk back" to the book, it could be about a question they have, a prediction, a connection they made, etc.  

Thursday:  Students will have the chance to practice rating their books just like real books critics do.  When they finish reading a book they will give the book 0-5 stars and explain why they decided to give the book the amount of stars they did.

Friday:  We will be talking more in depth about what it means to respond to a book.  Each student was given a reading response suggestion sheet inside of their notebook.  Some examples of suggestions would be:  write about your favorite part of the book, describe a part of the book that made you ask questions, describe what you might change about the book if you could rewrite it, etc.  Students may choose any one of the suggestions to respond to and write in complete sentences.  

While students are practicing using each of the components of the reader's notebook, they will still be practicing their literacy goals.  They will still be working on comprehension, fluency, accuracy, and vocabulary but now they will do it with the help of the notebook.  Students will also still have time to work on their spelling goals.

New Writing Project:   Now that we are done with our persuasive letter writing, we will be moving into a super fun writing project that goes along with the read aloud book that we just finished, Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  To fit with all of the silly personalities in our classroom, Team Blowey will be creating their own sideways stories to share with everyone.  Once we have had the chance to complete the writing, we will create a classroom book titled  Sideways Stories from Room 10  by Team Blowey.  I'm so excited to get started!

Math:  We are continuing to work on our game menu to help us understand how to add and subtract numbers better.  Students will be working both independently and with a partner to complete the goals on the menu.  Each student will play each of the games three times before we start unpacking our next few standards.  (Almost all of the games we play in school were sent home with the homework packets today.  Play with your child!  I promise you'll have lots of fun!)

Science:  This week we will be talking about how the "magical bees and magical wind" came into our classroom over vacation to help pollinate the brassica plants.  With the help of the bees and the wind, a couple of our flowers now have little pods that are holding the seeds of the next flowers that will be growing.  Oh, the wonders of the plant life cycle!

Read aloud books:  In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday this week (March 2nd), we will be reading various Dr. Seuss books!  Some of his books are my all-time favorites!  Have you ever read Oh, the Places You'll Go?  If not, you definitely check it out at the library!  You'll be sure to love it!

Don't forget... TEAM JERSEYS THIS FRIDAY!

I hope you have a wonderful week!

February 13-17

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day!  If students would like to bring in valentines for their friends, please bring one in for every student.  A class list was sent home last week in the boomerang folders.   We will also be making a "Friendship Snack Mix".   Students are asked to bring in one snack item to add to the mix.  Just like friendship, it just keeps getting better and better when more people add snacks to the mix!  Reminder:  no peanuts, peanut butter, or strawberries please!

We will be making team jerseys on Friday,  February 17th!  Students will have a slip in their boomerang folders tomorrow (Tuesday) with a place for you to sign up if you would like to help students make team jerseys!

Next week is February Vacation!  Students will keep their homework packets over break and bring them in the following Monday.  They will earn homework points for every time they practice a goal at home!  The Monday we return will be the start of the new homework policy!

This week in...

Reading:  We are working on the strategy called "monitor and fix-up".  While students are reading they are self-monitoring themselves to make sure what they are reading is making sense.  If something doesn't make sense then they need to "fix-up" by going back and rereading.  We are also continuing to build on the skill of making predictions.  When we make predictions, we use the text, pictures, and what we already know to make a really good guess about what might happen in a story.  We will be practicing these things while we read a story called Super Storms by Seymour Simon.


Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words for this week are:  violent, beware, prevent, uprooted, destroy, and grasslands.  We will be working with our elbow buddies to talk about what these words mean, how to use them in a sentence, and also building a connection with each of these words.  We will then read about these words in a short story called Wild Weather Hits Florida by Lisa O'Neil. 

Phonics:  This week we will be working with words with oo, ui, ew, ue, and oe.  We will be working with the following words:  root, boot, suit, fruit, clue, glue, flew, new, shoe, and canoe.  We will be sorting these words into categories and then changing the beginning or ending sounds to make new words. 

Writing:  Students are really being pushed to finish their final drafts of their persuasive letters!  We are working hard to make sure we have our triple stuffed OREO (opinion, reason, explanation, and opinion restated) just right so that it makes sense and is really persuasive!  We are using our peers as editors as well as any grownups in the room to check for capitalization, organization, punctuation, and spelling.

Math:  We are working on a math game menu!  We are learning to play lots of different game that will give us better strategies for how to add and subtract numbers.  These games are a lot of fun and introduce us to using some really important strategies that we will need in third grade!  For example, some of the skills we are working on are adding and subtracting numbers using number lines, 100s charts, and missing numbers!  All of these skills will be critical in the next standards that we will be unpacking.

Science:  Our plants have almost completed their entire life cycle!  We are finishing up our last few observations and drawings this week.  It has definitely been a lot of fun watching these plants go through all of the stages of a plant life cycle!

IN OTHER NEWS:

We went to visit our big book buddies today and we did a really fun project together!  After reading a book that taught us a lot about the history of Valentine's Day, we worked together to create over 120 valentines to be sent to a local assisted living center.  This activity was our way of honoring Valentine's Day, the 100th day of school, and friendship all at once!  It was so much fun to see all of the creativity that was in one room today!  The recipients of these valentines are definitely going to be very happy with all of the quality work that these students were able to do today!

P.S. (February 6-10)

I forgot to include a big announcement!

THERE WILL BE A HOMEWORK POLICY CHANGE!  

Tomorrow, your child will bring home a yellow paper with details about the homework policy change as well as ways to make homework more successful at home. 

