Week 16 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! What a busy week it was! We didn't get everything done, but we accomplished a lot. One thing we didn't do this week, was get out a Thoughtful Thursday project. We do have a special little 3 year old who was recently diagnosed with cancer. We have a few projects to do in the new year before we get to her project but she LOVES getting cards. If you would like to send her your own card over the holiday to make her smile, email Mrs. Doran at lauradoran@wlcsd.org and she will send you her address and more information.

One of the things we were busy doing was a special project for our families! We hope that you like them! We had fun making them!

We spent a lot of time publishing our realistic fiction stories on google drive. It turned out we're going to need more time editing. If you would like to help with this you can log in to google drive over the break. Our goal is to finish it up completely that first week back in 2018.

Another thing we did in writing was letter writing! LLE's post office opened up! Mrs. D. bought each of us a sheet of stationery and taught us how to address letters to ensure they get to the people we write to. We can buy our own sheets for 5 cents each every Thursday.

Despite it being a shorter week, we did awesome in our long 'i' word study and spelling test. Our scores are in Skyward. Please note a new list did not go home the last day of school. Enjoy the break. We will have a new study and focus the first FULL week in January. New words will be sent home on Friday, January 5th.

In math we had fun doing winter related things including these cute math-fact snowmen and more dreidel playing! Feel free to check in on our math website to play fun math games over the break. Board games are also great for math!

We celebrated THREE birthdays this week! Happy Birthday to 3 Great 8 year olds! Sto Lat!

Happy Birthday, Connor!

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

Happy Birthday, Elliot!

 We ended the week with a fun pizza party from Maireva (a Thoughtful Thursday recipient) who with her family treated us to lunch! We were so excited! We also had an awesome party. You can see pictures and video by clicking HERE or checking out our class Facebook page for the stills.

Mrs. Doran was overwhelmed with the kindness Room 119 showed her this week! Thank you all for being so amazing and thoughtful. You really absolutely made her feel so special. Wishing you all a very happy and restful holiday season with family and friends!

See you in 2018!

Week 15 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! Although we were not in school on Thursday, we still know the importance of warming hearts so we made a video for an inspirational woman name Nancy. You can see the project we made for her by clicking HERE.

The reason we weren't in school Thursday was because a giant snowstorm came through! This gave a sick teacher (poor Mrs. D.) a little longer to recoup from a nasty cold and second graders (like her son) extra time to play the math game we learned at school. You can use UNO cards to play too (ignore our dog Marty's bone on the ottoman... he likes to play too).

We had a special visitor from the library come and read a fun book to us on Monday. We also continue to focus on Realistic fiction and enjoy sharing great books with our friends. Mrs. Doran is reading the book, "Horrible Harry and the HoliDAZE" which shares a bit about different December holidays!

 In writing we are working on our Realistic Fiction books which (after conferencing and editing) we are going to type out on our chromebooks next week (fingers crossed). We also love our Monday Mysteries! This week we learned and wrote about why snow is white! Ask us about it!

A Happy Hanukkah to all our Jewish friends and families! One of the fun things we did for math this week was learn the Dreidel game! Besides being fun, it helped us with our math and ability to split numbers into half.

Room 119 is full of Bucket Fillers, so to celebrate we had some game time with friends! We also learned one of our Thoughtful Thursday friends (Maireva) was so touched by our project that she and her family wanted to treat us to pizza lunch on December 21st! Mrs. D. will email you more details in her Monday email blast!

With our 5th Grade buddies, we had fun reading "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and made cool grinchy ornaments! Mrs. Doran also shared with us her son's drawing of the Grinch HERE.

We ended the week with a special Mystery Reader! Elliot was very surprised to see his whole family come in to read to Room 119! We were all very excited and we think his little brother was excited to be in Room 119 too!

