Mrs. Wood’s Classroom Blog

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a fun and relaxing summer.

I have been really busy with graduate school and getting ready to transition to my new classroom and building. Can you believe in just a couple of weeks I will be back to school? Where has the summer gone?

I have been working on my classroom website and it is newly updated for my new classroom. You can visit us at http://www.mrswood.net to see what the changes are.

Check back here in August for new posts about our school days.

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentences for today.

Math: We continued to review concepts in math today. The students worked on reviewing clocks and how to tell time.

Physical Education

Social Studies: We took a look at a dairy farm community and how they make milk into cheese. Students also completed a map on longitude and the prime meridian.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today we worked on the questions for our story. Students read the story again in Triangle Knees groups and then worked on the questions silently.

Working with Words -

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Today students had the chance to see a “real” MEAP assessment. We did a peer response that includes the multiple choice questions AND the written part. This assessment will come home over the summer for you to review how to do it with your child.

Homework: Home Link 12.2 and Study for spelling test

Opening: Students worked on DOL sentences for today.

Math: We began our lesson today by reviewing the homework the students did last night. The math boxes were quite easy for most of the students since its material we’ve been learning throughout the last few units. They then completed a short worksheet to review calendar concepts (months of the year, etc). They also took a short time assessment that we’ll go over tomorrow.

Interventions: All groups read their stories in partners and worked on a noting details worksheet. This worksheet is very similar to what we did during Guided Reading yesterday and will do again today.

Math/Science: We took a few minutes to pull out the last of our Fact Triangles from the back of our books and cut them out to put in our envelope with the first set. Then the students read back through their science readers and completed a cut and paste worksheet on parts of a plant.

SSR

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today for Guided Reading, we listened to the story “Moses goes to the Concert” on CD before we completed an organizer to help us pull out the important details from the story.

Working with Words - We completed a Making Words activity today. Our secret word was “summertime”.

SSR

Art

Writing: For writing today, we focused on the Peer Response rubric again. I provided each student with a rubric in “kid friendly” language that will help them to remember what elements they need in order to pass this part of the written MEAP.

Homework: Home link 12.1 and Handwriting

I hope you all enjoyed the wonderful weather we had this weekend and had some time to relax! The last 9 days of school are going to fly by, let’s make the most of them!!

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentences for today. They are getting really good at spotting errors and realizing when sentences don’t make sense.

Social Studies: We had the chance to look at two short lessons today, talking about rural communities (communities that include farms). We talked about Valders, Wisconsin where they have a lot of dairy farms. Students found out that in Valders, they wake up at 5 a.m. to milk over 100 cows each morning! Then they have to do it again that evening! Whew! We also completed a map activity on latitude.

Interventions: Students began their new books today. We all looked at vocabulary for the new books and took picture walks. Some groups also had time to start reading the story.

Math: We reviewed and corrected some of our math boxes and did some review work in our FOCUS on the MEAP books.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today students worked on the introduction to our new story. It was a busy block!! We took a look at our new vocabulary and then we took a picture walk of the story. We also practiced this week’s strategy of “Noting Details” by reading a short story and filling out an organizer that asked us to pull out important information.

Working with Words - Students practiced some word activities using their vocabulary words for this week’s story.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: We are reviewing the writing process - today students took some “notes” (they copied what I wrote) to help them remember what we need to do in order to have a good piece of writing. This will be a good reference tool for over the summer reviewing.

Science: We are continuing to look at plants. We read through our plant books and completed a worksheet activity.

Homework: Math Boxes 11.9 and 11.10, Write spelling words 5x each

Opening: Students worked on math boxes 11.6, 11.7 and 11.8 for their morning work today.

Math: For math today students worked on lesson 11.8. We played Beat the Calculator in which the students formed groups of 3. Each student had a chance to be the Brain, the Caller and the Calculator. The caller called out the multiplication problem shown (ie. 2 x 4 = ___ ) and the brain and calculator person had to figure them out before the other. They also reviewed equivalents like 4 dimes = 40 cents. This reinforces fractions and multiplying.

Interventions: Students finished their intervention books today. They read their stories again in groups and then took a short comprehension quiz on the stories.

SSR

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today for Guided Reading, we practiced MEAP assessments using cross-text material. We read a short story together and practiced highlighting in the text to show proof of our answer. Next week the students will have the opportunity to complete the second story on their own.

Working with Words - We took our spelling review test today.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students wrote their final drafts of their Festival Fun Day station papers.

Homework: none

 Have a great long weekend!!

Opening: Students completed the DOL and math message for today.

Math: We continue to work in Unit 11. Students today had the chance to practice making the fact families for multiplication/division using Fact Triangles. They are the same as with adding and subtracting but the symbols and the function are different of course! We also caught up on correcting some of our math boxes.