The new policy will begin on February 27th, the Monday after vacation. 

Here is the new policy as well as some tips to help with homework:  

(NOTE:  This is exactly what will be sent home tomorrow!  Just giving you a heads up!)

***Students who do not bring their homework back in their boomerang folders on Monday, will lose their earned time that afternoon.

***If students who do not complete the homework that they circled they will be doing the work during their earned time over the course of the week until it is completed.

When students circle an activity to do for homework, it is NOT an option!  The only exception would be if you and your child came up with a different way to practice the goal.


Some tips on making homework time more successful at home...

~Get into a routine for doing homework.  Set up a specific time after school that is called “homework time”.  This time will be devoted to doing homework each and every day.

~Keep distractions down to a minimum.  Turn off the TV or any other electronic devices that may distract your child.

~Help your child figure out a routine that is best for them.  Some students like to keep working until their work is done while others like to take breaks in between activities.

~Make talking with your child a part of the homework routine.  Use this time to eat a healthy snack and talk about their homework choices.

~Designate a special place for doing homework.  For example, at the kitchen table or a desk.  Make sure there are no distractions and that any materials your child might need to do their homework (i.e. pens, pencils, crayons, etc) are ready and available.

~Help your child pack up all of his/her materials and put them into their boomerang folder once they have finished their materials.

Also, here is a cute quote from our read aloud book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School:

"You need a reason to be sad, you don't need a reason to be happy!"

February 6-February 10

Unfortunately, I, too, stayed up to watch the Superbowl last night and was a little bummed that the Patriots weren't able to win.  However, there's always next year!  We definitely had some yawning and some excited stories about the close game going on this morning at team meeting! On the bright side though, the Bruins were able to bring in a win for New England! 

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

We are SO close to having everyone bring in their t-shirt for our team jerseys!  As of right now, my game plan is to have students make their jerseys on February 17th (the Friday before break) and let them dry over vacation.  If you are someone who is able to volunteer to help us make these jerseys, please send a little note my way!  

Next Monday is early release.  We will be traveling to Dunn School to see our book buddies!

Next Tuesday is Valentine's Day!  Students are allowed to bring in valentines but if they choose to do so, they must bring a valentine for everyone in the class.  I will be sending home a class list with every student this week so that we can make sure that no one is forgotten.  We will also be making a "friendship snack" together.  Attached to the list of names, there will be a list of snacks that students may bring in. 

February 20-February 25 is February vacation!

This week in...

Phonics:  We are working on the variant vowel oo, ou.  Together we practiced and sorted words like:  could, should, would, shook, hook, crook, soot, stood, brook, and foot.   We will also be practicing what happens to these words when we change the beginning sound.  For example, what happens when I change the /h/ in hook to /l/.  What word would I get?

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words this week are:  conservation, remains, trouble, extinct, and hardest.  Together we will figure out what these words mean, how to use them in a sentence, and build connections with them so we are more likely to use them and understand them.

Reading:  We will be continuing to work on generating questions while we are reading.  This is a great skill to practice at home with your child as well!  As you are reading together, pause and take a second to ask yourselves a questions about what you are reading.  After you read a paragraph, what question could you ask that would help you understand it?

We will also be working with description as a structure of the text.  We will be talking about how a description is what something is like.  We'll also be having conversations about how the author sometimes begins signal words or phrases such as "to begin with" or "here is how".  

Grammar:  We are going to be talking about irregular verbs.  Some words, such as go, do not have -ed in the past tense.  Instead they have a special form.  For example, go in the past tense is went.  Do in the past tense is did.  

Writing:  Students are hard at work!  We have been working on using the OREO structure (opinion, reason, explanation, and opinion restated) to help us with our persuasive writing.  Some of us have encountered a little bit of writer's block, especially when it comes to convincing someone to do something.  For example, some students know exactly what they want but are having a hard time explaining why it would be a good thing for them to get it.  Persuasive writing is definitely putting our brains to the test!

 Science:  We are nearing the end of the brassica plants' life cycle!  We continue to write down our observations twice a week so we can document what our plants looked like throughout their life cycle and also how they changed!  We have been writing things like how tall our plants our, whether they stand up tall or lean, if they have any blossoms, what shape the leaves are, and so much more!

Math:  We are wrapping up our review unit on time.  This week we have been doing a little bit of practice with adding and subtracting time and also reviewing how to tell time to the nearest five minutes.  It gets pretty tricky when the minute hand is near the 9, 10, and 11!  Soon after that, we will be unpacking a lot of games that we will be playing.  These games will give us a ton of strategies for adding and subtracting numbers that we will most definitely need in the near future! 

I hope everyone has a phenomenal week!

Our Classroom Vision

After winter break, Team Blowey revisited our classroom vision to see if we still believed in our vision the same way we did at the beginning of the year.  When we voted, we decided we still wanted the same power words but we wanted to say it in a different way.  We spent some time writing it together and voting on it until it was just right.  When we finished, we had come up with more of a team chant to help get us energized to help the vision come true!

Here is the new and improved classroom vision:

We are a team...yeah!

We are respectful... woo hoo!

We help others... today!

We do quality work.

Together we learn... hey hey!

And when we do... uh huh!

Team Blowey... that's right!

Will always have fun!

Go Team Blowey!

Go Team Blowey!

Go Team Blowey!

Today, we decided that we wanted to add some movements with the words.  We had a lot of fun collaborating and listening to everyone's ideas!  Ask your child to show you the classroom vision dance today!