Know when I update...

Hello Families, Friends and Followers,

I recently learned that network blog is probably not posting to your facebook pages (if you are following me that way) unless you are friend of mine on facebook. To remedy that, I am going to stop publishing this on network blogs and instead I have added a new feature (on the top right) where you can enter your email and get an email notification each time I update this blog. I'm hoping it works and I have added my own personal email to this blog to 'test' it... Hopefully this will save you time and you will know (on the day) when I publish. I believe it will send you notification the same day that I publish a post.

We shall see...

Enjoy your weekend,

Mrs. D.

Week 26 in Review

Greetings from a cold room 119! Not only does it not feel like spring outside, it didn't feel like spring inside for us this week. Our heater wasn't working properly and Mr. James had to fix it a few times (they've ordered a new part and hopefully it will be fixed completely soon). We were quite flexible and enjoyed going to the Media Center to warm up our brains and our bodies. This week we had two birthdays to celebrate! Happy Birthday Jaidan and Taya! Remember, if you have a birthday coming up please contact Mrs. D. and let her know your plans. We need to make sure the snacks are safe. Please don't forget to send in another $5 for safe snacks for the rest of the year.

We have been working on nonfiction books about mealworms all week. Many of us are missing our 'traditional' writing workshop time and really miss writing in our notebooks. Mrs. Doran was a little excited when many of us put up our 'offices' and wrote in our notebooks when we came in before the bell rang. She is so thrilled that we love to write like we do!

Our nonfiction books are coming along great. We've added a table of contents to our books and many include nonfiction text features like headings, labels, captions, and bold print for those 'important' words we want our readers to pay attention to. Ask us what these things are and see if we can tell you about them. We will be sharing our books and then bringing them home next week.

As mentioned, our nonfiction books are all about mealworms. There was more excitement in our room when we observed another beetle! Jaidan's pupa had emerged into a beetle. We learned that adult beetles only live five to ten days, but Emily's and Trent's beetles are still alive. We're wondering if it is because of the cold temperature. We read that cold temperature can slow insects down and even make them dormant. The waxworms, crickets, and mealworms will be going back next week. If you would like our mealworm to come home, please contact Mrs. Doran (phone, email, send a note or leave a comment here). If she doesn't hear from you on Monday she will assume you don't want any new 'visitors' in your home.

We love hands-on math and Mrs. D. got some pictures this week as we explored different concepts. We did a lot with measurement. We measured items in centimeters and we also measured time (to the nearest 5 minutes) and money (and we added quarters to the other coins). Ask us to count by 25s. We're getting really good at it!

Mrs. Doran also passed out some calculators and we really enjoyed using them. We added numbers and even had a 'calculator' race and attempted to graph our results. Our range of answers was so great though that we couldn't graph it on our math journal page.

This week we also learned a lot about shapes. Most of us were able to identify trapezoids, rhombuses, and hexagons even though Mrs. D. tried to stump us! We learned what polygons are (ask us what they are) and we also learned about three dimensional shapes including prisms, pyramids and spheres. Next week we will be taking a math benchmark and finishing up Unit 7.

We did finally finish up the assessment for Unit 6 and Mrs. Doran will send them home next week. She also assesses us by asking us questions. Next week she is going to attempt to give the Unit 7 test to the entire class at once. We've done really well with the material and we're also getting more independent with our work.

In reading, Mrs. D. talked to us both about predicting and retelling. When Mrs. D. assesses our reading she is not just looking at how we decode words and how fluent we sound. She is also making sure that we understand what we read. The next time we read to you, close the book and ask us to retell the story. We have been practicing retelling using the interesting words we heard in the story and the characters' names. Mrs. Doran modeled this using the book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (and she also gave us each our own magic pebble!) and we practiced by using some Max Lucado books. Ask us to retell some of the stories we read this week!

After Mrs. D. models and teaches something to us, it is time for us to try it on our own! We love reading the 'just right' books from our book boxes. Mrs. D. hasn't been sending home the books we use in guided reading because she wasn't always getting them back in the beginning of the year and it was hard for her to manage. Because we miss sharing those books with you, she is going to try sending them home after the break. She will send them home the day she works with our group and will expect it back the next day (more to come on this in April).

