Thirfty Thursday!

Welcome back!  I hope you enjoyed your break.  I sure did!

The blog ended up being a brief one due to the weather.  Stay warm!!!

Although most were a bit sleepy out of the gate, they were obviously happy to be back.  It was great to see!

Our LifeSkill focus this week was on resourcefulness.  Their morning message had them write their name in a different way.  You can see my fourth graders being resourceful with the task.  

Here are the quotes we discussed. 

• One man's junk is another man's treasure.
• Waste Not, Want Not
• If you really want to do something you'll find the time.
• Use it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do, or so without.
• Think about what you can do with what there is.  

Looking towards the end of the month, we will start assessing our kindergarteners for the program.  This may mean that some classes will not be seen.  It will depend on where the testing falls.  More than likely it will be the classes who meet in the morning that will be affected as opposed to the afternoon ones.

The second nine weeks is quickly coming to a close.  The year is half way over, can you believe it?!?!?  I have a few things in the works that I'll be starting the second semester.  I'm excited!!!!  Stay tuned . . . .

FOURTH GRADE LA

What I love about this group is that they are such hard workers AND they love to help each other out.  This project has everyone in a different spot.  They are all working at their own pace which is great!  The first two to finish their time line became my Teacher's Assistant.  They were anxious to help!  I put them to work helping with the time line spacing, showing another how copy/paste pictures, or just running upstairs to retrieve a color copy. 

SECOND GRADE LA

How neat to hear that several students either got the book for Christmas or took the time to check it out from their local library.  It's funny because those who've read to the end, are being very careful about not spoiling it for the rest, yet they make sure to make a point of letting others know they know how it ends.  Secrets like these can be fun!  We eased back into the book and refreshed our memory as to the current predicament that Edward was in.  They took time to journal their thoughts to a question I posed.  These are always neat to read and I look forward to it.

THIRD GRADE LA

We continue our study of fairy tales.  They listened to/read/compared a few unfamiliar fairy tales to come up with the elements of a fairy tale.  They did a really nice job!  Of course, the Disney movies were quick to fill their list, but I pushed them to think of the many others.  They finished up with writing a definition of a fairy tale.  We're leading up to reading a novel in class . . . they can't wait!

FIRST GRADE LA

I introduced ANAGRAMS.  They were each given four letters to come up with a word and surprisingly, no one made the same word.  (P, T, O, S)  An anagram is using the same letters to make different words. (stop, pots, spots, etc)  We also continued to decipher another message called Alphabet Acrobats.  They could pick out, that the letters were backwards, but using a mirror helped them along.  We also did a vocabulary map on the word ANAGRAM.  They each had a dictionary to use.  I gave them a brief lesson on using the guide words to help us find the word which was tough for them.  We found the word, it's part of speech and definition.

Stay warm!  

Yours in education,

Mrs. Koedyker