Days With Mrs. Doran: Week 4 in Review

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Week 4 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! We had another great week. We've had many compliments on our behavior and PBS tickets written for our class for our quiet hallway behavior. Our PE teacher told us that she always knows that when she has us that it's going to be a great class. Mrs. D. is so proud of us!

As you know, we read past our 20 minute goal so Mrs. Doran took us outside on Monday to do a cartwheel. Of course being the photographer of the group, Mrs. D. was unable to get a picture of the cartwheel but imagine the gymnasts you saw recently on the Olympics... it looked kind of like that.
After Mrs. D. did her cartwheel (and survived), we were able to play for about 10 minutes outside which we loved! Mrs. D. took some pictures which are in the slideshow at the bottom of this post.

While we work on our stamina, Mrs. D. has begun testing us to find our 'just right' levels in reading and find areas she would like to work on with us. We also had a guest teacher on Tuesday so Mrs. D. could test us all day. She still has about 7 of us she needs to meet with. She started with the levels our kindergarten teachers sent to her but some of us went up from all the reading we did this summer and so far in class and some of us dropped a bit. Remember it is important to be reading every day.

We have also begun to build our writing stamina. In first grade we don't just focus on WHAT we write but HOW we write it. Mrs. D. is really focusing on handwriting with us this year. Many of us are forming our letters wrong, so she is trying to "retrain our brain" to do it the 'right' way, which will make learning cursive (in third grade) much easier. If you see us forming letters incorrectly at home, please stop us and make us do it over the 'right' way. Practice makes permanent so we don't want to be practicing the wrong way.

Before we get a handwriting sheet on a letter we are working on, Mrs. D. has us practice it on mini white boards with handwriting lines. Once she sees that we are forming the letters correctly, THEN she will give us the handwriting page to complete. We have also done a lot with writing our name. We need to write our names with one capital. Mrs. D. is going to start returning papers to us if we use more capitals in our names.

In Social Studies we learned what the words Past, Present and Future mean. We used these words in conversation so that hopefully we are retaining what they mean. We also have been busy working on our homework which includes making a timeline and using the words "past, present and future." We read a book about how things were in the past with our guest teacher and compared it to how things are in the present. Things sure have changed!

Mrs. D. met with all of us individually to learn a little more about what we can do in math and on Friday she gave us our first math assessment. It can be really hard for us to take 'tests' this way, but we did a great job! We were really excited because Mrs. D. passed out "offices" so we had some privacy. You will see the tests that we took coming home next Friday and Mrs. D. also will be writing some notes on how you can help us in math.

Friday was picture day and thankfully, Mrs. D got the very first appointment in the day so that we could get our pictures taken before we went to recess or lunch. We all looked very nice. If we were not in school on picture day, there will be a picture retake day in the near future.

As we do every week, we ended our day on Friday with a special Mystery Reader. Kirra was surprised when it was her dad that showed up at the door of Room 119 to read to us. She had thought it may be one of her parents from the clues, but the last clue Mrs. D. read let her know for sure it was HER dad. He read us the classic book, "The Velveteen Rabbit" and we were a great audience.