Of course we ended the week with our Mystery Reader. Grace's mom came in to read to us and we were excited to see her! By her last clue, which was "The Mystery Reader comes and helps us with math", we knew exactly who our Mystery Reader was and were very excited! Remember if you would like to read to us (even if you can't make it on a Friday), contact Mrs. D. We love when someone we know reads to the class. If you need a book, Mrs. Doran can always lend you one to read.

Please remember that next week our school will be raising money for Japan. If we bring in a dollar, we can wear a hat based on the schedule below. If you would like to donate more money, you can write a check payable to Japanese Business Society of Detroit.

Click on the picture above to learn more about this organization!

And as always, we leave you with some extra pictures from the week...

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Week 25 in Review

Greetings from room 119! We had a fun filled and exciting week in first grade! Thanks for coming over to read about our learning adventures!

Early in the week we gathered in the gym with the rest of the school to sing to Mr. Furca. We learned that he is OLD! That's right, Mr. Furca turned 60. To celebrate we counted out how old he was, but thankfully we did it by 10s so it didn't take too long. Some of the teachers dressed like the '60s' to celebrate and he also got a nice gift of 'tweakers' (which are speakers that plug into your computer so you can share presentations and videos with others). Mrs. D. bought some for her computer which is how we watch videos that relate to our curriculum and do our math exercises.

We have more new 'visitors' in room 119. This week we got crickets to help us study and learn about insects! We made a special habitat for them and agreed it is a much nicer place than our mealworms, waxworms and milkweed bugs have. They have a sand area where they eat, a soil area where (we hope) they will lay eggs and a 'living room' area where they can climb and drink water. They are pretty fast though so we don't get to observe them or hold them like we do with the other insects.

Of course we continue to keep track of our other insects and this week Emily's mealworm turned into a beetle! She was not in school when it happened so Mrs. D. tried to get a picture to send her. The beetle was pretty quick though and perhaps a little camera shy. We're hoping to have even more beetles next week!

In addition to observing insects, we've been reading about them. Mrs. Doran has a lot nonfiction books that are just right for us to read and learn. At the beginning of our Reader's Workshop we have been talking more about the different text features and things we notice about our non-fiction books.

We've been paying very close attention to these books for a good reason... we are becoming nonfiction authors! This week we made a cover to books that we will be writing about mealworms. We noticed that the nonfiction books we read had a large bold title, sometimes a subtitle (ask us what that is) a photograph or realistic picture and of course the author's name. We will be working on these books for a couple weeks so stay tuned!

On St. Patrick's Day, Mrs. Doran was running late. Her youngest has been sick and she's been running her other kids all over the place and was so tired... We had to wait for her to unlock the door and when she did, we couldn't believe our eyes....

Things were a mess!!! Those pesky leprechauns must have snuck under the door! Our lockers were open, chairs and furniture were knocked down and books were everywhere! Mrs. Doran was pretty upset to see such a mess but some of us weren't... for in all the mess we found some treasure that the leprechauns must have dropped!

Thankfully, we got the room back in order in time to watch the school news. Sofia was on sharing a story about when she caught her sister being the 5 Rs (respectful, responsible, ready, reliable and resilient). It was fun to see her on the news. Keaton had a PBS ticket pulled on the news so hopefully we'll see his story on Monday (when your PBS ticket is pulled out of all the tickets from the school, you get to be on the news).

Though St. Patrick's Day was a 'different' day we still did a lot of learning. Faith's mom came in and helped us with 'Lucky Charm' math. We also created little books on how to catch a leprechaun (since Mrs. D. was so upset by the little guys that trashed our room). She took videos of some of us sharing our ideas but they were too long to post here. She may get a YouTube account though to post them since there were some great ideas out there!

Grace's mom came in during the afternoon and we enjoyed reading a play that was in our Scholastic News. We love reading 'Reader's Theater' and the wonderful gift of Scholastic News that our PTA has given us! Scholastic also has neat videos to accompany the magazines we read (which is what Mrs. D. shares with us on her computer and uses her tweakers for). There were a lot of fun activities on St. Patrick's Day so don't forget to ask us what our favorite thing was!

A book that Mrs. D. read to us said that leprechauns are like little fairies. We knew that another fairy would be visiting Keaton's house because he lost a tooth! Losing teeth is one thing that we love about first grade!

We were also smiling when we heard it was our friend Chase's seventh birthday! We sang to him like pirates (argh) and enjoyed his safe birthday treats and the special glow bracelets, too. They were perfect for today because we had a Read-In in our classroom. We all wore pajamas and brought in flashlights so we could read in the dark!
In the morning we enjoyed reading with buddies and sharing books that we loved. Mrs. Doran was so impressed how on-task we were but she shouldn't be surprised. We have really built our stamina in reading and are close to reading for 40 minutes during our Reader's Workshop time!

