Off to a GOOD START!

Wow!  It's hard to believe that this school year is well under way!  We have been BUSY, BUSY, BUSY learning!  Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what we have been doing!

This is the first component of Daily 5 that the students learn--"Read to Self." 

The second component is "Work on Writing."  The students have all sort of fun writings they can do: letters, lists, stories, books, cards, postcards, and even text messages! :)  I will post pictures soon! 

The third component of Daily 5 is "Read to Someone."  This part really reinforces cooperative learning.  It helps students develop the confidence to read to others, as well as being mentors for each other in figuring out difficult words and comprehending what the story is about.  

We have been playing a lot of games during Math Workshop that focus on the skills of comparing the values of numbers and combining numbers to form a total.  The game the students in this picture are playing is called "Double Compare Dots."  Each student pulls 2 cards from his/her stack, adds the amounts together, and compares their total to their partner's total.  The person with the greater value wins!  The students really enjoy it...and from comments about the homework, parents and siblings do too! ;)

This is probably one of the most exciting things we have done yet!  FACETIME!!!  As part of our project about Labor Day and occupations, the students have had the opportunity to listen and talk with people from all sorts of professions: teaching, military, law enforcement, construction, martial arts, and much more!  We were very lucky (and very grateful) that most of our guests could come into our classroom and talk to us.  However, this guest, an Air National Guard veteran from Colorado, shared information about her profession via FaceTime.  The students loved it!  Hopefully with some more tech work we can soon FaceTime or Skype our guests using our Smartboard.  Very exciting! 

I will post more pictures soon!  :) 

Enjoy your weekend and the beautiful weather!

--Ms. Brandt