Welcome students, families and friends and thanks for stopping in to see what is happening in Room 119! This site is a window into our learning. We hope you will enjoy the stories, pictures and videos. Please also check out the links below our theme song for additional information and fun. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter! We love hearing from you so feel free to leave a comment!
Greetings from Room 119! We had a short week last week but we still packed in some learning and fun! We even had a Mystery Reader, but this time in the BEGINNING of the week. Our wonderful principal, Ms. Qonja came in and read us a story about a little old lady who swallowed a PIE! It was a great book to read right before the Thanksgiving holiday!
Our school did a great job collecting non-perishable items for those in need. Thank you to all who donated. The need is very real and your generosity will directly help families in our area! Thank you!!
Mrs. Doran was also surprised with a wonderful gift for the holiday! We all wrote on a little piece of paper something we loved about Mrs. D. She read them one by one and her bucket was overflowing! She is going to keep this little jar and open it when she needs a pick-me-up. Thank you!
Our third graders put on a concert for us. They sang many songs related to Thanksgiving and sounded GREAT! Many of us had brothers and sisters performing and Mrs. D. was really excited so see so many of her former students!!
In writing this week, Mrs. Doran taught us how to make a plan about what we want to write about. We could do this by making a list or a brainstorm. We tried these ideas out and did a wonderful job. We are working on getting more details into our writing and this is a great strategy to help us!
In reader's workshop, we worked on Fluency. This is something that most of our class is working on. The best way to work on fluency is to practice, practice, practice. We read just right books in the classroom and should also be working on them at home (we can use the paper books Mrs. D. sent home).
With the short week, Mrs. D. didn't take any pictures of math. We continued to work on counting money with nickels, pennies and dimes. Next week, we'll start our unit on measurement!
We spent much of our last day before Thanksgiving practicing and performing our play. We did a fabulous job! Mrs. D. posted the video on our facebook page before Thanksgiving but in case you missed it you can click HERE or watch below.
Also, she put together a quick video of some of the extra pictures she took during the week. You can click HERE to see it or watch below. Enjoy your long weekend!
Tomorrow we will performing our Thanksgiving Play for our Fifth Grade Buddies and perhaps a few other classrooms. Parents are not invited to this event because it is very short. Mrs. D. will be taking a video of us and will post it on the blog for you to see. If you are on Facebook, make sure you like our Facebook page. Mrs. D. often posts videos there before she gets to post them on the blog. To get to our Facebook page, you can click HERE.
For tomorrow's play, the boys will be Native American Indians and the girls will be Pilgrims. Please have boys dress in earth tones (if possible) and girls dress in black and white. If you do not have these colors, that is fine.
As you know, our school will be having a Variety Show in January. Our class will be performing an act together to our "Theme Song" that you can see at our blog. We also have a dance we learned to the song. Mrs. D. has a video of her doing the motions so that we can look at it and do exactly what she does (mirror image) to practice. To see that video you can click HERE (don't laugh!).
The Variety Show will be on Janurary 17th at 6:30 at Northern High School. Dress rehearsal will be from 5:30-8 on January 16th. Because we are doing a classs act, we will not have to attend the other rehearsals that individual acts will need to attend. Students in our class can still do their own act if they choose to. We will be practicing in the comfort of Room 119. Mrs. Zeigler and Mrs. Hutton (who are in charge of the Variety Show) have created a blog HERE that will have updates and information. Mrs. D. is sending home a permission slip today in our Everyday Folders. Please send it in tomorrow or as soon as possible if we can attend!
Permission Slips for individual acts are due TOMORROW.
Because it is a short week, tomorrow's lunch will be Cook's Choice.
And finally, congratulations to Mr. Olack who was our school's teacher of the year! We were very excited to hear that he won! Thank you to everyone who took a moment to write a nomination for a teacher. Whether or not they win, it's always nice to get a note telling them you are thankful for what they do.