 Just a reminder, PLEASE do your best to label all snowpants, boots, gloves, jackets and hats. Daily somehow we have these items that no one claims to be theirs. It would be helpful if they had names so we could give them to their rightful owner. The Lost and Found is growing and our hands may be getting cold! Thanks for your help with this! Have a great week! Remember no school Next Friday due to the holiday break!

Week 14 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! December is a busy month and it is also a busy month in Room 119. We, of course, made time for a Thoughtful Thursday project that went out to a fighter named Gina. You can see her project by clicking HERE.

You may have heard that we read many different holiday books in Room 119. One of the books we read brought an elf to our class! Meet Snowflake Sugarpuff. The elf showed up on our clock the first day but that didn't stop us from growing each day with our time-telling abilities. For a review and practice, click HERE for a lesson Mrs. Doran made.

We are currently working on Realistic Fiction. We are able to identify if the books we read are Realistic Fiction or not and tell you why, and we are also beginning our own books about a Realistic Character we have created. We will continue to work on this next week. Ask us about it!

We've done a great job defending our ideas with realistic fiction and we continue to love to talk about how we tackle our reading troubles. We very much enjoyed "Friend Friday" where we asked Mrs. D. if we could read with a buddy and share our books. We did a great job and hope to do this again!

Happy Birthday, Sonakshi!

We had two birthday girls this week and enjoyed singing and celebrating with them! Sto Lat!

Happy Birthday, Makayla!

We also had two mystery readers this week! Lamis's big sister came in to read to us. She used to learn in Room 119 with Mrs. Doran back when she was in first grade so it was great to have her back. She did a great job!

We also had a visit from Morgan's Nana who read us a book about a cat named Yoda that we all enjoyed! Room 119 sure loves Mystery Readers!

Just a reminder that conferences are next week! Mrs. Doran looks forward to meeting with you!

Have a great week!

Week 13 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! This week's Thoughtful Thursday went out to a little girl who is our age. You can see the video we made her by clicking HERE.

Mrs. D. shared some really sad news with us on Monday. Little Blue (the bird who came to school with her in warmer temps) died unexpectedly the day before Thanksgiving. We were all very sad and gave Mrs. Doran letters (A Thoughtful Thursday project of her very own). It meant a lot to her! Blue will be missed!

 As we continue to work on our "No Excuses" in writing We've found that many of us are really struggling with periods and capitals. We continue to meet with peer editors before sharing out with the class in hopes to make some improvements and we are. Many of us are also writing Realistic Fiction stories since that is something we are learning about in reading.

We do writing throughout the day and one of the things we learned this week is your ideas or perspective can change when you get more information. We did two writing activities about this. Ask us what we learned about turkeys and owls this week!

In reading we've been learning about realistic fiction books. We are practicing identifying the books we are reading and supporting why we think our books are realistic fiction, fantasy or nonfiction. Our classroom also got a new wi-fi drop which GREATLY helped with our wi-fi connectivity. RAZ-kids is much easier with working chromebooks. Keep up the reading at home!

 In math we took an assessment. As a class we did VERY well on it. We are getting better at explaining our thinking. We learned many strategies to help us solve problems from counting up or back, using sums of tens, fact families or double facts. We are also working on WHEN do use different strategies so we can solve problems efficiently.

We also got a preview for our next unit. We had fun playing a coin exchange game. This is a game we can also play at home so Mrs. D. sent home a spinner and directions to help us get better with coins!

We'll also be telling time. We watched a video where the teacher sounded awfully familiar... that's because it was Mrs. Doran. While we watched, we worked out problems. HERE is a link to the video so we can review and practice! HERE is another video to help us practice more.

Room 119's representatives had their first Student Council meeting and they came back to report how it went and to get our feedback on things to take back at their next meeting. We all did a great job. Room 119 is a great community!

We had our PBIS assembly for Kindness where our friend Hailey was recognized. She got the most votes in Room 119 with details on WHY she should be chosen. Room 119 has a lot of kind kids so this was a tough one to choose. Congratulations to everyone!

