First Two Weeks of School

Hi Parents, Friends, Students, and Families!  We have had a busy first two weeks of school.  I hope you can take the time to read through our first post to see what we have been doing.  As always, you can also look at the pictures I've taken.  I do my best to get a good mix of photos of all the students in our class so that you have the opportunity to see your child.  Some students have expressed to me that they do NOT want to be in any of the photos, so I'm also trying to respect their wishes.

Before I dive into our learnings, please take some time to familiarize yourself with our class website.  You can view an updated list of important dates, our specials schedule, our classroom expectations, and a bit more about me along the right side of the screen.  I'd also like to point out the two additional tabs located on our website.  One tab is titled "Websites."  There, you will find a ton of educational websites your child can access at school and at home.  We use several of them throughout the year.  The other tab is titled "4H Info."  There, you can read a bit more information about our classroom, some of my classroom policies, and Harlan Elementary School policies.

Now, to the learning!  Writing- We, along with Mrs. Erwin's class, are participating in what we call "The Great Mail Race!"  We wrote friendly letters to 4th grade classrooms in 40 of our United States.  We also included a bit of information about Iowa, Harlan, and Mount Pleasant.  We are hoping that we can get a letter back from those 40 states!  Here, you can see some pictures of the 4th graders working together on this project.

Reading- Our focus has been on setting up routines and expectations for our Daily 5 rotations.  Students will rotate through centers, like teacher time, read to self, read to someone, technology, work on writing, & word work.  Below, you will see students finding Good Fit Books for their book boxes.  They are using 2 strategies- I Pick and the 5 finger rule.

We also learned how to use dictionaries and how to choose between the correct definitions given based on the way the word was used in a sentence.  You can see the kiddos working with dictionaries below.

The Parking Lot- Students were introduced to a communication tool that I use in the classroom.  It's called The Parking Lot.  Students are asked to write post-it notes of things they believe are going well, areas that need improvement, ideas that they have for improvement, and just general questions.  It can be completely anonymous and is totally optional.  There are no limits to what can be placed on the parking lot (appropriate, of course).  We discuss what they post on it every Friday.  Here, you will see the students putting up their first post-it on the Parking Lot.

Snowball- We had a snowball fight in our classroom to get to know one another.  We wrote down three things about ourselves that no one might know.  We then crumpled up the paper and threw them at one another like a snowball fight.  Once we were finished, we found one snowball on the floor.  We each took turns reading the three facts and did our best to guess who wrote it.