Testing Information

Second Grade High Ability Identification Process:

Second Grade CogAT Testing:

We have now finished up all the testing for second grade CogAT.  Originally all students were screened and those who received a 77+ percentile rank, then took the full.  As a parent you may be asking yourself, "Should I be worried if my child did not take the full CogAT test?"  No.  This is only one of the two ways to qualify for high ability.  Please remember, CogAT is a test with zero reading.  It is a test which shows how students think.  It often identifies your out-of-the-box thinkers.  There is no way to prepare for it, nor does it test things that are taught in class.  It's just the way the student thinks.  We have the data, but will not make any final decisions until the NWEA data is in.

Second Grade NWEA Testing:

 Two scores listed, yours will have one.

The window for the NWEA test will open April 19th.  NWEA data from the end of the year is an achievement test.  Students who are shining in the classroom often score high on this test.  The big change going from second to third grade is the "Language Arts" section.  Students need to score in the 95th percentile or higher, on not only the "Reading" section, but also the "Language Arts" section.  Quite frankly, we do a lot of writing and reading in our third and fourth grade curriculum.  The LA section is not available to kindergarten and first.  A good suggestion that I give parents who are anxiously waiting their child's test scores, look back at past NWEA scores from this year.  Look at their Fall and Winter scores to see how they've done this year so far.  The score you need to look at, is the middle one similar to the highlighted snip above.  The middle, bold number needs to be 95 or higher in order to be considered for HA.  The number of students identified will be around ten percent of the second grade class.  Please don't hesitate if you have questions.  I'm sure this is a little overwhelming.  I'm here to help and answer any questions or concerns that you may have.  The bottom line, we want our kids to be where they need to be!  At the elementary level, that's during our WIN time.  What I Need.  Students are looked at each and every year for high ability.  Just because they were not identified in elementary school, does not mean they will not be identified later.

High Ability Summer School:

Brochures will go home today with the information about high ability summer school.  It will be taught again by Mrs. Pethes, a fourth grade teacher at Liberty.  I'm so impressed with her program!  Students really enjoy getting immersed in the theme of Old England.  It's hard to believe, but it's time to start planning your summer to see if you can schedule all those fun activities and educational camps.  It will run Friday, May 31st-Thursday June 21st.  If you have any overlap, no worries.  Mrs. Pethes is very adaptable.  It is offered to all current high ability students grades 1st-3rd grade.  Please fill out the form and turn it into the office by:  Friday, April 27th.

December 11- December 15

BAILLY'S SUPER WORD OF THE WEEK

DECISION: to make up your mind 

1st GRADE LA

Persuasive Paragraph: Monday we tried to finish up our persuasive paragraphs. I allowed students to be PROACTIVE and take it home to finish. I was happy to see many of them chose to do so. If it was not completed in class or for homework I will allow a few minutes on Monday for completion. The hamburger model and persuasive paragraph has allowed the student to utilize a higher-level thinking skill while planning and writing. 

Tuesday the students were on a field trip.

2nd GRADE LA

 Journals, Review, and Metaphors: Monday I had the students finish their journal entry. Last week I asked the students, Would Edward be better off staying with Bull and Lucy? If you are not reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane with your child, I highly recommend it. It has quickly became one of my favorite books. This book can be an easy read or studied for its' deep metaphors and endless connections. The journal entries allow me to see how deep the students are reading and relating to our discussions. 

I love the way we review our homework readings with each table getting to explain a chapter to the class. We have charts in our room to help us track the book. If a new character or setting is introduced, Edward's name or outfit changes, or Edward has experience another emotion, we track them with post-its. It's kinda a big deal to get to write the post-it 😉.

As I mentioned above, this book has a lot of connections when you look beyond the surface. This allows the perfect opportunity to introduce metaphors. We read an excerpt from the Testing Tree found in the beginning of Edward Tulane. Once I set the path, they saw how the excerpt relates to our story. They realized metaphors, "describing something by calling it something else", are all around us. We will continue our metaphor lesson next week. 

HOMEWORK:

 Read chap 18-21

 Reading Analyzer: FAVORITE chapter

3rd GRADE LA

Writing & Homework: We finished our Beatrix Potter lesson this week. The students wrote on a chart similarities between the theme, setting, plot and character traits in their books. We then identified the different interactions and how they affected the plots of their different stories. This lesson continued to help develop the understanding of interactions while also analyzing classic fictional texts. 

We finished up by starting this weeks HOMEWORK. 

