Week 3 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! We had a great week. Even though we weren't in school on Thursday because of Rosh Hashana (Happy New Year), we did TWO Thoughtful Thursday projects. Our scheduled project was for Mr. Marc (you can see his project by clicking HERE). We also did a project for the sister of a Room 119 student (also is a Room 119 alum). You can see her project, by clicking HERE.

Be sure to check our Everyday Folders because we all got our job assignments for the first trimester! Work starts on Monday and we're excited!

Our principal, Ms. Qonja, came and read to us and we loved it. We were very respectful and did a great job listening!

On Monday we celebrated Constitution Day. We learned what the constitution is and we focused primarily on the preamble. Many of us found the history very interesting!

In reading we are building our stamina and reading for at least 20 minutes. Some of us need some reminders to stay focused but the majority of the class is doing awesome! Mrs. D. has been able to read with us individually which has been fun. We also finished "James and the Giant Peach." In Language Workshop we read some "Mr. Magee" books and looked closely at their vocabulary.

We love writing! Just like reading, we are now writing for 20 minutes and everyone in Room 119 has shared their writing with the class. Next week we'll set personal goals in writing and work hard toward meeting them.

You have probably heard that we logged into our chromebooks this week! We had so much fun exploring the math games on Connect Ed and learned that the website accesses exactly what we do in school (great resource if we are absent). The game, "Fish for Ten" (a card game where we practice sums of ten) was a favorite as was "Penny Plate" on our chromebooks. Remember our login (and information) for the math website and google classroom is on our Everyday Folders!

We love having 5th grade buddies and we finished up a "Getting to Know You" activity with them. Many of us have written about our buddy time in our daily reflection notebooks. It certainly is a highlight!

We ended the week with a Mystery Reader! Special thanks to Makayla's mom who picked out two awesome books to read to us. If you haven't signed up to be a Mystery Reader yet, check out our blog for available dates and let Mrs. Doran know!

Next week we'll be working on iReady assessments. These assessments are taken on the computer or chromebooks so if we have comfy earphones, please send them in. We also have a new student who will be joining us on Monday. We can't wait! Have a great week!

Week 2 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! We had a great second week of school and we are building our school stamina each day. This week we lifted up Mrs. Doran's brother-in-law who has really been struggling. You can see the project for him HERE. 

Mrs. Doran was so happy to see such a great turn-out for Curriculum Night. If you were unable to come, click HERE to access the packet that was covered. If you ever have any questions, please let her know! Our parent community gave her great feedback on their thoughts and also helped cutting out Doran Dollars! (THANK YOU!!!) We can't wait to start working next week and have our first auction!

We have been rocking our reading stamina! Since we're doing so well, Mrs. Doran has been able to start reading with us individually. She has enjoyed learning more about us as readers!

Similarly our writing stamina is growing. Right now we have been working on getting complete thoughts on paper. We love sharing with our peers. Mrs. D. has been meeting with us individually to help guide us as writers.

We worked a lot with numbers this week! We made number grids (scrolls), number lines (where we chose if we wanted to count by 1s, 2s, 5s, etc...),  and talked out our problem solving for number problems with friends. We also worked a little with counting coins.

We were excited to celebrate our first birthday in Room 119! It is certainly GREAT to be EIGHT! If you have a birthday coming up, please remember to give Mrs. D. a heads up.  We had fun celebrating Emme and Mrs. D. even sang to her in Polish! Sto Lat!

Have a great week!

Week 1 in Review

Greetings from Room 119 and welcome to a new school year! We had a GREAT first week of school and even got to meet Little Blue! Each week in Room 119 we lift someone up in need with a project we call "Thoughtful Thursday." To see this week's project, click HERE.

 This week was full of getting to know each other and creating a great learning environment. We all had things we were excited about as well as things we were worried about. Mrs. D. smiled when she read what we were excited about and was able to look at our worries in hopes to set them at ease. She will be doing a similar thing with our parents at curriculum night. Don't worry, we didn't write our names on our sticky notes and you won't have to either.

We did a great job thinking about what readers do and even started practicing during our Readers' Workshop.  We are working on building our stamina so that Mrs. D. will soon be able to read with individuals and small groups. We are off to a great start. We also started our first read-aloud by one of Mrs. D's favorite authors! Ask us what she's reading to us~ maybe you've read it too!

At the end of each day, we spend 15 minutes writing in a reflection journal. It's a great tool to communicate to Mrs. D. what went well or perhaps what didn't. We also really like that she writes us back each day. We also got our Writer's Notebook and will work on decorating it this weekend! To see a video with directions on how to do this, click HERE.

In math we had a great talk about what mathematicians do (Mrs. D. forgot to take a picture of our ideas). We also created a graph about how we got home the first day and made some observations about our data. We took a beginning of the year assessment to drive Mrs. D.'s instruction and started learning about number lines and ordering numbers. We've got some great thinkers in Room 119!

We had a great week! Mrs. D. would love to tell you more about what we do in Room 119 so don't forget to join her at Curriculum Night next Wednesday, September 13th at 6:30. Remember this is for adults so try to get a sitter for us.

Have a great week!