Monday, February 25, 2013

Monday, February 25, 2013

My, oh my! The 2nd trimester really got away from us in terms of blogging!  I can't believe that Wednesday is the end of the grading period already!

There has been a lot happening in our room during the last couple months - we haven't been neglecting the blog without good reason! :)

One of the biggest changes has been in our reading instruction.  Instead of a lot of large group lessons and stories followed up with some guided reading, we've flipped our times.  Now we are doing almost all of our reading instruction in small group settings so everyone gets the chance to read books at their own level and have deeper conversations with a smaller group.  It also means that everyone is getting more time with a teacher each week.  Both the students and the teachers have loved this switch!  And, based on our recent DRA scores, the change is paying off in terms of progress too!

Another change we've made in the classroom is to structure our math workshop time differently.  Before, Miss Staudt would lead a math lesson or activity in the morning to either reteach the lesson from the day before or introduce things for the lesson that afternoon.  Now Miss Staudt gets to meet with small groups of students to work on math skills while everyone else works on math facts, does a hands-on center, or practices work at their seats.  It has made our math workshop time much more fun!

We are still going strong with 20 brilliant students and 2 smiling teachers filling up our room.  Coming up in the next few months we'll have Spring Break, Iowa Assessments, the Writing Assessment, introductions to Lincoln for next year, a fabulous field trip, a chance to meet our pen pals, and a research project centered around Women's History Month in March!

Hopefully we can still keep up the blog a little better amidst all of that - there are so many great moments to share!

Thanks for being forgiving of our absence...
Miss Staudt