Mrs. Wood’s Classroom Blog

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

Math: Today for math we worked on lesson 11.3 which begins our study of multiplication. The students have already had an introduction, when we looked at arrays, to multiplication concepts and what we are learning now will build upon that. We are using groupings to help us understand how multiplication works. For example, if I have 9 windows and each window has 4 panes, I want to know how many panes there are altogether. We take 9 windows and multiply that by 4 panes to get the following number sentence: 9×4=36 panes. Students also learned that the numbers being multiplied are called factors and the answer is called the product.

Library – Today was our last library day for the year. Mrs. Vallone read us a folktale about how the chipmunk got its stripes.

SSR

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today for guided reading, we are starting our final theme of the year. We looked at the vocabulary and spelling words for our story which is called “The Art Lesson”

Working with Words – We chanted and cheered the word wall words from A-M.

SSR

Art

Writing: Students took their “brainstorm” map from yesterday and began writing their first draft of their personal narrative stories.

Homework: Home Link 11.3 and handwriting

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

Assembly: During today’s assembly, we recognized 3 students who had written wonderful letters of appreciation to their teachers last week during Teacher Appreciation week. We also celebrated all of the classes in 1st – 3rd grade for their DIBELs testing scores by honoring the students who met the benchmark for May (in 1st grade its 40 words, in 2nd grade its 90 words and in 3rd grade its 110 words).

Social Studies: We reviewed our previous lesson on villages and towns and how communities are different. Then we talked about cities, suburban areas and urban areas. The students have found it interesting that you don’t have to drive too far away to be in the suburbs even though they live right in the city!

Interventions: During interventions today, we talked about author’s point of view and author’s purpose. Each group read their book through and completed a worksheet to help them analyze what the author was trying to tell us, the reader, about the character in the story.

Math: We looked at our homework from last night and reviewed how we can count up to determine what change we should get. Students spent time today comparing prices — they looked at two objects and determined which one cost more. Then their job was to find out how much more the higher priced one cost. Homework tonight will reinforce this concept.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today students finished their ITT test for Theme 5. They are getting more confident in their own ability to get through a longer text on their own and do well on it.

Working with Words – We reviewed our spelling words for this week and talked about the vowel sounds that are in the word book and the sound in moon.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students had a few minutes to finish their peer response papers from yesterday before we began working on the personal narrative for the ITT. Today students brainstormed and made their plan (thinking map or graphic organizer of their choice) to help them decide what they want to write about and what Power 3 details they want to add to make it more interesting.

Homework: Home Link 11.2, Reading Comprehension

Opening: This morning, we did not do a DOL/math review so that students could move their desk arrangement. We will stay in this format until the end of the year (unless there are some talking issues of course)

Class Meeting: During our class meeting, we discussed how the year is slipping away from us. Our focus needs to be on doing our best “almost” 3rd grade work and showing good behavior so we can learn as much as possible until the end of the year.

Music

Interventions: We moved around our groups a little bit and the Froglets group is now working with me. They have had a really rough time the last couple of weeks staying on task and being respectful of Miss Tish so her and I have switched groups. The change was immediate and noticable — all groups were focused today with no behavior problems at all. Each group began with vocabulary today and taking a picture walk of their story.

Math: We are starting unit 11 which reviews number operations concepts and will introduce the students to multiplication and division. It is very important that your child be practicing his/her addition and subtraction facts because this will make the multiplication facts easier to learn.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – For guided reading today, students are working on Theme 5 ITT tests. They read a story today and answered two short answer questions, some multiple choice questions and completed a sequence of events organizer. We will finish the test tomorrow.

Working with Words – We reviewed the word wall words favorite, could, sad, won and won’t

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students continue to work on Peer Response writing. They have had some trouble focusing on length rather than answering the question that is asked of them. Today they are practicing with another prompt and we will be conferencing about these papers throughout the week to help the students understand what they need to work on when writing these kinds of papers.

Homework: Home Link 11.1, Spelling words 5x each

Opening: Students worked on their DOL and math review for today.

