Week 34 in Review

Greetings from 119 and Happy Memorial Day Weekend!  Thank you to all who have served our country!  We are blessed to have the freedoms we do!  

 On the whole, we were much better this week and made better friendships.  It seemed our meetings about Empathy last week (and perhaps some talks with you) helped!  We also had author Maria Dismondy come and speak to us at an assembly.  She talked about the recipe for being a good friend and mentioned the word, "Empathy." Those of us in Room 119 sat up and listened because we already know the word and are working on putting it into practice!

Speaking of practice, we continue to work on reading.  Mrs. D. has finished testing a little over half of us.  It is amazing to see how we have grown over the school year.  Many of us also have been working on RAZ kids and sending Mrs. D. recordings of us reading!  She has really enjoyed listening to us and looks forward to hearing your feedback on it as well!

 In writing, we continue to work on writing beginnings, middles and ends AND adding more detail to our pieces (so our beginnings are a bit longer... etc.).  We also each have individual targets we are working on~ proper capital use, punctuation, spelling, adding more details, using better words.  Ask us what our target is!

In math we have been learning about symmetry and having a lot of fun with it!  This was our last week of official math workshop and we were so thankful for our math moms who came in EVERY week to help us!  Special thanks to the moms of Kaden, Massimo, Ward and Shane and thank you to Ethan's mom who came in during our Writer's Workshop!  You truly were such a help this school year!

 In science we started learning about small solids and how they can seem similar to liquids because you can 'pour' them and they can fill up a container similar to liquids.  We had fun exploring a mixture of solids and separating them using screens.  This took some problem solving and we did a nice job working together!

We celebrated Troy's 7th birthday and had fun singing to him!  He also brought in some cool Dr. Seuss pencils for us to have and he put some extra in the prize bucket!  We also got to see some Room 119 alums!  Some of Mrs. D's second graders came in to teach us about famous people that they researched!  We look forward to being able to do this in our second grade classrooms next year!

 We ended the week the way we love to, with a special Mystery Reader!  Regan's mom came in and read to us.  We were a wonderful audience!  We continue to try to get someone special for EVERYONE in Room 119.  Mrs. D. is very flexible with our schedule now so hoping to get everyone in by the end of the school year!

This is just a sneak peek of what we did.  Brought back by popular demand (or request of a few of us who missed seeing the videos) is a video of extra pics from the week!  You can click HERE to see more of us in action!

RAZ Kids!

As you know by now, we've been excited to try Raz- Kids!  I signed up for a free 30 day trial so that your children can practice books on your computer or tablet.  To use this site on a tablet go to the app store where you can download the app for free!  To get to the Raz-Kids website, you can click HERE.  From there, click on the green "Kids Login" button.

When you click on the green bucket it will take you to this screen.  For "Teacher Username" type in mrsdoran.

Then hit the green "Go" arrow.

From there you will see my full name (Laura Doran) as well as a class list.  Find your child's name and click on it.

From there you will get to this screen.  Click on "Your Assignment" and you will find some "just right" books that I chose for your child.  When your child finishes some assignments, they earn stars.  Once they have earned stars they can click on Robot Builder or RAZ Rocket for fun.

When you click on your assignment you will see many titles right at your child's level.  Under each book you will see three icons.  The first is an ear.  This choice will read the book to your child.  As the book is read, the words will light up so that your child can follow along.  The next option is an eye.  When you select this option, your child can read the book him or herself.  They can also choose to send me a recording of them reading (which many of them have!).  The third icon is a question mark.  After the book has been read, your child can answer questions about that book.

Recording yourself reading is a wonderful tool.  It helps children hear how they sound and repeated readings help with fluency.  Just click the red record button and read the page using the "next" arrow when you are ready to turn the page.  When you are done, you will have the option of sending it to me.

I am new to this and I am learning along with you.  I am trying to see if this would be a good tool to try out next year.  As you may notice, many of the book titles are those that I have sent throughout the year for you to keep.  If you have any other questions, please let me know and I will do my best to answer them!  Happy Reading!!

Week 33 In Review

Greetings from Room 119! As a group, we had a difficult week.  We talked a lot about "Empathy": what it is and why it is important.  Two of Mrs. D's book shelf covers were ripped, an erasable sentence strip was broken in half and a book shelf was drawn on.  Hopefully our class meetings will help us to be more empathetic and make good choices.

 This week was full of testing.  Mrs. D. will be testing us in reading or much of the remainder of the school year.  She has been really impressed with how much we have grown this year.  Please remember to continue reading with us each day especially those students who have been just at grade level or approaching grade level.