We ended our week with a special Mystery Reader. Connor W.'s mom came in to read to us. He was very excited and she read a great book. We were a wonderful audience too!

I will be sending out another reminder to all who have not yet signed up for conferences. Skyward has been closed due to report cards coming out soon. If for some reason a spelling test doesn't make it home or the math assessment didn't make it home, let Mrs. D. know and she can let you know how we did until you can see her grade book in Skyward again! Have a great week!

Week 12 in Review

Greetings from Room 119. It was a very short week for us. Mrs. Doran had a guest teacher on Tuesday due to her taking a class at Oakland Schools. Although we were not in school on Thursday, we know our most important work is to be kind so we took our 15 minutes to send some love to someone in need. You can check out the Thoughtful Thursday project we made for Mary Ann by clicking HERE.

Speaking of being Thoughtful... Although Room 119 didn't bring in the most donations for Hospitality House our donations added up to make a BIG difference! Way to go Room 119 and all of LLE!

We have such a diverse group of readers! We love sharing things we notice in our books, connections we make and things we are wondering. These are great things we can do at home too!

Our writing continues to improve as we now have a definite audience. We do not read our writing to a buddy, but our buddy has to read our writing to US! We've learned a lot about paying attention to detail and have learned a lot from our peers. We've also been good teachers to our friends!

In math we've learned that there are many strategies we can use to solve subtraction problems. Sometimes we are counting up - sometimes we count back and some of us are looking for a missing addend! More math next week!

Mrs. Doran and her family hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! 

Looking forward so seeing you Monday!

Week 11 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! This week's Thoughtful Thursday project went out to Yvette! You can see the project that we made for her by clicking HERE.

Because Mrs. D. had some more (time-sensitive) project requests, we did two projects on Monday for World Kindness Day. These projects take us only 15 minutes, but they mean a lot to those who receive them. Check out the video we made for Nancy by clicking HERE and the video we made for Grandma Tammy by clicking HERE.

This week we voted for a classroom representative for Room 119. Congratulation to all of our friends who ran. You can see their awesome speeches HERE. Jayce and Emme were elected to represent us this year. Great job, everyone!

We have really been loving our reading time. We keep asking Mrs. D. to INCREASE our reading time. We are currently reading for a solid 30 minutes and our conversations about what we notice in workshop seem to be growing as well. Ask us what we notice when we read!

 We are also growing as writers. We write for 25 minutes, edit ourselves for 5 and then meet with a peer buddy for a second set of eyes. Knowing that a peer is going to be the one reading our writing has really helped us pay closer attention to detail and our "No Excuses" that we came up with. Below is a video so you can see what it looks like when we're sharing our work! Great things happen in Room 119!

In math we have really rocked out solving missing addends! We LOVE the game "Salute" that we learned. You can play it at home with number Uno cards or regular playing cards. We also enjoyed solving "In and Out" problems. Ask us about it!

We've learned a lot about the Pilgrims and Native Americans through the biography of Squanto that we finished, a documentary we saw and Scholastic Magazines that we read. As tables, we took notes about important parts and then put them together in a poster to share. Before we made posters, we first took a walk to the 5th grade hall to check out posters they had made. We looked at what made their posters "good" and had a great conversation about letter size, color, use of illustrations and more. Each time we do this activity we grow.

We ended the week with a Mystery Reader. It was great having Audrey P.'s mom come in to read to us! She did a great job and we were wonderful listeners!

Don't forget that LLE is currently partnering with the Hospitality House and having a food drive to help those in the community who are less fortunate. The class with the most donations will get free smencils (a smencil is a smelly pencil).
Also, if you have not yet signed up for conferences, please go on Skyward Family access HERE to sign up. Email Mrs. D. if you have any questions.

Also, don't forget that book orders are due on the 28th. You can place an order by clicking HERE. If this is a surprise for the holidays, please email Mrs. D. and let her know so she can get it to you without us knowing.