Math: For math today, we turned to our MEAP Focus books and did some more review of other material that the students will see on the MEAP. Many of the students are realizing this is all information they have seen before. I also showed them how our GLCEs that we use to determine what we need to teach show up on the actual MEAP assessment. This really helped them realize that all of the information we have been working on is information they do need to know.

Physical Education

Social Studies: Today we began a new unit about the Types of Communities. We read about villages, like where Mrs. Wood lives, and towns. Towns and villages are small with villages being the smallest kind of community. We also learned that these types of communities are known as rural and are usually surrounded by forests and farms.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today students read the phonics reader, “The Family Garden” with a partner. Each partnership read through the story twice and then went back in the story and highlighted the words that end with y that have a vowel sound. For example, they would highlight family because the y at the end of the words sounds like “e”.

Working with Words – Today we did a making words activity. Our secret word was family.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Today for writing, we continued working on peer response. We again discussed our criteria chart and what the students need to have in order to have a profiencient (passing) score. They worked on this peer response independently. I will score this one how they will on the MEAP so the students can see where they need to improve in how they answer these types of questions.

Homework: Spelling – choose 5 words and write them in a sentence.

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentences for today.

Math: We took our Unit 10 math test today. Students had the opportunity to go back over the test with me after they had completed it (I collected their tests first to prevent anyone changing answers). This allows them to have immediate feedback on how they did on the test.

ACES: (All Children Exercising Simultaneously)
At 10:00 this morning, all of the students at Harrison Park joined Mr. Vroom and Mrs. Bandyk outside on the playground to participate in ACES, which is a nationally recognized program for students to be exercising all at the same time on a specific day. Mrs. Bandyk led us in some fun and creative exercises.

Library

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today we read the story Miss Nelson is Missing in order to prepare the students for our field trip to see the play on Friday. We talked about how we knew that Miss Nelson was really Miss Viola Swamp and what clues the author/illustrator gave us.

Working with Words – Students and I completed a rhyming activity to try to find as many “_ill” words as we could.

Read Aloud/SSR

Art

Writing: We went back over our Peer Response papers that we worked on yesterday. We discussed the prompt, discussed the question and discussed the strategy we need to use in order to pass this part of the MEAP.

Homework: Reading Comprehension (wasn’t sent home yesterday on accident) and handwriting

Today we did our DIBELs testing so we had a substitute teacher and I pulled kids throughout the day for the testing. I’m hapy to tell you that all but one student made significant gains in their reading! Way to go!

 Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentences.

Assembly: Today is Teacher Appreciation Day and they had a wonderful assembly to honor all of the teachers and staff who work at Harrison Park. Mrs. Jordan’s 5th grade students presented each teacher with a card, a certificate and a goodie bag! The district also provided a planter for each teacher as well.

Interventions: Students continued to work in their groups working on sequencing.

Math: Students reviewed for the math assessment that we will take tomorrow. They did the review altogether so they could ask any questions if they had them.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Students took their test on the story Thundercake

Working with Words – Students did a making words activity today.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students worked on writing their peer response model. We talked about these on Monday and did one together. This one was designed for students to work on alone for practice.

Homework: Math Review (The checklist says there was reading comprehension also but Mr. Dykstra forget to send it home — it’ll come home on Wednesday instead.)

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and math review for today.

Music

Interventions: All groups received their new books and worked on the vocabulary for this week’s books. These books compliment the story Thundercake that we’ve been working on in reading. The strategy focus for these books is “sequence of events”.

Fire Drill

Special Presentation: Today we had the opportunity to have a special presenter speak to our class about making good choices in regards to smoking. All of the students will take home a sticker to put on the window and some information for parents about the presentation.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – We listened to the story Thundercake again on audio. Afterward we answered the comprehension questions at the end of the story remembering to use restatement to help us.

Working with Words – We played some “Be a Mind Reader” games today.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Today for writing we focused again on writing a peer response. Many of the students are still confused by what they need to do in order to obtain a proficient (passing) score on this MEAP assessment. We revisited the chart we made and went through a peer response lesson together so the students can see a real example of a proficient response. Later this week we will be writing our own peer response papers and going over them together.

Homework: Spelling – write your words 5x each

Wow, can you believe it is the end of April??

Opening: Students corrected their DOL and math problems for today. Today we focused on adding money.

