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!
Thursday, October 24, 2013
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
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
Friday, October 11, 2013
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:
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.
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.
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