Happy Halloween!

In case you missed the fun of our Halloween Celebration, here is a recap filled with pictures. Students had a really great time and they did awesome on controlling their excitement and behavior inside the classroom :) They were pretty stoked to be partying during the school day. They had a couple different crafts to create, games to play and food to eat. THANK YOU TO ALL THE PARENTS who were able to come and help and/or who brought in the tasty treats. Very much appreciated! The party was a success! I hope everyone has a very Happy Halloween! Stay warm :)

Shape Monsters

We put a little twist on our current math to incorporate Halloween. Students built shape monsters using their creativity and understanding of geoblock faces, 2-D shapes, and specific attributes. They created pretty awesome creatures using quadrilaterals, circles, triangles, polygons, etc. Students recorded all shapes they used into a table to show their buddy and the class what evidence was produced to track their understanding of recognizing shapes within our math unit. These are hanging in our classroom if you would like to stop in and see. One day soon they will be visiting your homes...

Ordering & Investigating Rectangles

During our study of Geoblocks students are investigating rectangles and finding the biggest in different ways. They are using this and ordering shapes A-G from biggest to smallest using an assortment of different shapes and sizes of rectangles. It was trickier that they thought! Students also used what they ordered to cover with square tiles finding how many tiles covered the different rectangles. This identified which rectangle was the biggest and smallest. We also threw in predicting to see how close they were to mentally figuring it out. As you see they had fun with it :) 

Reminders...

Parent/Teacher Conferences

October 27 & 28 (5-8)

*Lowrys Books Fair during conference times

Picture Retakes

October 29

Halloween Celebration

October 30 (10-11)

1/2 Day

October 30

Dismissal @ 12:12

No School

October 31

No School

November 3

Bully Prevention Assembly

Thursday we had our bullying prevention assembly! Mrs. Williford and Mrs. McCain presented a great presentation on how to stop bullying and support those students who are affected by bullying.

Students were also given the opportunity to design the back cover of our Westwoods yearbooks with a bully free theme. 

Here are the design contest details:

Designs should be clear, easy to read and on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of white paper. 

Use one color. The design selected will be on the back of the yearbook in black. 

All designs are due by Nov. 14th to classroom teachers.

Halloween Celebration

Thursday, October 30^th 

10:00-11:00

 COSTUMES

If your child chooses to bring their costume to school, please bring it in a bag. We will change into these right before the party. All weapons, skateboards, or rollerblades are not permitted. I also reminded students that anything brought to school going with their costumes are their responsibility to keep track of. Thanks for your help with this.

Parents, if you are dressing up and joining in on the festivities please do not wear masks or other items that would cover your appearance. We need to be able to identify all adults in the building. Thank you!

GOODIES

The following is a list of items that we would enjoy for our Halloween Celebration. If you are willing and able to donate please let me know.

·        Two gallons of apple cider

·        Donuts

·        Fruit

·        Paper plates

·        Cups

·        Napkins

*We do have a peanut allergy in the classroom so please keep that in mind

 VOLUNTEERS & PRIZES

Students will be playing different games during the festivities. There will be different stations set up. Please let me know if you are available to help and/or help serve our tasty treats. 

Reminders...

A few reminders for next week. I know it is going to be busy!

October 20-24

Classroom Box Top Competition

October 22

Parent Teacher Conferences

* I will NOT be sending home reminders on your conference date. If you have a questions or concern please contact me. Thank you!

October 22
Lowry Book Fair - 5-8 p.m.

October 22

Olweus Bully Prevention Assembly

Wear Blue Today!

1:20-PS-1st Grade 

2:00-2nd -5th Grade

October 24

Move-A-Thon Pledges Due

Geoblock Building

Students were using Geoblocks to build other 3-D shapes. Then, they took their artistic skills to draw their findings on paper. Easier said than done to draw a 3-D shape :)

Spelling

New spelling words came home on Friday along with their spelling tests from this past week. Yes, the words are more of a challenge this week. These words are vocabulary used in our subject areas throughout the units of the curriculum. Hopefully these extra couple days over the weekend are helping students for that extra practice. 

Move A Thon

Thank you to parents who came and joined us for the Move A Thon! The rain held off and all kids were moving one way or another to get their laps in :) No one gave up and were rewarded with an apple and water in the end. Fun morning! 

6 Minute Fluency

Six Minute Fluency is a program we have started in the classroom for reading. This quickly builds fluency through interactive, peer-to-peer repeated readings of high interest, targeted readability passages. It will help students develop a foundational knowledge of phonetic elements, automatic sight word vocabulary, and the ability to read text fluently. Six Minute Fluency will only use six minutes of our instructional day. Students are paired with a "literacy buddy" reading informational text passages based on social studies and science content. This helps to enhance their background knowledge and content area vocabulary. Paired buddies will be given a new passage every Monday to read for the week. Students are working together with their partners to track one another, help solve errors, and graph results each day to show growth. This is our second day using Six Minute Fluency and the students are doing great! I will be more than happy to have this available to present at parent/teacher conferences or at a separate time if you have more questions or concerns. 

Unit 2 - Shapes, Blocks & Symmetry

Unit 2 is underway! This unit is part of the geometry strand of our Investigations curriculum. It develops students' ideas about 2-D and 3-D shapes and their characteristics and attributes. Students work on how to compose and decompose the shapes in different ways, and how to sort, categorize, name and think about the relationships between them. Students do in-depth work with rectangles and rectangular prisms and also investigate symmetry. They use a variety of tools, including pattern blocks, Geoblocks, and Geoboards. 

Please look for Unit 1 coming home with students (last Friday). Any pages not done can be done as extra practice at home. Let me know if you have any further questions or concerns. Thank you!