Greetings from Room 119! Week 11 was actually a pretty short week for us. We had a field trip and an assembly on Monday (Mrs. D. posted a video from the Field Trip on the last blog entry), and we didn't have school on Thursday because of Parent/ Teacher Conferences. Mrs. Doran thought that conferences went great and is happy to report that she was able to meet with ALL of our parents! She doesn't remember the last time she had 100% attendance at conferences, so she was really excited.
This week was Kindness Week so we began the week by thinking about all the ways you can be kind to someone that won't cost a thing! We worked as tables and came up with great ideas - from smiling at someone to asking a person if they'd like to play.
We didn't just think of how we could be kind as individuals, our school is also asking us to help the community. Maddie E's brother came down to tell us what Student Council is doing to help the community and asked us for any ideas we'd like the school to try this year. Our school is collecting non-perishable items on the days leading up to Thanksgiving, so don't forget to bring in those cans! The classroom that donates the most items will get a free Smencil for every student!
Mrs. D. did some final testing with us individually with money. We should be able to count nickels and pennies. This is a great thing to practice at home. We are starting to learn about dimes too. Another fun way to practice math is to go on the Everyday Math Website. Ask us how to log-on. We're getting to be old pros because we go each week to the computer lab for about a half hour.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, we've been reading interesting books about the holidays and finished a chapter book all about the Native American Indian named Squanto. We then wrote all we know about Thanksgiving and Mrs. D. put it together in a class book. She shared our individual pages with you at conferences. We also made some turkeys. If you want to see what we're thankful for, click HERE or check out the video below.
In Reader's Workshop this week we learned how making a picture in your mind (or visualization) can really help you understand a story and improve comprehension. We practice this often when Mrs. D. reads us books with no pictures, but we also made a movie illustrating a song. We thought of the words and drew pictures of what our mind saw. You can watch the video HERE or click on it below.
Friday was the end of Kindness Week but in Room 119 we always celebrate kindness. We each got a note card from a friend telling us how special we are! It was a great activity and Mrs. D. loved the reactions we had when someone gave us a compliment. Being nice really does feel good!
And finally, we ended our week with a special Mystery Reader. Chase's mom surprised us and came in and read us a book called, "The Pout, Pout Fish." We really liked the book and it had a great pattern in it, so we were able to read along with her at times.
As always, there are extra pictures from the week for you to see. You can click HERE to view them or just look at the video below.
Please also note, that there will be no homework given this week.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
(And don't forget to practice your lines for our Thanksgiving Play!)
As you have probably heard, we had a great time at our Field Trip yesterday (despite the cold and rainy weather). Special thanks to Amelia's mom who came with us yesterday. Mrs. Doran took a lot of pictures and video and she put it all together in a video that you can watch below or you can click HERE to view on YouTube.
We also had an assembly about Kindness Week. If you have extra note cards and envelopes that you can send in, that would be great. We will be doing some activities to show that a little kindness can go a long way in filling someone's bucket.
Because of the Field Trip and assembly, Mrs. D. wasn't able to get our books in our homework bags Monday. You will see them come home in our Everyday Folders today (Tuesday). Remember to keep these books at home and have us reread them for fluency practice so we can read like we talk.
Don't forget that tonight (Tuesday) is Skate Night from 6:30-8:30. Mrs. D. is giving us a reminder sticker to wear home today. If we wear the sticker to skate, we will get a FREE drink! Thank you PTA for organizing this great event!
Our Student Council is sponsoring a Food Drive this week and next week to benefit the Hospitality House. Even just a can or two would really benefit someone in need in our community. As an incentive to bring in non-perishable items, the class who brings in the most food will earn a prize. Every student will be able to choose a FREE Smencil. Thank you for your support!
And finally, please remember that this Thursday is Parent/ Teacher conferences. Please click HERE to double check your time (all times are posted on the right side of Mrs. Doran's blog). Let Mrs. Doran know if you are unable to keep this appointment and she can meet with you at another time. Though Thursday is a long day for her, she is looking forward to meeting with you and sharing with you what she sees in the classroom. We have a great classroom community! It's been a wonderful year so far!!