HOMEWORK: Finish your interactions journal. Think of a time you interacted with nature in an imaginative way. Write a paragraph describing your experience. ILLUSTRATE your paragraph with colored pencils, crayons, or markers. 

4th GRADE LA

Computer Lab & Project: Monday we were able to get into the computer lab and print out our pictures for our biography project. Not everyone had their pictures ready. This task is now their responsibility to complete on their own time. However, it is known that they are always welcome to come into my class during lunch recess to complete this!! Once students are done typing out their time line events they will start gluing everything to the time line!! Hopefully, this is where we will be close to ending at before the break. 

December 18 - December 22

BAILLY'S SUPER WORD OF THE WEEK

CARPE DIEM: seize the day

Change/Gifted Children/Best Practices

Duneland's high ability program will be changing starting with our current kindergarten students.  Change is not always easy, but if it benefits our students then we know we are moving in the right direction!  More details will soon follow . . .

1st GRADE LA

Finish to the start: We finished our persuasive paragraphs on Monday. I wanted the students to learn a few different concepts with this writing. First, I wanted the students to understand if you wish to persuade someone, you must give them reasons for following your thinking. In our paragraphs we gave three reasons we believed all first graders should speak Pig Latin. Next, I wanted to emphasize the idea of introduction and conclusion. 

We want our readers to understand what we are writing about because they do not have the opportunity to read our writing prompt. By writing an introduction, it allows us to explain what we were prompted to write. In the conclusion, I wanted the class to recognize we are simply restating the introduction. Last, I wanted to stress basic writing skills.

The class now knows we indent at the beginning of paragraphs and we ALWAYS start a sentence with a capital letter and end with punctuation!!!

After our persuasive writing we went right into our next lesson, Connecting Letters and Language. Monday we did a fun activity changing one letter in a word to create a new word. However, the new word had to match the clue given to us. Tuesday we started class with the usual beginning of a lesson task, deciphering a message. We had 1 rock star who got it right away. The others soon followed once they found the clue and noticed the connection, OVER & UNDER. This lesson will show us how letters are kind of like magic; by simply changing one letter in a word we have something completely different.

2nd GRADE LA

Metaphors & Main Ideas: The class was introduced to metaphors last week.We began this week with a metaphor matching worksheet to reveal how common metaphors are and how often we hear them. Rereading chapter 4 in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane the student now understand how the story Pellegrina told Abilene is a metaphor of Edward's life.

We also read a quote from the beginning of the book. Until now, the students would not have known how this exert would fit into Edward's journey. They clearly understands how this metaphor relates to Edwards life.  

3rd GRADE LA

~NO CLASS DUE TO FIELD TRIPS AND HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES~

Nature interaction paragraphs AND pictures are still due!!

4th GRADE LA 

Pictures, Timelines and Slideshows: As of Tuesday, everyone has had a chance to print all of their pictures for the timelines. Next, students will need to finish typing their dates, print and cut them out and glue the pictures and dates to their timelines.

We have ROCK STAR done with her timeline. These dates can always be typed at home on the student's school google account accessible from any computer with internet. I will allow the students to finish up any typing our first week back from break, then we need to put the timelines together and start on our slide show and monologue.  

1st GRADE MA

What Happened: This week was game time. We played the game 'What Happened' where each table was split into 2 groups, the guessing group and the spinning group. The guessing group had to pull a card from our Grupo deck, recreate it with shapes we made with post-it's from a previous lesson and memorize it. The spinning group will spin the the game dish either landing on 'MOVE ONE SHAPE', 'DO NOTHING', OR 'TAKE OFF ONE SHAPE'.

With the guessing team's backs turned the spinning team alters the shape. The guessing team most then decide what component of the shape has been altered.

This game allows the students to use their spacial visualization in order to see how the shapes were manipulated.

2nd GRADE MA

NO CLASS THIS WEEK: I hope everyone enjoyed Roles Poetry Cafe and their holiday parties! I had a great time helping out with Mrs. Ahrendt's holiday party.

3rd GRADE MA

Chapter Check-Up: What a way to end the last week before Holiday break, with a Chapter Check-Up! I am so sorry, but I wanted to get it done rather than after break when we may have forgotten a few things.........

4th GRADE MA

Least Common Denominator: The last couple of weeks we've been comparing unlike fractions. We have learned a few different methods to find our answers. We learned a couple of generalization rules when we have common numerators and common denominators. 

Our last day we were missing one of our classes and were unable to finish our least common denominator worksheet. We instead did a fun word/fraction worksheet.

