Week 17 in Review

Greetings from Room 119 and our last post of 2019! The time certainly did fly and especially this week. Mrs. Doran didn't take a lot of pictures (as much of what we did was top secret and things our families will see over the break). We did make a Thoughtful Thursday project for our friend Leighton's mom. You can see the project we made for her by clicking HERE. If you have someone you'd like us to lift up, you can email Mrs. Doran at lauradoran@wlcsd.org and she'll let you know what she needs.

In math this week we took some assessments (some need to still be inputted and you'll see them in January) and we also had to get creative one day when Jingle Bell (our elf) was sitting on our clock so we did some "time" work by making some clock snowmen! They turned out so cute and will be displayed in January!

Another highlight was watching "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" movie. After, we did a Venn-Diagram to compare and contrast the the book and the movie. After that we did a Visible Thinking Routine called Tug of War. We thought about and wrote individually about what we liked best~ the book or the movie. Twenty-two of us liked the book best and 5 liked the movie. You can read WHY we felt this way as this is now displayed in our hallway.

Visible Thinking Routines can also help us understand and identify our ideas after reading a book. We read "The Proudest Blue" about a girl's first time wearing a hijab. It gave us a different perspective and understanding. This is now posted on our door (We're really sharing this week's work with LLE).

 Mrs. Weaver and Mrs. Doran got us all a new book and Mrs. D. read with us the first four chapters (she was only going to read one chapter but we wanted her to keep going). Hopefully you can read it to us so we can learn about what happens to the main character and his dilemma.

We ended the week with an AWESOME party! Thank you so much to all the parents who came in to volunteer! Mrs. Doran took pictures and a video which you can see by clicking HERE. All of the still pictures are also on our class facebook page.
Also, please note that Mrs. D. found out that some of us are so smart we've been checking out the Mystery Reader dates on our own so she's moved them and is only showing the available dates. She'll contact you the week you read and if you are ever curious or forget your time, just let her know. Room 119 kids are SMART!

And I just need to take a moment to thank you all so very much for making me feel so incredibly loved this last week of school. I was so humbled by your kind words and extremely generous gifts. I have really enjoyed working with all of you this year and while I am looking forward to these two weeks to recharge, I'm also going to miss "my kids" who are YOUR kids! Thank you for sharing them with me! It really is a pleasure! I'll see you all in 2020 (and hopefully Norbert will too! He sends you holiday wishes).

Week 16 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! This week our Thoughtful Thursday project went out to our friend, Gianna's Meme. You can see the project we made her by clicking HERE.

Most of our writing this week was writing about our reflections from the first trimester. Mrs. Doran enjoyed reflecting on our progress and sharing it with you at conferences. Please take a quick, anonymous survey HERE to give her feedback.

We continue to work on our fluency and our read aloud book, "The Wizard of Oz", will be coming to an end next week. It's been such a fun book and we're really enjoying it.

In math we worked on measurements in inches and centimeters. We will be taking our Unit 4 Assessment next week. Look for a review to come home Monday if you'd like to look over what will be covered on our test.

A very Happy Birthday to our friend, Alton! We loved singing "happy birthday" to him in English and in Polish (Sto Lat!).  Unfortunately he went home sick on Friday so our Mystery Reader (his Grandma) didn't come in to read. We hope he's feeling better soon.

And since there's no Mystery Reader picture, we though you might like this picture from Moonbeams for Sweet Dreams. We know Mason went (though he didn't say 'hi' to Mrs. Doran... next time!). You should definitely go to this event. It happens every night December 1st-25th. You can learn more about it by clicking HERE.

Week 15 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! What a great week we had! This week Room 119 made it's 200th Thoughtful Thursday project!!! It went out to the teacher of one of Mrs. Doran's kids. We were happy to be able to lift her up. You can see Diane's project by clicking HERE. If you have someone in need of encouragement who would like a project, please email her to see what she'll need from you.

We are learning about different holiday traditions in December and when we read the book "The Elf on the Shelf" an elf (that we named Jingle Bell) showed up! His second day here was a bit rough since some touched him. Thankfully some familiar elves helped him (and we had some work editing a letter those elves wrote).

On Monday, Mr. Stearns, a former teacher, joined Mrs. Doran and Mrs. Weaver. We went to the computer lab and are working on a fun project. We're going to continue working on this the next few weeks and can't wait to show you! Stay tuned!