Physical Education

Math (continued): We spent the time after PE finishing going over some of the math boxes we’ve been working on. It is important for the students to get feedback on the work they are doing so they don’t continue to make the same mistakes when they see the same kinds of problems.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - We read the phonics reader, “Jade’s Drumming” all about a little girl named Jade who constantly drums on everything, driving everyone crazy! Eventually Jade becomes a famous drummer as an adult and makes a lot of people happy. We looked for -ed, -ing words with double consonants in the story. Students found a lot of them!!

Working with Words - Students completed a worksheet to practice spelling words.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Today for writing students took the feedback they received from other students yesterday and rewrote their stories. A few students sat with me to read their stories and receive feedback on them.

Science: We looked at a leveled reader today all about Plants, which we have been learning about. We completed an anticipation guide before we read to see what we thought about plants before we read. After we read it, we’ll revisit the anticipation guide and see what we have learned.

Homework: Home Link 11.7 (for reference - this does not need to be returned) and Home Link 11.8; Choose 5 spelling words to use in a sentence.

Opening: Students worked on Math Boxes 11.5 and 11.6 for their morning work today.

Math: We went right into lesson 11.6 today which continues to work on multiplying. We completed a products table (which will be a GREAT reference tool over the summer for your child to study their facts) and worked on a few review problems to help us remember how multiplying works.

Interventions: Its been a weird week so far so today was the first time we got to do interventions this week. The groups are reading from Reading A-Z  leveled readers this week. The froglets and tadpoles are reading about Extreme Animals — they are mini-books filled with interesting facts (did you know a butterfly tastes with its feet or that a cricket’s ears are on its knees?!).

Math Boxes: Since the library is closed for the rest of the year, we took the time today to review our math boxes. I try to go over them with the students weekly and we’ve been busy so it was great to catch up. It also helps reinforce the concepts for the students since we do see the same types of problems over and over in the boxes.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today students took their test on “The Art Lesson” and “Author’s Viewpoint” which was our strategy with this story.

Working with Words - Students worked on spelling review sheets as part of working with words today.

SSR

Art

Writing: We took our rough draft from yesterday and read them aloud to a partner. The partner could ask “I wonder…” questions such as “I wonder what your feet looked like in the big feet?” to help the author put MORE detailed writing into their story.

Homework: Home Link 11.6 and Handwriting

I’m sorry this did not get posted yesterday! It was a really busy day!

Opening: Students worked on DOL sentences for the day.

Math: We took a quick math quiz on multiplication facts 0 and 1.

Festival Fun Day  9:15 - 11
The kids had a great time participating in Festival Fun Day (field day). Mr. Vroom did an awesome job of setting up great activities and getting volunteers for this fun event. All of the students had a great time.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Students worked on the reading questions at the end of our story, “The Art Lesson”. We listened to the story on CD and then answered the questions.

Working with Words - Students completed a word work sheet using their vocabulary and high frequency words from the story we are working on.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess (We had recess indoors due to the 3rd-5th grade students having their Festival Fun day this afternoon)

Writing: We moved our bubble map from yesterday over and made a new bubble map on the one event each student chose to write about. We worked on adding Power 3 detail bubbles to our map and then began our rough draft of the writing.

Homework: Reading Comprehension

Opening: Students worked on DOL and math message for today.

Assembly: We had a special Monday assembly to talk about Festival Fun day for the students. It is like field day but much more FUN! It will be tomorrow.

Music

Math: Today we worked on lesson 11.5 which helped us to remember to use arrays in multiplying. We practiced skip counting to multiply also.

Lunch

Dental Presentation in Library

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading -  Students reviewed vocabulary words for the story “The Art Lesson” and we completed a Four-Square organizer.

Read Aloud

Fire Drill

Recess

Writing: Today we discussed some of the writing the students have recently done and began a bubble map organizer about Fun Day. Most of the students were at Harrison last year and could remember some of the stations that there were. We made our bubble maps together and labeled them as power 1s and power 2s. Tomorrow, after our fun morning, students will chose a power 2 (one of the stations) and then add the power 3 details to it. Later this week they’ll actually write an informational piece about the station they chose.

Homework: Home Link 11.5, spelling words 5x each

Opening: Students worked on their math boxes for 11.1 and 11.2 today.

Math: Today in lesson 11.4 we took a look at division. I showed the students how multiplication is repeated addition yesterday and how division is just repeated subtraction today. If the students learn their multiplication facts they will know how to divide easier because they are just turn around facts like we do when we add or subtract. Students used number stories similiar to yesterday to practice dividing, with the difference being that today they were dividing a whole number up by a certain number of students.

Physical Education

Social Studies: Students took their Chapter 6 quiz.

SSR

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today students completed a worksheet to help them understand Author’s Viewpoint a little better. We read a short story and had to decide how we knew what the author was feeling by finding evidence in the story.

Working with Words - students completed a worksheet using endings for the word “play” and changing words to past tense using -ed or other irregular versions of words (like give to gave).

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students continued to work on their personal narrative writing today. They took their plan and made revisions or changes and began writing their “sloppy copy” in their test booklets. Tomorrow they will publish the final on regular lined paper so it can be put into their portfolios.

Homework: Home Link 11.4, study your spelling words