Our Week at School!

As usual, another busy week! We had two visitors: Mayor Kelly of Bartlett and Mrs. Siegler, our 1st mystery reader. We learned a lot from both!!!!!

In readers workshop we learned about 3 reading strategies to add to our CAFE menu: Check for Understanding, Go back and reread, and tune into interesting words. CAFE stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanded Vocabulary. These are the goals of real readers and underneath we have the strategies to meet the goal. We will be adding more and students will have individual goals they work on in each area.

In Writers workshop we learned that IDEAS are the heart of all writing. Writers write what they know and they use expanded vocabulary to help paint a picture for the writer. We also have a CAFE menu for writing: Comprehension (my writing can be understood,) Accuracy (spelling, conventions), Fluency (word choice,) and Expanded Vocabulary. Just as in reading, each child has a goal/strategy they work on.

We finished unit 1 in Everyday Math on Friday. This was a review unit and we will take an assessment on Monday. This will help guide my teaching for small group work. We also worked on math stations. We also have a CAFE menu: Comprehension (I understand the problem and know what I am solving for,) Accuracy (I can solve problems correctly, I can add/subtract accurately), Fluency, (math facts), Expanded Vocabulary (I understand math words (difference, sum, equivalent, etc.) and use them in my writing.)

Under each goal we are adding math activities and students will have a choice of what to work on during independent math time. These choices, however, will be based on the specific math needs of the students.

We took our fall MAP reading test on Wednesday. On Tuesday afternoon of this week, we will take the math portion.

On Monday, students will have a substitute teacher as I attend a district literacy meeting. Mrs. Graves is a certified teacher who has taught for many years and has completed many long term sub positions at various schools, including Liberty. We are very fortunate to have her and there will be no interruption in learning.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful fall weather today! I'm stuck inside with a nasty cold! Yuck! I hope this is the ONLY one of the year!

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Tuesday Thrills

Mayor Kelly of Bartlett paid our classrooms a visit today. We are learning about government and how laws are made. Mayor Kelly shared with us how laws are made in Bartlett.





We also had our first mystery reader: Mrs. Siegler! The students were soooo excited to see her...and so was I! She read The Old Woman Who Named Things by Cynthia Rylant. The boys and girls were enthralled as she read. Come back and read EVERYDAY Mrs. Siegler!!!!





Our focus in reading this week is metacognition-thinking about your thinking. Our first strategy will be checking for understanding as you read.

Here are a few pictures from our math workshop. We were playing addition top it to practice our math facts. We also wrote number sentences to match our cards and recording who had more by using greater than and less than signs.

A Week at School

Even though it was a short week...it was a busy one!

We learned more about picking just right books. We learned a new strategy called I PICK:
I=I choose a book.
Pick: what is my purpose?
Intrest: what are my interests in reading a book?
Comprehend: I understand what I am reading. I can retell what I read...I can remember what I read.
Know: I know most of the words--the 5 finger rule.

We learned more about different genre's as we continued to build stamina. In writers workshop we focused on where writers get ideas.

During math workshop we practiced math facts as we learned about different activities we will be able to do when our REAL math workshop begins.

Thursday was a Switch Day and we went to our specials. During our integration time with the ELL classrooms we learned more about laws and rules.

I hope everyone was able to get onto XtraMath.org. Let me know if you have problems. It was GREAT seeing so many faces at Open House this week. I'm looking forward to a GREAT....GREAT....GREAT Year!

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Open House

Just a quick correction...Open House is Wednesday at 6:30. I hope to see everyone there!

Classroom News!

I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend!

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Here are a few more photos from our week:

Newsletter

I will send home a paper copy as well until I know who is able to access our newsletter via computer. Hopefully, in the future, we can save trees and money by posting news online.

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Back to School!

Welcome Back to Liberty School!

I'm soooo excited to back at Liberty! I've talked with many of my former students and my....how you have all grown in one year! Amazing!!! And I'm so excited to meet and get to know my new students. We had a wonderful three days together and I saw many of you at the ice cream social Friday night. I'm looking forward to another wonderful school year!!!! I hope you are too!

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