New iPad Headphone Usage Policy

This is the first year we have had all of our students on iPads.  A number of these programs, such as RAZ Kids and Dreambox, require sound.  The result has been to significantly increase classroom noise, which can be a great distraction to some students.  Each classroom will be supplied with a set of headphones for students' use at the start of the new year.   If your child breaks or loses his/her headphone set, he/she will be responsible for either bringing in a replacement set of headphones or earbuds, or he/she will need to bring in $5 in order to purchase a replacement set.  

Thanksgiving Week

Innov8ors University had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration week.  On Monday, students worked together in their morning meeting to solve math problems related to ordering pizza for the entire group.  Students brainstormed about the information that they would need to solve the problem of how many pizzas need to be ordered for our whole team.  Then, on Tuesday, we ordered pizza for our lunch and also made a friendship trail mix, which represented students' personalities and ideas coming together to create something great!  Students ate this while we watched Little House on the Prairie, which we watched to kick off our Westward Expansion inquiry unit.

Also, Mr. Irwin and his wife welcomed their baby girl on Saturday, November 23rd!  Her name is Tristyn Rose.  We all are so excited for him and his family.  While he is out, we welcome Ms. Sharon Gonnella in our team.  

Late Breaking News!

Congratulations to our students in Innov8ors University for winning the Box Top War!  Our pod collected over 3,500 box tops, which averaged to 40 box tops per student!

Here was the breakdown of the box top collection:

First Place - Innov8ors 3657 (40 per student)
Second Place - Wonder 2598 (36 per student)
Third Place - Achieve 3165 (35 per student)
                     Bridge 1280 (35 per student)

Total Collected - 17152 which equals $1,715.20

 The money raised will go towards Veronica's Playground Project (information about this is posted on our blog).  Because of their great community-service effort, we won a dance party which will be held November 1st  during school.  More details to come!  Thanks to all the families who brought in box tops!

Weekly Update

Thank you to all who attended Parent/ Teacher Conferences and the Open House last night.  We love the participation from our families in our Innov8ors University!

Literacy:
Students are working on picking out main ideas and important details within our non-fiction reading.  This has been done through modeling, guided practice, and independent tasks within our Nutrition and Health unit.   Eventually, this will lead to writing strong summaries of our reading.
Students are meeting with various teachers reading realistic fiction books and working on retelling and character development.  Students are given various assignments and may have to take this home in order to complete it on time.
We did not work on Words Their Way this week due to the shortened week.  We worked on Language Arts skills within the Moby Max website and reviewing testing strategies.  We will continue with Words their Way next week.  Students must get their Words their Way assignments done through the week in order to participate in the Fun Friday activity of the week.
Students need to continue to work on reading Achieve articles and doing activities/ thought questions. We ask all students to do a minimum of 3 per week because research shows students reading levels will increase by the end of the year if they complete this many lessons.   As a POD, we assign three articles that relate to our Inquiry topic on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; students are welcome to also pick choice articles as well.
In writing, we brainstormed about topics that we know a lot about and then wrote facts that we could teach about those topics.  We then will take these prewriting activities to write as an expert to teach others about that topic.
In Inquiry, students are starting to investigate topics within our inquiry unit to research.  Students will relate their question to the overriding question "How does health and nutrition affect our human body?"

Math
We continue to develop students' number sense through units that relate to algebra and our base 10 number system.  Students continue to use tools such as Ten Marks to show their learning.  They also started to use Dreambox, another app that encourages students to use math manipulatives and conceptual ideas to reason through answers.

Our school spelling bee will be held on Tuesday, October 29th.  Congratulations to our spelling bee representatives:
Kylee, Allie, Jonathan, Angelina, Robert, and Dakota

Alternates for the spelling bee are:
Luke, Hannah L., Macy, Julian, Matthew F., Gregory

Busy!

In the past few weeks, we have been very busy!  Here are some highlights of our daily activities:

Morning Meetings:   We continue to meet as a team for morning meetings.  During our morning meetings, we learn about our Students of the Week, listen to morning announcements, , learn technology with our iPads, work on writing journals, investigate math problems, and work on literacy skills like editing, inferring, etc.  In the last couple of weeks, we also learned our Innov8ors cheer for this year.  We are super-excited to share it!  Please see the additional tab that features names of our students of the week.  We are very proud of them for standing out as following the Jefferson Way and using our SMART ways of behavior expectations in the classroom.

Group Guidelines and Behavior Expectations:  Our POD continues to work together to develop student-driven guidelines on expectations in the classroom and school.  We made posters as small groups with our POD brainstorming cards that we did in our morning meetings.  The posters display the TRIBES agreements and share what it looks and sounds like.  We understand that these are the SMART behavior expectations:

• Safety First
• Mutual Respect
• Attentive Listening
• Right to Participate/Pass, but Listen
• Tolerance/ Appreciation for all

We have been establishing routines in transitioning between classrooms, small group centers, and activities as well.  We made posters to establish what these look and sound like too.

