After braving the extremely cold temperatures (I am not used to it getting this cold since I grew up in Washington!) we made it to school with our late starts. All of the students did a great job getting here by nine every morning. This week we didn't have anyone absent at all which is amazing! Great job!
This week we did a lot of different activities to keep our interest and attention after being well rested from break. We had our normal Wednesday poetry workshop where we read a funny poem by Kenn Nesbitt called, "I Bought Our Cat a Jetpack." I thought it was a great one! The students really like reading our weekly poem because they get a chance to entertain themselves with a new poem, read it aloud, and usually read something pretty funny! I have noticed a huge difference in their expression when reading since we have been doing poetry workshop this year. Expression is a big part of reading fluently so keep up that great work!
We also celebrated Alaska joining the union on Wednesday by learning an Inuit game called ajegaq. The game was traditionally played with a hollowed out bone and a stick but we used toilet paper rolls that we cut semicircles into. We then substituted a stick for our pencils and tried to catch the "bone" with our pencil. It was a LOT of fun... for them to play and me to watch!
Yesterday we were in our normal routine with reading, music, writing, and math. The students finished their animal report research on Thursday which was exciting and a huge step! That is amazing that the research is done... now onto the writing of the report. We will start next week with the formal writing so I hope we are ready! I know we can do it!
We also spent our art time learning about the color wheel. I found out earlier this year that most of the students didn't know how to create green from blue and yellow or orange from red and yellow, etc. So, I decided to help them understand these mixes in a hands-on way. We used blue, red, and yellow paint to create a whole color wheel of 12 colors! It was pretty fun and really had the kids excited! I think they thought I was making it up that you could mix colors and not just make a dark brown! :)
Today we had our usual Friday schedule after the late start. The students reading the story "Seal Surfer" and took a vocabulary quiz on those words. They did a great job with really understanding the words this week! Nice work! Then we spent time doing a mapping quiz using the grid maps we learned about earlier this week. They are mapping pros now which is great. I always loved geography and mapping so that makes it great for me as a teacher to teach something I really enjoy too! Math today was a little tricky. We learned about square numbers which was a challenging concept to really understand. Slowly but surely we will get the hang of things!
This afternoon we had our normal class payday and class store was today also! It was fun to see what the students picked to buy, as always! This week the mystery bags were popular (as usual!) and so were the twisted pens. Pens overall seem to be the hot item these days!
I hope you all had great weeks and have fun weekends. I will see you Monday, well-rested and ready for a full week!
A sneak peek at next week:
- Book orders will be sent home early next week and students will earn $20 in classroom money for every book they order with the paper form or online. Remember ordering online gets the class and you free books so that is a great incentive!
- Friday is the end of the quarter AND the end of the semester so grades should be home by the end of the week. If you want to know sooner, you student will get their grades in class on January 19th and I can always email you or call you with those details if you are interested!
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