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.

Week 10 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! This week's Thoughtful Thursday project went out to a 12 year old who will be having surgery next Thursday. You can see the project we made for her by clicking HERE.

Read, read, read, read, read... We finally got back on our chromebooks this week. We usually do RAZ kids on Tuesdays but last week we only had a half day of school and the week before that there was no school, so we made time this week. Please remember to that RAZ kids is a great tool to use at home too for "just right" text!  We have also been talking about different genre. Our new chapter book is a biography about Squanto. Ask us about it!

In writing we came up with a "No Excuses" list. It is our goal to apply what we know to our writing. After writing, we are meeting with a partner before sharing out in hopes to fix everything from our "No Excuse" list.

In math we've been learning about fact families. We had some great "a-ha" moments as we manipulated the numbers in a fact. We concluded that with 3 numbers, we can make four facts. For example, with 3,4,7 we can make 3+4=7, 4+3=7, 7-4=3 and 7-3=4. This is a little different if we use a doubles fact. Ask us about our learning!

In Social Studies we talked about the communities we belong to and what actually makes up a community. We made small books. One of the most exciting things about this is that we learned how to use a stapler. Don't worry~ Mrs. D. was monitoring so all fingers were safe.

A special thank you to all those who are or have served our country! We learned all about Veterans this week. We also wrote letters and made placements for a Veteran gathering on Veteran's Day!

We ended the week with a special Mystery Reader. Melanie's grandma came in to read to us. She did a great job and was our first "Grandma" to read to us! If you would like to sign up to be a Mystery Reader, click HERE for available dates and email Mrs. Doran at lauradoran@wlcsd.org.

In Word Study we continue to work on long vowel words. This week we focused on the o_e pattern. Next week we will be working on long "u" words using the u_e pattern. Have a great week!

Week 9 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! This week's Thoughtful Thursday project went out to a special first grader. You can check out her project by clicking HERE. If you know of someone who could use some encouragement, let Mrs. Doran know by emailing her at LauraDoran@wlcsd.org.

We had a blast on Halloween! Special thanks to the amazing moms who planned and pulled off an outstanding party! We had a great time. You can see more from our party by clicking HERE.

We are reading 25 solid minutes now and we are growing each day in our conversations about what we are reading, too. Reading makes great readers!

In writing we enjoyed publishing books. We made sure they were a small moment (one topic), used "show, not tell" and also that we were paying attention to our conventions. We loved sharing our books with others!

In math we did a lot of problem solving with doubles facts and also learned about frames and arrow patterns. Ask us about it! On Friday we took our Unit 2 Assessment and will begin Unit 3 on Monday. Our tests will come home next week!

Happy Birthday to our friend Hailey! We had fun celebrating her on Friday! It's GR8 to be 8! Sto Lat!

We ended our week with a Mystery Reader. Ethan's mom came in and read an awesome Dr. Seuss book called "Wacky Wednesday." We loved it! Thank you so much for coming in!

Just a reminder that next Tuesday we don't have school because it is Election Day! Have a great week!