Math:  Our math groups have been in full swing for awhile now.  We have our morning seminar in which we have been reviewing the math strands prior to our state testing.  Then, we meet with our teachers in small groups in the afternoon to learn and practice Number and Operations in Base 10, our current unit.  We rotate among the various centers (Workshop, Investigation Station, Collaboration Corner, and PLP Place).  We are using various tools on the iPad and making real-world applications of our learning as we go.  Some students are even making up their own restaurant, using specific math skills to show this off!  Please check out the blog's Math Resource area for links to various math apps or websites that we are using in class.

Literacy:  Our teachers leveled all of us during September and did a number of shared reading lessons about Health and Nutrition, our inquiry unit, to show us how to monitor our thinking.  We continue to make reactions to the texts we read, including articles on KidBiz3000.  We also are making thinksheets like the FQR-Facts, Questions, and Responses--to help us determine important details.  This will enable us to pull out the main ideas and important details to use in a summary.
We also are tying in our guided reading groups and writing workshop to our unit on Health and Nutrition, by focusing on reading fictional books that deal with our emotional well-being and writing about important moments in our lives. Our guided reading books' themes include family, wellness, bullying, and friendship.  We have been put into guided reading groups and are reading fiction books to help us with reacting to realistic fiction and learning more about this genre.  Our writing workshop is encouraging us to become writers and making us realize that we all have a special story to share about an important person, moment, or place.  We are learning to focus our writing on one specific moment and developing that story.

Words Their Way:  Everybody is in a specific group with word lists that should come home every week.  Every Monday we get our word lists and are expected to sort the list and write it down in our Word Work notebook.  The following is the list of activities for each day, which either we complete at school during Daily Five or at home if we don't get it done in school:
Monday:  Definitions
Tuesday:  Synonyms
Wednesday: Antonyms
Thursday:  Sentences and/or paragraph
Friday:  Quiz on ten of the words from list
Anyone scoring lower than a 70% will need to have their test signed, which usually comes home on Monday.  100% tests are rewarded with a raffle ticket.     
Inquiry:  Within our inquiry unit on Health and Nutrition, we are using reading and research strategies to explore different elements of health and nutrition.  We have visited the website www.kidshealth.org to read articles and view videos that deal with health, while we also take notes and ask questions.  We also worked on developing a research web about the human body as we read from a book about Human Body Systems.  We will continue to work on various inquiry skills and eventually work towards collaborating with partners about a specific health topic.

Second Week

We continue to work on building our community with more TRIBES activities that focus on the five agreements: safety first, mutual respect, attentive listening, right to participate, and tolerance and appreciation of others. We will be working together to create posters for each classroom in our POD to remind us all about these expectations.
Many of our students have completed the Achieve Level Set and are working on the steps to complete Achieve activities and thought questions. There will be a time this week in which the students are asked to not go on the Achieve website until it updates some of our district account information.
As we continue to level our students in reading, we look forward to getting them into reading groups in the upcoming days. Also, we are practicing the Daily Five areas too. In particular, we are building our stamina in reading independently and in monitoring our comprehension by taking notes as we read.
In math, we have switched into math groups based on our needs. We continue to review the different math strands. We started with reviewing basic Number and Operations in Base 10 and are now working on Fractions. While we continue to work on the review, we also will focus our main math unit on Base 10 throughout this quarter.
Our first inquiry unit is the Human Body, Health and Nutrition. We are working on reading strategies as we start to build knowledge in this area.
Finally, we are taking MAPS testing in a three-day window. On Monday we took the Language Arts test, on Tuesday we took the Reading test, and on Wednesday we will finish with the Math test. Many students are doing a great job taking their time! Some students may have to finish tests during make-up times in the afternoons during the rest of the week. We will use this information to help guide students' instruction and learning plans as we go forth this quarter.
One thing that would be really helpful from parents is if they could get their students a soft pencil pouch to store pencils, etc. It seems it was left off the supply list. A soft pouch travels well with the students as they transition to various areas of learning. Please make sure to label the pouch too.
Thanks again, and we will continue to keep you posted on upcoming events!

A Great First Week!

We had a great first week of school!  We have had a morning meeting every morning to go over various guidelines and our TRIBES agreements.   We are working on Math centers and our Reading centers, also called the Daily Five, so that we know what to do for independent work. 

We continue to discuss our TRIBES agreements and doing the Jefferson Way, which is Respect, Responsibility, and Ready to Learn.  However, we did have to take away the soccer courts today because we continue to have issues with students misbehaving and not playing with good sportsmanship.  We have gone over this in our morning meetings, but please have a discussion with your child about sportsmanship.

