MAP TESTING, BOOK FEST, & LABOR DAY

     If your child seemed extremely irritable or just plain tired this week, it is because MAP testing took a lot out of us all! The good news is that it will officially be over tomorrow! We will use the scores as baseline data and then your child will take the test again in mid year and at the end of the school year.
 
  Tomorrow is our field trip to the Decatur Book Festival! Please dress your children in their orange Westchester shirt! I have two parent chaperones who will be riding the bus with us but if you'd like to meet us at the book fest we'd love to see you! You can meet at our bus drop off point which is at Squash Blossom in Decatur Square. We leave WE at 8:30 so I'm guessing 8:45 is a good time to find us!

  We do not have school on Monday...of course I forgot about it until yesterday! I hope you have a wonderful and safe weekend with your families.

  We had a lot of recess after testing this week so here are some of the ladies connecting with nature and we also had in impromptu dance party! The boys danced more than the girls! HA!:)

  See you tomorrow at the Book Festival !

A few photos from last week!

Hello Everyone,
 I'm posting today since I too worn out to do it on Thursday! I just wanted to let you know that the kids start MAP testing tomorrow and finish on Thursday! Don't worry too much about it. This will serve as baseline data for the year. It tests reading, language arts and math domains.
    I am in the process of giving DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) this week and next week. This basically means that your child reads to me and I ask him/her questions as well as assess the overall comprehension, fluency and reading level. The Dibels test was completed last week. Try this LINK for more info. AND we have already had a MATH pre-test as well as a math quiz on Place Value, Rounding, Addition, Subtraction, and Bar Graphs.
  All in all, the first six weeks are a whirlwind of rituals, routines, data collection, and community building!
 
Curriculum Night:
  Here is the Prezi I gave at Curriculum Night in case you didn't make it. I will see if I can get the main presentation from Ms. Loftstrand.

Here are some photos of what we've been up to:

COLE visited on Curriculum Night & sat in his BFF's seat in first grade! 

The Classroom Library is almost done! (Still need a low shelf if anyone has one!)

Curriculum Night

Place Value Dice Game

Author Study on Patricia Polacco

GA Habitats Research

See you with another post on Thursday......:)

Curriculum Night : Thursday at 6pm!!!

Hello Friends!
  We will be having Curriculum Night this Thursday at 6 pm. Ms. Loftstrand and Ms. Stroud will be briefing you on the ins and outs of MAP testing, Report Cards, and Expeditionary Learning in the auditorium from 6-6:30 and then you will meet me in our classroom for a Q & A session. Join Us if you can!
( I will post the presentations afterwards for those who can't make it.)

More to come in Thursday's post.....

Week Two! What a great week!

Hello! This week has flown by! We are getting better at our routines & trying (really really hard) to follow our schedule. I had to switch around some of the MATH times at the end of the week so we can team teach with Mrs. Yoo and Ms. Nesbitt...but otherwise the schedule is done!
 HOMEWORK:
     I sent home the homework calendar and reading log on Tuesday. The kids will need to keep them in their blue communication folders everyday. We will be writing HW on the calendar daily (....once I start assigning more...don't worry, I won't assign a lot!) For now it's just reading. Math will start soon as well as Science projects for GA habitats.
Reading response journals are due every Monday. This is supposed to be your child's responsibility so help me to put the ownership and habits of scholarship on their shoulders!

Here's what to do: Students read for 30 minutes (or more) nightly.This can be done with you at bedtime, on their own or a combination of both. They will record what they read and in their reading logs. The goal is to get your kids interested in reading and finding books that they LOOK FORWARD to reading! If this seems like it will never happen, don't worry. I hated to read when I was younger and now I love it.

Here's what we've been up to:  We chose our class jobs and created our list of What Readers Read! 

We started number talks (mental math) and working with our base ten manipulatives to represent numbers in many ways. 

We talked about expanded form and played a place value scoot game....there was some dancing involved! 

Hope to see you at Curriculum Night : August 21st 6pm!

Week One...Success!

Hello Friends,
 It' s been a busy week full of community building and learning school and classroom norms. I am plum exhausted! :) I am ready to dive into teaching the curriculum and getting some assessments going.
  I sent out the schedule and class list last night. It will likely change as we get more information about how the kids respond to it and create inclusion schedules as well.
Here are some answers to questions I have received:
1. A few of you expressed concern about the short Science and S.Studies times. These are bits and pieces of the day when we may be continuing to work on or wrapping up a project. Most of our instruction will be integrated within Reader's and Writer's workshops and later within our school-wide expedition. Don't worry, I will make sure that we cover all of the 3rd grade standards and there will be lots of opportunities to learn the standards and much more!
 2. In addition, there were questions about recess after lunch. Unfortunately, our schedule is limited because we have a few 1/2 day or 1/2 time specials teachers and we need to be able to work around their availability. That means fitting recess in when I can.
3.  I will also be adding our library time to our schedule on Fridays at 9:30. I will re-send the final updated version of our schedule asap.
4. In addition to that I will be sending a dismissal chart for you to check. Please let me know if I need to make any changes to it. (Look for it early next week or over the weekend if I can get to it)
5. I am adding/updating our class email list all of the time so let me know if you need me to add you or your spouse. I apologize if I left you off.
6. After school transportation: I asked about children riding the bus home with a friend if they have parent permission. As of right now, non-bus riders cannot ride the bus due to lack of seating space. So if your child wants to go home with a friend for a sleepover or play date, they will have to be picked up by car riders or walkers. I will let you know if this changes.

Now for the good stuff...here's what we have been up to this week!

  Tables came up with team names...this was an especially difficult task because all members had to agree and share in the responsibility of creating their posters.

  We formulated our class contract. Each child wrote their ideas on a sticky note and we then we combined some and discussed the others. All students signed the contract for our class. :)

This is our August precept...from WONDER. We are reading the book as a read aloud but if you want to buy it so your child can read along...that would be great!

  Lastly...I am in need of shelving for our book bins, preferably the low 2-shelf kind.....If you have something that might work, I'll take it! :)

Thanks!

First Day of School ...... What a great day!

Hello Friends,
  Today we had a very productive and tiring day. It is always difficult to get back to the routines of the school day and even harder to learn new norms. This is a particularly unique situation since all of the children are coming from different places. Change is hard on everyone but it helps us to grow and learn how to handle challenges in our lives.
  We spent most of our day learning about classroom and school norms. We read a great story about kindness, played some community building games and we organized some of our supplies. We shared our "About Me" bags and wrote letters to new friends in the classroom. Tomorrow we will learn about reading response journals and begin writing in them.
  Thanks so much for all of the supplies and for your smiling support this morning and afternoon. The  pick-up will be improve each day as we learn more about traffic patterns, recognize your faces and feel 100% confident with the procedures. Please email me if you have any questions! I'll post more later this week about what we will be working on and when homework will start.

WELCOME TO WESTCHESTER!

Hello Friends!
     I am so happy to be a member of the Westchester Crew! I have spent the last 2 weeks learning about CSD and making friends with my new staff family. I am super excited to meet you all and get our 3rd Grade year started! In the next few weeks we will spend lots of time learning about and getting to know each other. We will make many decisions about how our classroom community will function and I will be gathering as much information about as I can in order to be the best teacher I can be!
  Please read through the tabs located across the top of the blog page to learn a little more about me!

WE HAVE FISH!! WE WILL NAME THEM THIS WEEK! 

My husband and son, Cole on Cape Cod this summer! 

I like to be silly! :)