Mrs. Hartsock's Reading Group

Our shared reading story this week was Grandma's Records.  Ask your student to summarize this story for you!  Students enjoyed seeing (and listening to) a record and a record player . . . many had never seen a record! :)  Skills covered this week include questioning and classifying/categorizing. Students had fun completing several categorizing/classifying activities, as well as creating their own with categories of their choosing.   We also used kidblog to respond to biographies that we read about children who have musical talents.

Language Skills

Spelling words for the week focused on the long o sound, and common spelling patterns used in words that have the long o sound.  We continued our study of nouns as our grammar focus, learning about proper nouns and students practiced identifying and capitalizing proper nouns.

As you may have read in an earlier post this week, we have also started blogging!  (Scroll down to read the Kidblog post to learn more about it).  Students are LOVING blogging using the kidblog website.  We are working on using complete sentences as well as correct punctuation and spelling when writing posts and comments.  Students have enjoyed commenting on the writing of their peers and receiving feedback on their own writing.

Blogging!

Social Studies

We jumped into a new unit this week - US Government.  I hope to correlate our study of government/citizenship with the upcoming election.  Our first lessons covered the history of our government and why colonists decided to create a new country. We learned about some of our country's important documents, including the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights.

Reading with Mrs. Bender

This week we were able to begin our work with the Fry Sight Words.  The kids are working to improve their vocabulary development.  One of the activities is putting their challenge words in ABC order.

Good-bye Mr. Wegter!

Mr. Wegter left us on Thursday.  On Friday, he will be flying to Ireland to finish his last 8 weeks of student teaching.  We enjoyed having Mr. Wegter with us, he did a fine job.  Of course, the kids enjoyed having the Whoopie Pies and the question session.

Science

Lots of fun this week.  The kids were working on their own experiments which focus on either the water cycle or states of matter.

Math

Partial-sums was a challenge this week!  A great web sit to use for review for skills taught in class is called www.khanacademy.org.  They have videos the kids can use to watch how to do some of our math techniques.  We will also be using this web site for some homework assignments in the future.  I checked with the Kalona Library.  If you have a library card, you may use the computers at the library, however parents do need to arrange the time their students will be in the library.  Kalona Library hours are Monday-Thursday from 9:30-8:00 and Friday from 9:30-5:00.

We did have some time to use some of our math games we have in our classroom.

Kidblog

We are excited to have started something new with our students this week – blogging!

As you know from reading our classroom blog (and possibly many other blogs!), a weblog (or blog for short) is a place where one can publish his/her writing online.  Our student blog will be online (kidblog.org), but is password protected, meaning that it will not be accessible to everyone. Initially we are only going to allow students and teachers in our classrooms to access the blog.  If you are interested in checking it out, your child can show you how to log in with his/her username.  (Once we get the hang of blogging, we do plan to provide parents with a guest login and password so that you can read and comment on your student’s writing too).  At this time, we have asked that students do not post to their blog/post comments at home until we’ve had more practice.  Later in the year they will be allowed to blog and post comments outside of the school day. (To visit our kidblog, click on the kidblog tab at the top of the page, then click the link provided.)

Blogging allows our students the opportunity to develop their writing skills as well as to write for an audience. Students will write “posts” pertaining to books they are reading, science reflections, and will also be allowed to use their blogs as a journal.  Students will also be encouraged to read posts written by their peers and to leave comments/provide feedback on their writing.  All posts and comments will be approved by a teacher prior to being posted for all to read.

We are hopeful that blogging will encourage our students to write, provide them an opportunity to publish their writing, become a way to both give and to receive constructive feedback, as well as become a forum for learning internet and blogging etiquette. 

Stations

This week we worked on getting caught up with math and language arts.  We also did our Time for Kids which had an article on Mars along with some election information.  Columbus Day is Monday so the kids had a packet of information along with some activities to try.  They enjoyed trying to sail across their desks!

This and That

• Please check your child's Friday folder for a bright lime green form . . . it's almost time for parent/teacher conferences!  We'd like you to indicate on the form which night works best for you to meet, as well as which time frame.  Then we'll send you a specific date/time for your child's conference.  Thanks!

• Brrrr!  It's definitely feeling like fall outside!  Please be sure your child is dressed for outdoor recesses.  The weather has been a little unpredictable (warm, then cold), and it's always a good idea to send a coat or sweatshirt with your child at this time of year.

• Just a friendly reminder - Please refrain from sending birthday party invitations to pass out at school unless the whole class is invited to the party.  We understand that most families are unable to invite everyone, and we have this policy to avoid hurt feelings that can be caused when some children don't receive an invitation.

•  Take note - October 15 is a no school day (staff professional development day)