Thanks for taking the time to check in and see what great things your child is doing! It was great to see that my students missed our class as much as I did. I stopped in one day last week to gather some things and a few questioned me as to what was going on and when we'd start back up. I'm SO happy to be back teaching again =)
Our week is not quite back to "normal" due to conferences. With the early dismissals, I would have missed my first and fourth grade math kids this week due to scheduling. Thanks to the quick thinking of my fourth grade LA group, who are also ALL in my math group, they didn't miss. I switched them up and had the math group come Tuesday. One day is better than none. Great problem solving!
I went a little "picture crazy" this week due to having extra time with the early dismissals, so enjoy!
Many of our activities and projects in HA use cooperation. It's critical that students are able to work well together to produce their best work. I see wonderful cooperation in here! Especially since I taught High Ability last year, my students know my expectations, what needs to be done and they get right to work. We are able to do SO much in such a little amount of time.
A few of the quotes discussed:
- If everyone is moving forward together, then the success takes care of itself. (Henry Ford)
- Pat others on the back, not yourself.
- Great discoveries and achievements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. (Alexander Graham Bell)
- Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success.
I mentioned this last year on my blog, in Duneland we have access to a wonderful resource called IXL. The username is the students first initial, last name, then the last five digits of their student ID. Your child may even have it memorized. If you are interested in this and don't know this number, email me and I'll get it for you. The password is yo12345. I strongly suggest you check it out if you haven't already!
Fourth Grade: With our one day of LA this week, we worked on "bio posters". The students took what they learned from previous lessons about roots, prefixes and suffixes to make an educated guess as to the meaning of their "bio word". They were given several choices of words starting with "bio" that they had to define their word, define word parts and illustrate. Then they moved onto the beginnings of our next project. I gave them several choices of great biographies suggested by Mrs. Borelli. At this point they are just choosing a person and reading about them. Exciting stuff! Can't wait to delve into the lesson.
My math group started off with a problem of the day. It's always such a great way to get their mathematical minds thinking. We then wrapped up our oragami cubes. Many were excited to finish and get their cube up on the board for conferences. Make sure to stop by whenever you're in the school. Those who were finished went onto an extreme dot-to-dot. You can find them on Amazon if your child is one of those who can't get enough of them. They have all kinds. I even have a few kids who grab them for other fourth graders who are not in HA. It's out of control, lol!!!!
Second Grade: Last year, when we went to the High Ability Conference, I was thrilled to see one of my all time favorite books as part of their curriculum. We have just started our journey with Edward and I can't wait for them to experience and "taste" this book as a good friend of mine put it. Some of them made a funny face when they took me literally. We began by making predictions about the story and the character. We also analyzed the word journey by making a vocabulary map. I read aloud to them the first couple of chapters, but eventually they will read a chapters on their own. Lots of BIG vocabulary, so we discuss as we go, so it's not one they can just be set free to read. Pick it up if you have a chance, so you can talk about it with your child. It's a keeper.
They then started to work on a packet where they had to break the poem down into values and number of coins. We finished up with writing a kind note letting the boy know what he did wrong and what he needs to keep in mind. This group always asks to work on their extreme dot to dot when we have a few spare minutes. It's great!
Third Grade: We've moved from reading/retelling myths onto legends and tall tales. We read Johnny Appleseed before discussing several questions about the story. They each chose a legend to read then a tall tale to retell. We've begun our discussion about the difference between a myth, legend and tall tale. We'll continue that next week when we do a Venn Diagram. I'm always so proud of this group. They work very hard and have such insight into what we're doing. I always look forward to working with them.
We began our unit on fractions by reading The Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar Fractions Book. I read only the beginning since I saw that I was loosing them by just reading. We needed to get into the lesson! Students gathered with their clip boards to do a Hershey packet where they colored a Hershey bar and answered questions. It's a fun way to talk and learn about fractions. Who can go wrong with chocolate!
First Grade: We've moved onto deciphering another type of message. It was a secret message written using the telephone keypad. They had numbers and arrows they needed to figure out the key to reading it. It didn't take long; much easier compared to their Caesar Cipher. We are working up to learning and speaking in Pig Latin next week. We've just started to analyze words and look at their vowels and syllables. Kids always love this! We only met once this week in order to see my math group.
We started off with our Problem of the Day. The first grade one was a bit too easy for them, so we moved up to second grade. It was a challenge for all, but once we walked through it, you could see the light bulbs go on. For our activity, I put different story problems around the room for them to solve. It included both addition and subtraction problems. Equipped with their clip boards and paper, they traveled around the room to solve. Once they found their problem, they needed to write the equation and solve it. We only met once, so we'll go over their work next week. They did have time to Find It . . .you can ask them what that is.
Yours in Education,
Mrs. Koedyker
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