Greetings from Room 119! We had a busy week and Mrs. Doran has been busy this weekend writing our report cards (and tending to her three year old who may have broken his finger... OUCH!). She is looking forward to meeting with all of you on Thursday. She thinks we're such a great group and can't wait to share all the things we have accomplished and our goals for next marking period.
Handwriting continues to be really important. This week we worked on the letter "d" and many of us were forming this letter incorrectly. Mrs. D. told us we should start the letter by writing the "magic c" and this helped a lot of us. She calls it the magic c because it starts a lot of letters like a, d, g... etc.
We love writing and are writing so much more each day. This week Mrs. D. taught us about time-order words. Time-order words help us organize our writing in the time it happened. Some of the words we used this week were: first, then, next, after that... etc.
Mrs. R. from the public library came in to read to us again this week. We joined Mrs. Bandy's class in her room which was fun for us. We like being able to see what other classrooms look like. We saw some things that were the same and some things that were different. Mrs. R. did a great job and we loved the books she read to us.
Brandon had a real bat that was in plastic and he brought it into school for us to look at. We've been learning a lot about bats with our 5th grade buddies, so to see a real bat was very cool for us. Mrs. Doran and Mrs. Turek have been trying to get some people to come to our school and teach us about real bats... stay tuned.
We did a lot in math this week like creating and completing patterns, skip counting, adding and subtracting and counting money. Mrs. D. also did some individual assessments and instruction with us. We love math and did a great job choosing a math choice while Mrs. D. met with other students. She hopes to set up parent volunteers at conferences if you are able to help in the classroom during math or other parts of the day.
On Thursday, we learned all about bus safety with Buster the Bus. We even were able to practice a bus evacuation. This was important because even those of us who don't regularly ride a bus will ride them on special occasions like field trips.
We were so excited when Mrs. D. brought in the "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" movie for us to watch. We talked throughout the movie, but Mrs. D. was happy because it was all 'on task' talking. Throughout the movie we were comparing and contrasting the movie to the book. We even remembered the difference in the language that Roald Dahl used in his book verses what was used in the movie ("rubbish" vs. "garbage"). We really did a wonderful job on this activity and Mrs. D. could have made a much bigger venn diagram for us to compare the two.
With our fifth grade buddies, we talked a little about kindness. Next week our school will be celebrating kindness week. One of the things we will be doing is writing kind notes to others. If you have extra blank cards and envelopes you'd like to donate to our classroom, that would be great.
Mrs. D. met with all of our groups this week (even though we had a major focus on math) to work on specific goals like fluency and accuracy. We also learned about the "E" on our CAFE board which stands for "Expanded Vocabulary". We have been paying attention to interesting words in books Mrs. D. reads to us and some of these words are even turning up in our conversations and writing which is awesome!
On Friday, we ended our day with a Mystery Reader. Robbie's dad came in and read us a wonderful story! Robbie's dad was also a football coach for many of us, so we were really excited to see him. Robbie's mom also was able to come in and listen to the book and snap a few pictures. Room 119 is a community to learn and we love having families come into our room! If you haven't yet signed up to be a Mystery Reader, Mrs. D. is going to try to sign you up at conferences. She hopes that all of us will have at least one special person read to our classroom.
As always, this is just a snapshot of what we did this week, take a look at the video below or click HERE to view it directly on YouTube.
Greetings from Room 119 and the CLASS PBS WINNERS OF LAST MONTH! In addition to teachers finding individual students being the "Five R's," they also sometimes find an entire class doing a great job (in the hallway, the lunch room, etc). We had more tickets than any other class in the month of October. Mrs. Doran was not at all surprised. Our school will be unveiling a new PBS blog soon (Mrs. D. has been working on it). But first you are invited to a great informational night to learn all about our PBS program. You can click HERE to see the flyer about it and Mrs. D will also tell you more about it at conferences. Stay tuned...
With a major flu bug that seemed to hit our classroom the last couple weeks, Mrs. D was trying to wait until we were all present to work on our writing portfolios. The binders you sent in at the beginning of the year are now filling up with our writing. We loved looking back at our writing and seeing how we've grown in just two short months of school! We really are a great group of writers!