In addition to working on our fluency, we got a new read-aloud book. Mrs. Doran is reading us "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and while this book was written over 100 years ago, we're LOVING it! If we haven't seen the movie yet, don't show us! The book is VERY different and we'll do a compare and contrast when we're done reading.

In math we learned that based on where a number is placed, it's value is different. For example in 87, the value of the 8 is 80 or 8 tens. In the number 78, the value of the 8 is 8 ones. We had fun exploring place value and playing a fun place value top-it game. Ask us about it!

We ended the week with a highlight! Leah's mom came in and was our Mystery Reader. She read a great book about an elf and then donated that book to Room 119! We were so excited! Thank you for coming in and for the great book!

Just a reminder that we have parent/teacher conferences next week. Don't forget to write down any questions you may have so you don't forget. Of course, if you'd like to ask Mrs. Doran something now, please don't hesitate! Have a great week!

Week 14 in Review

Greetings from Room 119 and Happy Thanksgiving! We learned a lot about the history of Thanksgiving and that the Native Americans had a very tough time. We also used this time to reflect on all that we are thankful for. We also wanted to welcome our new friend, Aleksandr, to Room 119!

Because we were not in school on Thursday, there was no "Thoughtful Thursday" project this week. Since we've been working on writing our opinions about books, we tweaked things on Wednesday to write letters to family and friends sharing our opinions about them and supporting why we think they are awesome. We hope that you liked the letters we wrote! Many of us wrote many letters and even chose to continue writing during free choice! WOW!

Writing, of course, is something that occurs throughout our day in many different areas. In Second Steps we were talking about how it's OK to have a difference of opinion from others. We began this lesson with a "Zoom In" routine where we look closely at a picture and try to make sense out of it. We shared stories where we may have felt different from someone else but how we are still able to be kind and agree to disagree.

We've love reading and building our fluency. This week we focused on reading like characters. To do this, we have to pay close attention to clues an author may give us as to HOW the character talks. We did a great job with this.

This week in math, we worked on telling time which we are WAY ahead of since we've been doing this since the beginning of the school year and still work on it a little each day. Sometime we can get tricked when the hour hand is late in the hour like 3:50, 3:55. Overall though we're doing great. To see how Mrs. Doran taught us, and for review, you can click HERE.

We had a lot of fun with our 5th grade buddies doing some "Turkey Trivia." Mrs. D. and Mrs. T. were dressed alike. They used to always do the turkey trot together but injury hasn't allowed Mrs. T. to do it the last few years. Mrs. D. however had a great race placing 6th out of 374 in her old lady age group! YAY!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! See you in December!

Week 13 in Review

Greetings from Room 119. This week we lifted up a senior and WLN. You can check out her project by clicking HERE. If you know of someone who could use some encouragement, please email Mrs. D. at lauradoran@wlcsd.org.

 It was a fun week and we were happy that so many people were able to attend folk dancing! Mrs. D. and Mrs. A. were so happy about the amazing turnout since we know that schedules are often full. To see the amazing dancing our Room 119 community did, click HERE.

Our reading focus has been on fluency. We worked on rereading and scooping up phrases to read like we talk. Mrs. Doran has seen improvement in this area and we've had fun rereading and changing our voice like the characters we're reading. Ask us about it!

In writing we are now working on opinion writing. The first thing we did was think about characters in books we've read that we really liked. We shared our thoughts by writing a letter to Mrs. Doran complete with a beginning that stated the character we were writing about, reasons why we liked that character, and a closing. Mrs. D. has loved reading our opinions.

In math we took our Unit 3 Math Assessment after a review. Most of us did awesome and our explanations (sharing HOW we solved a problem) are really improving and that's not an easy task. Tests were sent home and need to be signed and returned. We'll start Unit 4 next week.

Did you know that we have some entrepreneurs in Room 119? Some of us are bringing in our own items and having "Garage Sales" at free choice. So much creativity and learning goes into our play!

Wow! We were all blown away by the kindness shown to Room 119 this week. Thank you to all who purchased a book for our room and also to those who bought the items off our wish list! We now have clipboards for everyone, stickers for Thoughtful Thursday projects, additional Expo markers, Pins that were lost to hold up our "buckets" and play dough for free choice! For all of this we say, THANK YOU!!

We have a short week next week but look forward to welcoming another new learner to our Room 119 family. It's a great place to learn! Have a wonderful week!

