Good Morning,
I have to apologize for not getting this out on Friday. I do hope you all are having a great weekend and have a chance to help out and/or shop at the Ski and Skate sale. The proceeds from this sale fund many opportunities for the students of our school.
One of my goals this year is to develop a love of reading within each student. Over the years I have received grant money, used budget money, and have been fortunate enough to receive donations to build a classroom library. This library is filled with thousands of books and allows the students to choose from a wide variety of titles. Over the past few weeks, I have added over 100 new books to our classroom library. All of these books were free to us! Half of them came via the Scholastic book order. I used points (earned when you all order) to receive them for free. The other half came from an organization called Donors Choose. This is an organization that allows me to put projects on and donors from around the country choose to donate towards a project. I don't advertise these projects via email and social media because I am not looking for friends, family or the school community to donate. Over the last two years I have received over $1,250 dollars in books alone. Needless to say, the kids were very excited for all of the new choices and titles. Between the books they shop for every Wednesday and the book that goes home each night, these titles are already flying off the shelves. Who would have thought 15 new books about pugs or pug characters would be so popular.
Our class teamed up with Mrs. Smith (Torrey) 5/6 graders on Wednesday. Torrey and I are going to do a few projects with our classes this year and this was the introduction of the two groups. We started off by teaming them up and kids finding a nice spot outside to read with their 5/6 grade partner. We then had the kids go on a walk, using the Mad Path that parallels our playground. It was such a beautiful day and the gathering was fun for all of them. I found it funny that so many of the 5/6 kids came up and said that their younger partner runs too quick for them. Next week we will carve pumpkins with the 5/6 class. This will be part of our write up for the celebration and traditions of Halloween.
Speaking of Halloween. I just wanted to go over how it will work for our class. On Monday, October 31st we will use part of the afternoon, to talk about the tradition of Halloween. We will read some books, talk about traditions each student has, write about our learning and have a little treat, that I will provide. We will not be doing costumes at school. This way nothing gets left at school or lost before the big event that evening. However, I would love to do a photo parade of the kids in their costumes. If your child would like to participate, take a i of them prior to 10/31 and upload it into this Google Drive folder. I will then turn it into a slide show for the kids. That way everyone gets to see each other's costume. If anyone would like to donate two gallons of cider, please let me know. We will enjoy that with the treat that I make.
This week's writing instruction had students focusing on writing with detail. I referred back to one page from Jane Yolen's book Owl Moon and we talked about how well she painted a picture in the reader's mind. The discussion focused how Jane went after the reader's senses to help create such a vivid piece of writing. The students then had a chance to practice this in their own small moment stories.
I used science time this week to go over how experiments work and the idea of making a prediction, conducting the experiment, writing their observations through "I notice . . ." statements, and then checking if their prediction was correct. The students documented all of their learning in their science notebooks and seemed to have a great time with the simple experiment. The focus was more on how to document their learning than the actual experiment itself.
NOTES:
*Please make sure your child has a sweatshirt or fleece for the classroom, in their backpacks. If you want them to leave it at school, please tell them that and make sure their name is in it.
*Picture retake day is Wednesday. This is for individual shots. The class picture will not be retaken.
*I will be out of the classroom on Friday. I run a mentorship program, for teachers learning about global education through a fellowship program. The kick off for the new cohort is this weekend in Washington DC. I will be back on Monday.
I hope you all have a great week!
Peace,
Mr. Young
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| Free Hot Chocolate for the Kids |
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| "Waking" on the Mad Path |
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| Reading with the 5/6 kids |
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| Reading with the 5/6 kids |
