Room 206 Happenings!

Good evening!

Today the students received their AR folders. They are aware of their levels, point goals, and what they should be reading. I am going to send you their levels and log ins for Home Connect as soon as possible so you can track their progress at home.

Also- I completely rearranged the classroom after school. I was frusterated with the "congestion" in our room. Twenty-four desks is a lot to fit, especially with a science sink taking up space and the computers in their own peculiarly placed spot.

I will help the kids adjust in the morning. We will go through one more change whenever the kidney table makes its appearance in our room.

As I stated in the e-mail, if possible please pack lunch tomorrow instead of having your child buy. We are doing lunch in the classroom as a reward for Boosterthon class goals, so bringing a lunch will be much easier.

The footprint cars are due tomorrow for our Boosterthon door!

The Unit 1 math test is tomorrow. Your child should have completed the review by now, which is not due to me. It is only a tool for you to use to help your child practice and study. Unit 1 covers lots of different things so do not fret! Things calm down a little bit and we will begin to focus more on addition in the next unit.

We reviewed a bit for the math test by doing math centers today. The centers included using coin stamps to stamp out coin amounts, using base-10 blocks to practice place value, playing the Penny-Nickel exchange game to reinforce there are 5 pennies in a nickel, and playing the Rolling Our Way to Basic Facts game to practice basic facts by adding together values from dice.

Here is a picture of Archer playing the Penny-Nickel Exchange Game!

Daily 5 is underway and the kids are finishing up learning how to Read to Someone. We will move onto Listen to Reading next week, which I will accompany with a handwriting center and read to self. Once we complete learning our centers, I will start meeting with guided reading groups. HOPEFULLY we will have our beautiful wonderful much awaited kidney table by then so small groups will have a conducive place to meet.

Here are Catherine and Lauren practicing Read to Someone. Carter and Jeremy are working together in the background, and you can see Kyle in action too!

Mystery Reader

Thank you Keely Muse for coming to read to us today!

Accelerated Reader

Today the kids received their AR folders and AR levels. They from here on out take AR tests at appropriate times. I am going to send you an individual e-mail either tonight or tomorrow about how you can access Renaissance Home Connect at home to view your child's progress. They will be individual due to user names and passwords.

Links for Learning

This is a great link for practicing different reading strategies. We did the making connections game today and the kids LOVED it.

http://reading.ecb.org/student/entry.html?login=mrs.nel00006

This link can help them practice singular/plural nouns. I would choose "complex" as the level.

http://softschools.com/language_arts/games/singular_plural_nouns.jsp

Math Games!

Today we played a domino sorting addition game! This helped us practice our addition basic facts. Here are a couple pictures of the children playing the game!

Boosterthon!

As a class, we have come up with "class incentives" for Boosterthon. These are rewards that go towards our class total.

The class has already raised a little over 50 dollars.

$10-Table Points, $20- 5 minutes extra recess, $30- Homework pass, $40- 10 minute extra recess, $50 - Lunch in Classroom

Those are all rewards they have already earned. We had table points and five minutes extra "indoor recess" due to rain today. They watched a little bit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I will send a homework pass home soon, they will have ten extra recess minutes tomorrow, and on Friday we will eat in the room.

$65- 15 minutes extra recess, $80 PJ Day, $100 - Trip to Sunken Garden (I still need a couple forms for this from some of you), and $150 is a movie/popcorn party.

We are currently at I think $53, and the Booster guys will update us of our standing daily.

Here is a picture of the class interacting with the Boosterthon staff today when they visited us.

Door Decorating for Boosterthon

Today we had some wonderful volunteers come in and help your child make a footprint.

I am sending home the footprint today. I believe Michelle Constantinides has sent an e-mail with the details of what to do, but I am going to paste into this post her directions in case you have lost them. Step one has already been completed by the room mothers.

2.  Your job is to cut out the footprint at home and get creative by turning the footprint into a car.  You can use anything to make wheels (think construction paper, wrapping paper, recycled juice boxes cut into circles, etc…), draw or glue on windows (think aluminum foil or colored saran wrap, patterned wrapping paper, etc…), decorate your car in any tasteful way (please no guns or death boys :)), the brighter and more colorful the better!!!!  Glitter, sparkles, colored markers, painted patterns, shine, color, patterns, anything goes for each car.  Have your child make it their "dream" car.  

3.  Please return the finished cars (with names on the back) to school by Friday of this week.

4.  Please have your children find one picture or draw one picture of something related to each of the historical figures.  You can print it, cut it from magazines, draw it, or write a catch word or phrase.  Just keep it small as we don't have a ton of space.  Please return these by Friday of this week.  Below by last name is your historical figure.

MLK JR

Abramowitz

Arvin

Conrad

Constantinides

Earhart

Rdmonds

Ferguson

Hartman

Irwin

Kim

Cunningham

Lieberman

Lietz

Martinsen

Meador

Milam

Lincoln

Muse

Palckar

Prescott

Regnault

Sands

Edison

Smith

Streelman

Ward

Wiley

Winckler

5.  Our Mom Team will put it all together on Friday.  Tuesday will be the judging of the doors.