Week 12 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! We had a shorter week with a big snow storm that started Monday and gave us a day off on Tuesday due to road conditions. Despite the cold, we hoped to warm the heart of Gary who is the Uncle of a student in Mrs. Ulin's class. We were glad he could join us for his uncle's project. You can see the project by clicking HERE. If you know of someone who could use a Thoughtful Thursday project, email Mrs. Doran at lauradoran@wlcsd.org

With the crazy weather and schedule, Mrs. Doran didn't take pictures of us reading (mostly because she was reading with us). She did take this picture which shows some of what we were working on. We are working on improving our fluency and to do this we are working on re-reading passages and pages. We also worked on how rereading can help us change character voice and work on intonation.
(The picture that someone drew happened at free-choice when we were playing school and it made Mrs. D smile so she took a picture of it.)

We finished our writing unit of personal narratives and we had a celebration where we were awarded "Improved Author" certificates. We are beginning a new unit on opinion writing. We started with a pre-writing assessment to help guide Mrs. Doran's instruction.

In math we continued to look at subtraction strategies. We focused on how we can use near doubles facts to help us with subtraction and played games where we rolled for doubles as well as Subtraction Top It to help us practice. We should be ready to take our math assessment later next week.

It was election week at LLE and in Room 119. We heard from some amazing candidates and placed our votes after listening to some wonderful speeches. Congratulations to Ella and Memphis who will be representing Room 119 this year.

We had an assembly on Thursday where Maria Dismondy read one of her books and taught us about "The Buddy Bench." Later we were given our very own Buddy Bench that will be out on the LLE playground! Thank you to everyone involved who gave this to our school community.

We were excited to celebrate our friend Sami's birthday this week. He turned seven! Happy birthday, Sami! Sto Lat!

We ended the week the way we love~ with a Mystery Reader. Kinsley was so excited when she realized it was HER mom who came to read to us. We all know Kinsley's mom well because is one of the motor moms who works with Room 119 each week! Thanks so much for reading to us!

Have a great week!

Week 11 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! Brrrr! It's getting cold out there! Please remember that we go outside every day! This week we learned about Veteran's Day (and will continue to learn more next week) and we also sent out a project to Ms. Heather for Thoughtful Thursday which you can see by clicking HERE.

 The book fair is next week! Mrs. Doran will allow us to go down during our free choice and we will also go during our library time on Thursday. Mrs. Doran will check and send home other shopping days and times in her email blast!

Our narrative unit in writing was so much fun! We improved our organization, transitions, peer editing and more. We are excited to have a celebration (with awards) on Monday and bring home our books to share with you! We hope you'll enjoy reading them as much as we enjoyed writing them!

In math we continue to work on money, time, adding and more every day but this week's focus was on subtraction strategies. We looked at counting up as a strategy and counting back. While we may have been more comfortable with one or the other, we realized that sometimes one strategy was more efficient to use than the other. Ask us about it. We also played subtraction top-it which is a great way to practice and a game that can be played at home!

We ended the week the way we love to end it... with a Mystery Reader! Sahana was excited to see that her Aunt was our Mystery Reader. She read a great book all about being unique and we were a great audience!

Wishing you all a great week!

Week 10 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! Mrs. Doran has been sick all week and sadly isn't feeling much better. One thing that does make things better is when we do our most important work. This week we lifted up a Room 119 (current freshman) alum's Grandma. You can see the project that we made for her by clicking HERE.

We finished our read aloud, "The Witches", and have begun a biography about Squanto. Mrs. Doran loves meeting with us to listen to us read and work on individual strategies.

In writing we continued to work on revising and editing. We began a final book to publish and are adding everything we learned in this unit to our books! We have quite the stamina as writers!

In math we reviewed (even though many of us forgot about them from first grade) fact families and how we can make four number models from just three numbers. For example with the number 3, 4 and 7 we can write:
3+4=7
4+3=7
7-3=4
7-4=3

On Fridays, we get on the chromebooks to work on iReady lessons. It also helps if we do some of these lessons at home. Login information is on the back of our folders. Mrs. D. also added some cool things to our google classroom.

We love working with buddies. With the Thanksgiving season beginning, we reflected on things we were thankful for and made some Thankful Turkeys! They'll be hanging outside Room 119 soon!

A very special thank you to our Room Moms and all the fabulous parents who were able to help with our party! We had a fun Halloween despite the weather. You can see us sharing some Halloween Funnies in a video by clicking HERE and see us having fun at our party by clicking HERE!

Have a great week!