Celebration of Learning!

Hello,

   We have been working our fingers to the bone on our Human Impact Expedition Projects and we are ready to share our work with you! We will sing a few songs led by our wonderful music teacher Ms. Gwaltney and then the children will share their work with you. Your child has created several artifacts in alignment with our 3 case studies.

  You will need to bring your smartphone and make sure you have a QR Code reader. Your child has created a very special presentation for you! I will post the link to the work after the celebration so that you can spend more time looking at everything on a larger screen.

We had a successful math night last week, thanks so much for joining us! 

Here are some links to online resources: 

• Rekenrek: This tool can be used to build visual representations of multiplication facts.  Use this with flash cards (hold up the flash card, have your child build it with the rekenrek, and say the fact).  

• Ten frame: This tool can be used to help to build number sense (hold up the rekenrek for a few seconds, take it away and have your child tell you how many they saw)

• BigBrainz: This the best multiplication/division fluency software that I have seen and it is free (just download the free version).  It is an actual video game that provides visual supports to build fluency.  You will need to download the software and play on either a PC or Mac.   

• Greg Tang Break Apart: This game is a great way to promote flexibility with numbers when adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing numbers.  

• XtraMath: This is a fluency building site.  Visual supports are not provided, but it is a progression based quick practice.  

Building a tree city with our Kinder buddies...

My bus trip to the Women's March in DC!

Our work with Geometry:

Happy New Year!

                SAVE THE DATE: Friday February 3, 2017 10:00 a.m.  DECATUR SQUARE
* We are having our Celebration of Learning at Decatur Square (near the gazebo) at 10 am on 2-3-17. We will be taking a bus to the square and we will meet you there! There will be more info coming soon!


Hello! I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday season filled lots of family fun! I fully enjoyed my time off with my family. We went to New York for a few days, it was Cole's first time in the big city and he loved it. We went ice skating in Bryant Park, strolled the beautiful Christmas windows, explored the Met and visited Lady Liberty! I was also able to get a bit of shopping in and we ate amazing food!
   We also had lots of friends and family time here in Atlanta. We celebrated Christmas with our dear friends from Buenos Aires, we (my husband) got a drum set and we received news that he is Cancer FREE! It's going to be a great year friends!

Thank you all so very much for the holiday gifts, I really appreciate you and I love your babies so much! I really missed them over the break. We talked about our New Year's Resolutions this morning and there were some really great ones....

* I will work to be better at:

soccer, guitar, drums,video games and collecting (fossils, dinosaur teeth, Pokemon)

* I will help my parents more to show them I'm responsible.

* I will learn to speak  Korean...

* I will become British... (lol)

* I want to learn to:

    sky dive, fly

* I want to go to the North Pole to meet Santa.

Before break we completed our work on our Geometrocity and the children LOVED it! 

WE also exchanged gifts with our kinder book buddies. They made us cards and reindeer candy canes and we gave them books. Your children are so thoughtful and kind to their little buddies.

I just loved this .....

An Early Post!

Hello! Thanks for bearing with me these last few months. I am now officially DONE with my Ed.S. program and I couldn't be more thrilled to graduate and have more time to do the things I love. As always we have been very busy in Room 212!

Important Info:

1. MAP testing will be complete by week's end. Most children are done they are just finishing up anyone who missed school.

2. We will be giving our Kindergarten book buddies a thank-you gift next Friday 12/16. If you have any gently used K appropriate books you'd like to send in, we will wrap them and present them to the children during our Buddy time.

3. We are not having any sort of celebration in the classroom, however, I am going to have game time next Friday (12/16) morning. So send in a board or card game if you like!


Here's what we've been up to:


Interactive Timeline: The children built a timeline to include our 9 historical figures' DOB, birthplace, and photo. We will be adding their contribution to society to the timeline next.

Book Buddies: We helped our buddies create a story on Book Creator to extend their reading unit on Gingerbread Stories.

MATH: We are tiling AREA, ordering plane figures by area, and relating it to multiplication.

FALL! We had a blast in the leaves last week!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Hello!
  I wish all of you a very lovely and restful Thanksgiving! Your children have been wonderful and amazing these last few weeks. They were especially kind and caring today since I lost my voice from this crazy weather!

We had an exciting last few weeks with a trip to the High Museum and the Decatur High School Musical:School House Rock performed at our school.

We ate "Stone Soup" with our kinder buddies from Mrs. Wertz class!

We learned about our historical figures and shared knowledge by playing "Give One, Get One". Ask your child what he or she learned!

We are working hard to learn our multiplication facts with fluency. Here is a little screencast made by Junot & Sho to help you get your children practicing at home!

November...and still 80 Degrees!

Hello Friends,

   It's never easy to start a week with Halloween on a Monday, but we made it through! Thank you very much for the flowers and cards!

 We had an amazing time hosting you for our Writing Celebration! The students were very proud of their work and they are already asking when we can host you again!

Our case studies are in full swing. We have had quite a few exciting activities and expert visitors. In addition to the adaptation stations a few weeks ago, we've learned about Global Warming from our CDC expert. We've also tested the creek (see results below) and talked with Mrs. Ericson and Mr. Blackburn (EPA expert and dad). Last week we hosted Mr. Pope (also from the EPA) and learned about groundwater. AND we are studying air pollution with our pollution catchers!

We are working on how to identify main idea and supporting details in non-fiction text using "boxes and bullets" and we started free choice writing this week! There are lots of comics and songwriters in room 212!

In math we are still plugging away at the relationship between multiplication and division. The students have also decided to make a "sticky note" window with encouraging words right next to our list of NF text features...and we love birthday selfies at recess. 

AND....camping with Cole and Halloween fun!

**Creek Results***

Temperature  60 degrees F /16 degrees C
pH- 7.5- GOOD
Nitrate- 20 ppm POOR
Dissolved Oxygen- 8  - Students can calculate % saturation using dissolved oxygen and temperature  
Phosphate-   3 ppm GOOD
Turbidity- 0 JTU- Excellent

The results for the two bacteria samples taken in the morning and afternoon:

E.coli morning sample:  300 cfu (colony forming unit)

After lunch:    167 cfu

EPA recommends no more than 235 cfu for swimming activities.  So a little high, but pretty normal for an urban stream.  Interesting that the morning sample was higher than the after lunch.