Week 21 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! It was a short week with the MLK holiday and an icy no-school day. We managed to still get in a lot of activities including, of course, our most important work. This week's Thoughtful Thursday went out to an inspiring water-skiing grandma named Helen. You can see the project by clicking HERE.

We continue to read and learn about series. We treasure the time we get to read books we love and get excited when Mrs. D. plops down beside us to hear about what we're excited about and listen to us read.

The day off really cut into our time but we still got some blank books and started our series. This will turn into a mostly optional activity so we can keep moving forward- it's fun so many of us are working on it in our free time. Some of us have created our own characters and others are writing a book in a series we already know and love~ like Mercy Watson. Ask us what we're writing about.

In math we continue to work with adding two digit numbers and the different strategies we can use while continuing to review other things like time, money and more. Hopefully our review keeps solidifying what we're learning. Ask us about our favorite way of solving two-digit addition problems. We will have a math assessment next weekend and journal pages were sent home if you'd like to review.

We continue to work on iReady testing. We hope we can finish it up next week. Most of us are done with math. During reading many of us came up to Mrs. Doran, not with questions, but to share with her connections we were making with things we have learned. It's always exciting when you make connections!

 We ended the week with a special Mystery Reader. Greyson's Grandma came in and read to us "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" written from the perspective of the wolf. We loved it and Greyson was truly surprised and excited to see the Mystery Reader was HIS Grandma!

Thank you to all the wonderful people who donated their time and money to make a very successful Winter Family Fun Night! Mrs. Doran missed it but was able to visit with Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Nienhaus (former LLE teachers). The LLE community is a wonderful one! Thank you for being part of it! Have a great week!

Week 20 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! We had a bit of excitement this week with a visit from the news station but we still got a lot of learning in. Our most important work went out to Emma, a 13 year old who is fighting leukemia. You can see the project we made her by clicking HERE. 

 When we send out Thoughtful Thursday package we do so to be kind to others. It's always exciting to get a package ourselves. Nate and his family sent some sweet cards as well as some "Fortnite" bracelets that we were all very excited about! Thank you!

Our friend Naishini was telling Mrs. Doran about a holiday her family was celebrating called Pongal! She brought in a book that she has to show us but since Mrs. D. was unable to read it (unfortunately, she has only limited abilities when reading languages beyond English), she found a short informational video to teach all of us a bit more about this holiday. If you have a holiday or tradition that your family celebrates, let her know so we can talk about it in class.

We have been reading a SOLID 30 minutes each day which is amazing. You could hear a pin drop in room 119 (Mrs. D. and those she reads with during this time are also very quiet). We continue our study on series. Ask us what we're learning about and what we're reading.

In writing we worked on some persuasive/ opinion pieces. We wrote these pieces being sure to state our opinions and support them in the format of a letter. Mrs. Doran sent them home in our Everyday Folders. They are pretty convincing so, who knows, maybe some of us will get that baby sister we're asking for. ;-)

In math we've been learning different organizational strategies to help us add mentally. We also learned about arrays which may be a highlight for many of us. "Times" is actually just adding a number a certain amount of times. It was like a lightbulb moment for many of us and very exciting!

We also began iReady testing in math. Some of us finished this week. Mrs. D. encourages us to take as much time as we need. We were really excited to share with her that some of the questions were EXACTLY what we're doing in math RIGHT NOW! Next week those still working will continue and we will also begin the reading assessment. Send in those headphones if you haven't already. The ones we have aren't the most comfortable.

We ended the week with a visit from a special Mystery Reader. Adyn was so excited when she learned that her mom was the Mystery Reader. She read a great book about diversity which was perfect because diversity is something we celebrate regularly but will look at especially next week thanks to Martin Luther King's amazing life and legacy.

If you would like to attend the special MLK celebration at WLN, you can click HERE to see a quick informational video on what it's all about! Remember there is no school on Monday so it's a great opportunity as a family to see how you can make this world a better place just like Dr. King did!

Stay Warm!

Week 19 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! This week we lifted up a 5th grader who recently lost her dad and now is fighting stage 4 cancer. You can see the project we made for her by clicking HERE.

 We also started the week by celebrating our friend Greyson! We enjoyed singing to him in English AND Polish! Sto Lat! It's great to be eight!

We have been focusing on series this week. We have started reading a series by Kate DiCamillo (author of Edward Tulane and many other great books) starring a pig named Mercy Watson.

When our letter writing wasn't the best last week, we took this week to turn into a "letter writing factory" and we nailed it! Ask us the five parts of a letter and what we know about letter writing. Next week we'll mesh what we learned this week with opinion writing!

It was all about money this week! We've been working with counting change. Ask us about the "money grab" game we learned this week and play with us at home. It's great practice and the more we practice, the better we'll be!

We had a fun visit from former Thoughtful Thursday recipient Mrs. Stephanie, her firefighting husband and her little pup, JoJo. We loved visiting with them and gave up a cheer when Mrs. Stephanie shared that she just learned that she is CANCER FREE! YAY!!! They also gave us stickers to use for future projects!

 We ended the week with a special Mystery Reader! Olivia's Grandma came in to read us a great book that had us making connections with James and the Giant Peach as well as Wizard of Oz. It's fun how books can bring about new experiences and greater knowledge! Thanks again for coming in!

Just a reminder that we have a Scholastic Book Order going on. This is a great way to build your home libraries. Click HERE to place and order!

Week 18 in Review

Greetings from Room119! We had a quick two days together but we so enjoyed talking about our time away, sharing stories and hugs and getting back to what we do in Room 119. For our Thoughtful Thursday project we made cards for a teacher who will be out of school for a bit recovering from a surgery. We look forward to her getting her cards! We also talked about the new year and making resolutions. It's good to have more than one goal, so we wrote some down and hope to meet our goals to be better to ourselves and to others.

 We started a new read-aloud based on a true story called "One and Only Ivan". Ask us about it!

We loved getting back to reading and one of our goals is to expand our reading stamina to 30 minutes a day. This gives us extra time in books we love and allows Mrs. D. more time to read with more of us. So far we're doing great!

In addition to writing for Mystery Doug, we also reviewed letter writing. Although we read letters from Mrs. D. every day, many of us forgot what we need to do to write a letter. We will continue to practice this next week. We also learned how to address an envelope. Mrs. D. bought us all a piece of stationery so we could write to our 5th grade buddy. If we would like to buy our own stationery to send letters to others at LLE, it will cost us five cents. We can purchase it from the post office on Fridays.

We did get some time on iReady to practice the lessons. We did not start our new Math Unit because time did not allow it as we also had our LLE Leader of the Month assembly (congratulations Greyson), chose new seats for January and were hired for new jobs. We sure did fit in a lot in our two days.