Here is some information to use if you would need to communicate with us:

Phone #s: 

 414-604-4100

Mrs. Zitzke ext. 1322

Mr. Irwin ext. 1313

Mrs. Semrad  ext. 1334

Team innov8ors blog: 

http://teaminnov8ors.blogspot.com/

Check the blog for important updates, an online form to fill out, and a PowerPoint presentation about the beginning of the year.  It also will detail information about what we are doing in class.  We will use this as our main form of parental communication about what we are doing in class.

Specials schedule for Mrs. Zitzke:

Mrs. Zitzke	Mr. Irwin	Mrs. Semrad
Monday:  SEL Tuesday:  Phy.Ed./ Music Wednesday: Music/ Phy. Ed.  Thursday:   Art Friday: SEL	Monday:  SEL Tuesday:   Art Wednesday:  Phy. Ed./Music Thursday:  Music/ Phy. Ed. Friday:  SEL	Monday:  SEL Tuesday:  Music, Phy. Ed. Wednesday:  Art Thursday: Phy. Ed. Music Friday:  SEL

Email addresses:

Zitzker@wawm.k12.wi.us

Mcgrortye@wawm.k12.wi.us

Irwinm@wawm.k12.wi.us

A few reminders: 

Please bring a water bottle to drink from daily as our rooms get warm.

Each student is welcome to bring a HEALTHY snack for the morning.  We  have a number of peanut allergies in our POD, so please be aware of what you are bringing for snack or birthday treats.

Thanks for a great first week!

Mr. Irwin, Mrs. Semrad, Mrs. Zitzke, and Mrs. Bogdanski

Innov8ors University

Beginning of the Year Open House PowerPoint

Here is the beginning of the year PowerPoint that we showed at Open House.  Feel free to review:

Open House Information PowerPoint

Parent Form

Student and Family Information Form

Welcome to Innov8ors University!

IMAGINATION. INVESTIGATION. COLLABORATION. INNOVATION.

We are excited for the start of our school year! Mr. Irwin, Mrs. Semrad, and Mrs. Zitzke will be your teachers this year, along with our intern, Ms. Bogdanski. This year we will be teaching in an NxGL classroom environment. This environment focuses on preparing students for college/career readiness in the 21st century by using student-centered learning environments that build imagination, investigation, collaboration, and innovation through a family and community partnership. We are very excited to have this opportunity to teach your child within this environment.
We will use this blog as our main communication to showcase learning, give weekly updates, and communicate news with families throughout the year. We look forward to meeting with you at Forms and Fees/ Open House which will be held Wednesday, August 28th throughout the day, from 11 a.m.-7 p.m. See you there!

Keynote Collaboration

Our class teamed up with Ms. McGrorty's class to learn about the app called Keynote, a presentation tool that is similar to PowerPoint. The students learned different features of the Keynote app from Mrs. Rivest, our tech director. The students will eventually use Keynote with their Inquiry groups to make a presentation to show their findings about the Civil War and Civil Rights.

Team Innov8ors and Team Building Activities

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we worked together as Team Innov8ors to do some community building activities. Because it was fairly mild outside, we ended the day outside doing relay races. Each team consisted of members of each class. We also formed a circle and had classroom members lead our pod in singing our classroom song. We then talked about working together as a team and celebrated our successes and discussed ways to improve.

Mrs. Galewski's Presentation

Mrs. Galewski did a presentation for Team Innov8ors about her family history, since we had read some of her great great grandfather's letters when he was a soldier during the Civil War. Many students had lots of questions regarding the life of her great great grandfather and his time in the war.
The teams in Mrs. Zitzke's room learned a lot of new information through the presentation:
iSmart: We learned that James had to walk 80 miles to get to Madison.
Cookie Puppies: We learned that James' daughter died at a really young age.
Minov8ors: We learned more about the Civil War!
4 Musketeers: We learned that James earned more land than money.
Booyah: We learned that James died at 84 years old.
Flamin Hot: We learned that he came from Scotland.

Thank you to Mrs. Galewski for the awesome PowerPoint presentation and taking her time to meet with our classes and answer their questions!

Our Unity Tree

We used handprints of each Team Innov8ors member to make a tree to symbolize our team. We also put names on ornaments, stockings, and snowflakes to show who was a member of our team.

Innov8ors use eClicker to share learning about the Civil War

Team Innov8ors used the eClicker app to answer questions about the Civil War. These questions were written individually by Mr. Irwin's students. Mrs. Rivest, our tech integrator, put these questions on an app called eClicker, and created a quiz for the students to take on eAudience. Mr. Irwin's students partnered up with Mrs. Zitzke's students to use the iPads to answer the questions. The quiz was "graded" in real time, so we could see how each partner groups did answering the questions. It also allowed us to see how the class did answering each question. The class got 100% on three of the questions and an overall 74%. Mr. Irwin received a 94% ....smarty pants.