Photo Rewind #4

Another week has passed.  Here's what we were up to!

We practiced our citizenship skills and voted for two student leaders to represent our classroom!

Another fun way to practice our math facts!  In this one we see who can slap the answer fastest!

Here we were doing some reviewing before our math test.  We love to use maninipulatives as tools when we are solving math problems!



This shelf has books that we have borrowed from the AEA and it is an incredibly popular source of great reads!  We seem to have a class hooked on graphic novels!




We did some matching to review our states and capitals of the Northeast Region.  This pair was really thinking when they pulled out the map to help them out!



Sometimes we are all so buried in our books that Miss Staudt doesn't even want to interrupt us to start the next lesson!



And sometimes we just need to rest a moment (or just pose for a picture before heading back to our seats!)  Such a funny group!



Meet our new student leaders!  We are so excited to have them represent our class!

Our classroom library is a frequently visited place, and Miss Staudt LOVES when she catches students exploring new genres!

Photo Rewind #3

Our apologies for not posting this week!  Miss Staudt was gone all day Tuesday (read on to find out why!) and our student blogger let the blog sleep in his desk each night so it didn't get shared with you!  Next week!  We do have LOTS of pictures to share this week though, so you'll still have a pretty good idea of what went on all week in 129!



We've been working on the writing trait Ideas and did some prewriting for a story with groups after reading about the big idea of "be yourself" in A Bad Case of Stripes.

 

Miss Staudt was gone all day on Tuesday to the Great Lakes Regional Social Studies Conference in Des Moines.  She gave two presentations to other teachers and received an award for being the year's Outstanding New Social Studies Teacher!  The students were very proud!



Governor Branstad designated Wednesday, October 3 as a day focused on making our state more healthy.  We took part in the Healthiest State Walk and met Governor Branstad's challenge!



The fall colors made for a beautiful walk!




It was fun to walk with our friends!




In Social Studies we have been exploring the cultures of the people who first populated the United States by analyzing artifacts from each culture.  The group studying the Latino culture loved the bright colors in this traditional blanket!




After studying their culture, each group made a poster and shared the information with the rest of the class!




After reading our story this week - The Kid's Invention Book - we practiced our interview skills asking THICK questions to our friends who were pretending to be the characters in our book.  The students asked great questions and our volunteers showed off their understanding of our book!




We borrowed this number line from Mrs. Hansen and used it to practice some of our math facts.  It was nice to be up and moving while we were learning!  Check out our video update to see us in action!




In our story this week a boy invented a prosthetic for his friend so they could both play baseball.  We connected this idea with the questioning skills we have been working on and had a great learning experience!  Miss Staudt's uncle, Scott Dight, has worn prosthetic arms and legs since birth.  He answered lots of our questions about prosthetics and living with a disability.  Miss Staudt was so proud of how respectful the students were!




This week was Jahmen's turn to share something with the class.  He told us about his wrestling trophy and shoes!





Photo Rewind #2

Here's a glance back at our week! Lots of reading!

This is Miss Staudt's favorite way to start the morning!

As our authors shared their work, the rest of us gave them feedback about their writing using our scoring guide for the writing trait Ideas.  They gave each other great feedback - very honest and respectful!

Friday afternoon we enjoyed the beautiful weather and had our literacy workshop outside in the courtyard!

The picnic tables were a great place to work on writing!

Sometimes we needed to move into the shade - it was so warm!

Soon it will be too cold to enjoy our books outside!

The outdoors gave us great inspiration for our writing.

We love sharing great books with one another!

Photo Rewind #1

I would like to start sharing more images of our class in action - hopefully that means you'll get a rewind of images from our week on Fridays!

Here is a glance at our week!

After trying our first 'On Demand' timed writing, my authors took the time to share some of their pieces.

Using Scrabble tiles is a fun way to practice our spelling - and our adding skills when we find out how many points each word is worth!

Another fun way to practice our spelling words is by using pipe cleaners!

My boys especially love using this secret code to write their spelling words - they were asking to use it during writing time too!



One portion of our literacy workshop is reading with someone.  This helps us all hear another example of fluent reading - and it is so fun to read with our friends!

We all love to cozy up with a comfy pillow, a good friend, and a good book!

Our new math series has these wonderful pre-made math centers to practice our skills.  We have learned two of the games so far and are really enjoying playing them during math workshop!