Math: We worked on lesson 10.10 today. It continues to talk about place value and the value of the ten-thousands place. We practiced writing big numbers and using the word DIGIT to represent 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. We wrote numbers and gave each digit its value – for example if we wrote 3, 481 and wanted to know the value of the 4, it would be four hundred because the 4 is in the hundreds place.

Interventions: Groups finished up their books today focusing on a comprehension activity to see how much they understood and remembered from their stories.

Library

Silent Reading

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today we read the story Thundercake. It is such a fun story all about being afraid of thunder (I can relate to that one! ). We read the story and then the students completed a worksheet similar to the one yesterday where they had to sequence what happened in the story in the order that it happened in.

Working with Words – Students continued working with the -ed and -ing endings

Read Aloud

Art

Writing: We are continuing to use our Powers in our writing. Students used the organizer that we started on Monday to begin writing a personal narrative on a topic of their choosing. The students also had an opportunity to share their writing plan with a friend and will continue with this writing tomorrow.

Homework: Home Link 10.10 and Handwriting

Opening: Due to assembly today, the students completed two DOL sentences and we corrected them together.

Assembly: Today we talked about respect for property and what this means. The students in the audience (read: all the students in the school) had the chance to share ways we might show respect for property – ideas included picking up trash we see outside, cleaning up our own messes, not touching the walls and windows as we walk down the hallway and more. We can also transfer this to PENCILS and other items given to us to use. They are our tools and we can’t do well in school without the tools we need.

Social Studies: Students took their quiz on the Pilgrim Communities chapter.

Math: For math we continue to review place value — we looked at place value up to the ten-thousands place. It can help to think about writing “backwards” to keep the numbers in the correct space so when we read the number the regular way we have the numbers where we want them. We also took a look through our FOCUS on the MEAP books so students can get some feedback on how they did on the pretests they took. We will use these books throughout the next few weeks to give the students extra practice on GLCEs they may not have mastered yet.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today the students practiced our strategy focus of Sequence of Events by reading a story story about fishing. Sam and his grandfather go fishing and it tells us what happens on the trip. Students had to put the events in the order that they happened after reading the story.

Working with Words – Today for working with words the students manipulated their spelling words by the -ed or -ing endings.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Today we took our writing prompt. The theme was Anger. This should have been a relatively easy topic for the students to write about since we have been talking about Anger with the story Carousel and Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and how the characters were angry. I also briefly reminded them to think about what they have learned about with Power Writing to help them as they wrote their papers.

Homework: Home Link 10.9 and Spelling worksheet

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and math review for today.

Music

Interventions: This week the students are reading books that talk about birthdays (they go along with the story Carousel that we read during reading over the last two weeks). Today everyone worked on the vocabulary sheet and did a picture walk of the story. They really finding you can learn so much about the story by reading the pictures.

Math: Today we worked on lesson 10.8 which reviews place value, but incorporates the 1,000s place. We reviewed our base-10 blocks and how a cube is the 1s place, a long is the 10s place and a flat is the 100s place. There is a big cube that stands for the 1,000s place. Students practiced telling me how many of each kind of shape go together to make the next shape (so 10 cubes make 1 long, etc). We also “made numbers” by having students stand at the front of the room holding a certain number of each shape and we “read” our friends to get our numbers.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today we took a look at the vocabulary and did a text talk lesson for our new story, Thundercake. Students also were introduced to our new spelling words they’ll have for this week.

Working with Words – Today we are revisiting some of our word wall words that the students are still struggling with. We are looking at their, there and they’re as well as the words what and wanted.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: In writing today, we are continuing our look at Power Writing. Students each got a premade bubble map organizer that was already labeled with P1 and P2 sections. Their job was to select a topic (the P1), then decide what they were going to talk about within that topic (the P2s) and extend those P2s with details which will become the P3s. We are practicing not spending ALL of our time on our plan as we write. Later in the week the students will use these organizers to begin writing Power Paragraphs.

Science: To compliment our science unit on plants, the students watched a short video called “Our Green Planet” which talks about how plants have evolved into the many different kind of plants we have today.

 Homework: Home Link 10.8, Write spelling words 5x each