Often Mrs. D. will give us a topic to write on for our portfolios and this sometimes takes the place of our traditional Writer's Workshop. That makes us mad because we LOVE Writer's Workshop (this makes Mrs. D. smile). This week she showed us how to do some nonfiction writing and to think about our audience. We did a great job and our nonfiction writing pieces about leaves are hanging in the hallway for you to see.
We don't just write during Writer's Workshop. We make books about our friends' "show and tell"presentations and we also use writing in math. This week we learned about story problems and how to write them and the key words to look for. We have some anchor charts in our room to help us reference when a problem is asking us to add or subtract and many of us are using them as a resource which is great!
We also tried taking our first end of the marking period assessment. This is a long assessment and Mrs. Doran forgot that she usually starts first graders taking the test in small groups, so we went back and started slow. She wanted to make sure that what we wrote on the tests was an accurate assessment of what we can do and what we know.
We are doing wonderful in our Reader's Workshop. We are now reading upwards of 30 minutes each day! This has allowed Mrs. D. to get to 3 or 4 groups each day. When she works with us in small groups she finds something that is 'just right' for us since we are all working at different levels. As a class we have been working on retelling stories and this is also what we are working on in all of our groups and workshop.
A small group may consist of rewriting sentences in books, cutting them up and putting them together. It could also mean working on sight words or word parts like the one pictured here. One challenging thing about teaching is that the needs of students vary greatly so it can sometimes be difficult to write in a blog what EVERYONE is doing so ask us what books we're reading and what we're working on. We should be able to tell you if we're working on comprehension, accuracy or fluency.
We filled up another Potato Head last week so Mrs. D. showed us "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" as a reward (that we voted on). She showed this on Halloween and also gave us a small candy as a treat. It was fun.
And of course we ended our week the way we love to, with a special Mystery Reader. Jacob was really surprised when it was his dad who showed up to read us Dr. Seuss's, "Green Eggs and Ham" book. Some of us were saying we had never tried Green Eggs and Ham but Mrs. D. says it's great! Just add a little blue or green food coloring to your eggs and they will turn green. She eats it every St. Patrick's Day with her kids.
Of course there is always more... Check out the slideshow below (or click HERE) to learn about some of the other things we did this week. Don't forget there is no school for us on November 6th. Remember to vote and turn in your Fun Run money if you haven't already. It is due November 9th. The top earner in our class gets to have a pizza lunch with Mrs. Doran!
Earlier in the week, I sent you an email mentioning that we would welcome any safe candies that you may have left over from all your treating. Below is a list of safe candies that I got from the parents of our students who have life threatening allergies.
Please remember that these are for the Prize Bucket ONLY and that our school still follows a non edible birthday treat policy. For your convenience, I also added these candies under our "Safe Snacks" link on the right side of this blog for you to reference at any time.
Safe candies are:
Twizzlers
Whooppers
Blow-Pops
Tootsie Rolls (Tootsie Roll brand ONLY)
Jolly Rancher Lollipops
Pixie Stix
Sixlets
Airheads
Swedish Fish
Sour Patch Zombies
Sour Patch Kids
Also coming home today is your child's behavior calendar. Please take a moment to discuss it with your child. Remember that students who pull cards (of any color) half the time they are in our classroom will receive a beginning grade on their report card. I will also make mention of behavior in my comments if your child seems to be pulling cards more than 4 or so a month. Remember, students get 'warnings' prior to pulling cards. If you have any questions, please let me know.
And finally it is NOVEMBER! If you get this blog via email, please take a moment to go directly to our classroom blog (http://dayswithmrsdoran.blogspot.com/ ) to check out November's Upcoming Events. Also there is a link to all conference times if you forget what time you have signed up for. I will also send home reminders as we get closer to the 15th. If you ever do have a concern about your child or wonder how they are doing, don't wait until conferences, send me a message and I can get back to you right away.