We also enjoyed reading quietly to a stuffed animal friend that we were able to bring in. We are practicing reading with expression because that makes it more interesting for our audience... even when they're "stuffed". If you would like to order books from our Scholastic Book Order you can click here. Remember each time you place an order we get a free book for our class!

And because it was Friday we were able to have a Mystery Reader! Jaidan's sister, Aubri, who is a freshmen in high school, was able to come to our classroom after her school got out to read to us! She did a great job reading to us and the book even had a Llama in Pajamas which fit in perfectly to our Read-In theme! Have a great weekend and don't forget to let Mrs. Doran know you were here by clicking on our name on the right.

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Important News

As not only a teacher in the Walled Lake School District, but as a parent of two elementary aged children and two coming up into the system, I am very concerned what the cuts in Lansing will mean for your children and mine. I am re-posting the letter from our Superintendent and urge anyone reading this to consider writing the leaders in Lansing. It only takes a moment.
- Laura Doran

March 15, 2011

Dear Walled Lake Schools Parents/Guardians,

Governor Snyder’s proposed $470 per pupil cut to K-12 education is just one of the budget challenges that our schools face. The real math shows a much greater impact on Walled Lake Consolidated Schools of $1,069 per pupil reduction, for a projected total loss of an additional $16.5 million for 2011-2012. In fact, the full impact of the Governor's proposal is the largest single annual cut in the history of education in Michigan and will most certainly negatively impact programs for our children.

Over the past 10 years we have reduced our budget by more than $31 million and we have already reduced counselors, secretaries, administrators, and media specialists. We have also had significant concessions from our transportation department; we have increased class size; and, we have privatized our custodial staff. The proposed per pupil cuts, combined with an eroding tax base, lower property values, rising costs of utilities, gasoline, health insurance, supplies, equipment, and school meals, will compound the already dire financial impact on our students.

I encourage all of us, though, not to play the “blame game” and attack our elected officials or others; however, it is extremely critical to communicate with legislators the impact the Governor’s proposed budget recommendations will have on students.

Both the House and Senate K-12 Appropriations Subcommittees have meetings scheduled for this week:
House K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee Tuesday, March 15 at 10:30 a.m. (Room 426 of the Capitol Building)
Senate K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee Thursday, March 17 at 9 a.m. (Room 405 of the Capitol Building)

Please contact the Governor and your legislators to make your feelings known:
Governor Snyder (rick.snyder@michigan.gov)Senators:Mike Kowall (SenMKowall@senate.michigan.gov)Vincent Gregory (SenVGregory@senate.michigan.gov)
Representatives:Vicki Barnett (vickibarnett@house.mi.gov)Lisa Brown (LisaBrown@house.mi.gov)Hugh Crawford (hughcrawford@house.mi.gov)Eileen Kowall (eileenkowall@house.mi.gov)

Some key points to consider, as you talk with legislators:
K-12 funding was dramatically altered in 1994 with the implementation of Proposal A. In Proposal A, a covenant was established between the state government and the citizens of Michigan stating that local school districts would surrender their ability to ask their constituents for local operating fund increases in return for a guarantee of equitable and appropriate funding from the State of Michigan. We believe strongly that the Governor’s proposal to utilize School Aid to fund anything other than K-12 education is a violation of that covenant.
We understand that the potential reduction in the School Aid Fund will be as high as $1.4 billion, which would be a serious violation of the Proposal A covenant with multiple negative impacts on the quality and quantity of educational programs and student outcomes across our state.
Districts are already implementing many of the “new” ideas, such as increased employee health care premium sharing, that are being highlighted by the Governor as substantial offsets to the proposed $470 per pupil reduction. Therefore, many districts no longer have “low hanging fruit” to harvest.
The proposed cuts to K-12, while holding others harmless, demonstrates a lack of understanding that K-12 public schools accept all students and do so without the ability to increase revenue via tuition or millage increases…K-12 is not in the same boat, operationally or fiscally, as the other institutions on the Michigan education continuum and, therefore, should not be combined into the same funding stream. The Governor's proposal of putting community colleges and higher education into a redefined School Aid Fund does not account for varying abilities to raise revenue.
We should not be cutting state aid for our students in order to subsidize out of state students' tuition rates at Michigan universities.
Thank you for taking action to support and protect our children, our schools, and our community.
Respectfully,
Kenneth Gutman
Superintendent of Schools