 We also took our DWA (Developmental Writing Assessment).  It is amazing to see how we have grown as writers!  Mrs. Hill copied both our tests from September and from this week and they will be placed in our portfolio for you to see!  Our class learning target has been to include a beginning, middle and end in our writing.  We do have individual targets we are working on.  Ask us what ours is!

In math this week, we did a lot of work with the hundreds grid.  We explored it and learned how it works.  We found out that it is a great tool to help us add and subtract big numbers.  When we go down the number grid we add ten, going up the number grid subtracts ten.

 In science we explored liquids!  We learned that unlike solids that keep their own shape, liquids take the shape of their container.  We also learned different properties of liquids like color, transparency and viscosity.

 You may have thought we were done learning about insects, but we got caterpillars this week!!  They will be spending their time in Room 119 eating away.  We look forward to seeing what they do next!

 For Fun Friday we did some painting for an upcoming surprise!  We love getting out paints and being creative!

We ended our week with a special Mystery Reader!  Ethan's third grade brother came in to read to us and he did a GREAT job!  We were a wonderful audience and enjoyed both the story and wonderful illustrations in Jungle Dreams.

Have a great week!  Remember on May 20th there will be an All-Pro Dads' Meeting and on the 21st there will be a Skate Night.  We also have a short week next week with no school on Friday.

Week 32 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! We are so thankful to have such amazing mothers!  We hope you all had a wonderful day and enjoyed the treats we made for you!

 As you know, Miss Coe had her last day with us and is now a college graduate!  We were sad to see her go but hope she will drop in again to say hello!  We learned a lot from her and she learned a lot from us.  Mrs. D. is glad to be back in full swing!

 Mrs. D. forgot to send this picture to Miss Coe for her blog post.  Landen's mom came in and read to us the Hungry Caterpillar!  She did a great job and we were a great audience!

 Mrs. D. was overwhelmed with all the love she felt last week!  Thank you for all the flowers, notes, treats, fruits, supplies and more!  You made her feel like a queen!  She would have loved to write individual thank you notes, but so much came at once she couldn't keep track of who gave her what.  Thank you!  Her diet can start again next week! :-)

In reading, we are learning that authors often try to teach lessons through their stories.  Mrs. D. has been reading us stories about the "Wemmicks."  Ask us about them and what lessons Max Lucado teaches others through his books.

Our writing was top secret this week!  We worked on books for our moms about the "Top Ten Reasons We Love Our Moms" and also wrote Miss Coe a book with "Words of Wisdom" to help her on  the road to having her own classroom. We gave her great advice!

We continued to learn about solids this week and explored their properties.  We became more familiar with the vocabulary to describe solids and enjoyed trying to build towers with solids.  We learned that some solids are more 'rigid' than others and also that building towers isn't as easy as it looks.

 We recorded what we learned in our Science Notebooks and then worked together as tables to build towers.  We did a great job.  Next week we will explore liquids!

In math we took our Unit 8 Review and it was sent home for you to see.  The most difficult problem we had (as a class) was the story problem.  We practiced more together.  We find that explaining our math thinking in writing can be hard.  We will continue to practice this next week as well.

 We had a special birthday celebration last week!  Braedyn turned 7 and we had fun singing to him and celebrating him.

He was very surprised when later that day his mom came as our Mystery Reader.  She read a book about Noah's Ark that was written and illustrated by her friend.  We thought it was very neat that Braedyn and his mom know a REAL author.  We were a great audience and enjoyed ending our week with our Mystery Reader.  If you have not come in and would still like to, please contact Mrs. D.  She would love for everyone to have someone special read to our class.

If you're getting this blog via email, be sure to go to the blog website to see the upcoming events!  It's hard to believe we only have a month left together.  We still have a lot of learning to do!

Have a great week!

Farewell Miss Coe

 

Today is Miss Coe's last day and we will miss seeing her.  Hopefully she will come back and visit from time to time as she has been a large part of our lives the last four months.

In addition to the bag, books and pizza celebration we had on Tuesday, we gave Miss Coe a special book today called, "Words of Wisdom" Creatively Written by Room 119.  We are hoping that our advice will help her as she works toward her goal of having her own classroom.

We also made a video for her that you can see below or by clicking HERE.  I apologize you cannot view it on mobile devices.  That is because of songs that were used.  While making this video, I had some audio issues that took a long time to resolve (5 hours after baseball games last night) and I realized AFTER uploading it to YouTube that 3 of the children's "Goodbyes" were not in the movie.  I will be fixing that later but since today is her last day, this is the video that was shown today.

Thank you for supporting her.

Laura Doran

Week 31 in Review

 

We had a great 31st week of school!  To see what we were learning about, be sure to check out Miss Coe's chronicles by clicking HERE.  Sadly, this is Miss Coe's last week with us.  Be sure to tune in this weekend to Mrs. D's blog to see how we celebrated her graduation!!