Email Issues

Dear Families,
If you have sent me a recent email I have received it, but my replies to emails are being returned to me 'undeliverable'. There are people in the district working to fix this problem. I will print out the emails that were returned to me (my responses to your emails) and put them in your child's Everyday Folder. I do encourage your emails with any questions you may have.
Thank you for your understanding,
Mrs. Doran

Week 24 in Review

Greetings from room 119! Did you know that March is Reading Month? We've been doing a lot of reading in the classroom and in case you haven't heard, on March 18th we will be having a Read-In. Mrs. Doran will be sending home additional information on it next week, so stay tuned.

Speaking of 'tune' and 'reading month', with our fifth grade buddies, we made records that displayed our favorite book and said, "Reading Rocks!" Because most (if not all) of us had no idea what a record was, Mrs. Turek (our 5th Grade buddies' teacher) taught us all about records. We couldn't believe that when Mrs. Doran and Mrs. Turek were little there was no such thing as an iPod or even a CD! We got to listen to a record and see how they looked.

Back in our room, we chose our favorite book and wrote the title, why we liked the book and drew a picture on a (paper) record. Then we met back up with our buddies and they helped us cut out our records and mount them on black paper. They made some records too and we are looking forward to hanging them so that all of our school can see that READING ROCKS!

Not only are the books the stars of the month, we had some great Star Students to celebrate. We had fun writing their letters and sharing their books with the class!

With the take-home books we are keeping each week, the work that we do in Reader's Workshop, and Mrs. D's guided reading groups, we are really improving our reading! Many of us are also using the great words we see in our books in our writing. Special thanks to Emily's and Sarah's families for sending in more page protectors for our portfolios. We will be bringing them home next week over night to show you how our writing is growing!

Most of us now are using chunks of words we know to attempt to spell harder words. One way we work with words is through fun activities like Making Words. Mrs. Doran gives us a strip of letters that when rearranged will make one big word. One student works under the camera so if we need help, we can see what he or she is doing. Mrs. D. tells us different words to make, and we work quickly to make them using the letters in the big word. Some of us also try to guess what that big word may be. The final word we make is the 'big' word that uses all of the letters. We really love this activity.

After we find that big word, we then move to the gathering place where Mrs. D. puts all the words we just made in a pocket chart. There, one student will create a 'word sort'. They can sort the words by first letter, last letter, vowels or even number of letters. Then those of us who didn't create the sort have to guess what the sort was. Can you guess what Keyar's sort was?

Perhaps the biggest news of the week was that TRENT'S MEALWORM TURNED INTO A BLACK-WINGED BEETLE! We were so excited about this! We also got two new types of insects. We now have milkweed bug eggs (Sofia is holding their habitat with the stick she brought in for them) and we have waxworms.

The waxworms move pretty quickly and reminded us a lot of caterpillars. Our room got pretty loud when we were observing our waxworms and at first we watched them from a distance, but soon we were all holding them in our hands. Mrs. D. took more pictures that you can see in this week's slideshow.

We are getting more independent in math, but just as a reminder to parents, there is a link to homework help under the link on your right. It comes with a parent note, tips and answers to homework. We have finished our first math journal and it will be coming home next week. Mrs. Doran does most of her teaching without the math journals. You may have seen math pages come home that say 'challenge'. After Mrs. Doran teaches a concept we practice it.

To meet different learners' needs she makes a regular math sheet and a challenge math sheet. She lets us choose which math sheet we would like to work on and was thrilled that we chose for ourselves what she would have chosen for us. That means that we are self assessing and understanding where we are as learners. In the same sense, many of us like to work with others and share with them strategies that we use!

And finally- this week we were able to have our Mystery Reader come in! Grace's God-Mother came in and read us a wonderful story called "Ladybug Girl". We enjoyed the book and she did a great job reading to us! If you are a mom, dad, auntie, uncle, grandparent, great-grandparent or just someone important in our life, we would love to have you come and read to us. Check out the Mystery Reader link on the right and let Mrs. D. know if there is a time that you can come in and read to us. If the times left don't work in your schedule, contact Mrs. D. and she'll work with you to find another time that you can come in and read to us!

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