The worksheet forced students to simplify, allowing the concept of our fraction strips we did at the beginning of the year to be used.  The worksheet looked at a word to be the whole and letters to be part of the whole. It was a fun class. 

November 29 - December 1

Happy December!!

BAILLY'S SUPER WORD OF THE WEEK:

LIBERTY: freedom to choose

~I was not here on Tuesday, our LA classes met one time on Monday~

1st GRADE LA

PERSUASIVE PARAGRAPHS: Monday I asked the class if learning Pig Latin was difficult. Some raised their hands in agreement while others found learning Pig Latin easy. I then asked, "who is right and who is wrong?" This question lead us to the idea of opinions and if  there was a right or wrong answer. Once we understood that an opinion could neither be or right nor wrong, I introduced the idea of persuasion. While children seem to have an inherent gift of persuasion, as least mine do, I wanted to formally introduce the concept as trying to convince someone to agree with your opinion . Next week we are going to write a persuasive paragraph together. We will be trying to persuade other first graders that Pig Latin is an easy language to learn. 

2nd GRADE LA

VENN DIAGRAM: This class is rocking all the connections in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Before Thanksgiving break we read the Velveteen Rabbit. I told the students to listen carefully for similarities and differences between the two stories. Monday we made a Venn Diagram between the two stories. It was amazing to hear the depth in the connections they made  between the two. They saw the surface similarities and differences, such as they were both rabbits or one had a girl owner and the other had a boy owner. They were also able to identify the concept of love and being loved in the 'lives' of both Edward and the Velveteen Rabbit.  

THERE WAS NO HOMEWORK SINCE I WAS GONE ON TUESDAY.

3rd GRADE LA

FINISH UP: The students were able to finish their Reading Analyzers over the different Beatrix Potter books they read with partners. Next week we are going to bring them all together for discussion questions. We will be looking for similarities in theme, setting, plot and character traits between the books. For the students I had last year, we did this a little between The Tale of Despereaux and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.We will also be discussing how INTERACTIONS affect the plot of the stories.  

4th GRADE LA

TIME LINES: At this point in our Biography  Project almost everyone is working on their time lines. The students have been shown that time line dates are NOT evenly spaced. I told them, with an Agent of Change individual, they may see a cluster of events between certain times. I explained I am looking for accurate spacing, meaning I can see they took the time to understand where the dates are relative to the individual's birth and death dates. I am also looking for neatness!!!!! I have rulers, yard sticks, markers, anything they may need, organization and neatness is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. 

We were supposed to go the the computer lab and print our pictures on Tuesday, with me being gone I will need to reschedule this for next week. 

*IF YOUR STUDENT DOES NOT HAVE THEIR MINIMUM OF 10 PICTURES BY THE TIME WE GO TO THE COMPUTER LAB, IT WILL BE THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIND A TIME TO PRINT THEM*

IT SEEM LIKE FOREVER SINCE I HAVE HAD MY MATH STUDENTS!!!

WELCOME BACK!

1st GRADE MA

GRUPO.......FINIALLY: This has been the most well behaved week I've had with this class ALL YEAR!!! Wednesday we refreshed our memory on the rules of Grupo. The goal is for partners to find a pair of cards with 4 of the 5 attributes the same. 

After playing a couple of rounds we swapped the rules up needed to find pairs that had 2 DIFFERENT attributes. Team "A" had to tell team "B" the similarities or differences they found in the match and vice versa. If the cards were not a true match, the other team got the pair. 

We had a lot of fun with this!!

2nd GRADE MA

SMILE GALLERY: Wednesday and Thursday we worked on tiling. We first practiced tiling with a single pattern block. The students were then introduced to the concept of a  "basic pattern", this is the fewest number of blocks that are repeated to make a design. 

Our worksheet had us identify the basic pattern of two different designs. Next, the students chose 2-3 pattern shapes to create their own basic pattern. After they created a basic pattern, they cut it out and used it to fill in an entire 'wall mural' worksheet.

HOMEWORK: Any coloring they did not finish was sent home for homework.

3rd GRADE MA

Since we are a small class, I allow the students to sit or stand
where ever they concentrate the best.

WHAT'S NEXT?: This week we started a new lesson with patterns in sequences. Continuing to use the concept of growing patterns, we are trying to find a generalization or rule to determine any term in a given sequence. I demonstrated to the students what would happen if I punch 1+3 into a calculator and continually punch the " =" sign. We saw the answer of 4 continue to grow by 3's. We sampled this a few different times to make sure understanding was clear. I explained while 3+1 gave us the same previous answer of 4, if we continue to press the equals button, our answer will only grow by 1's rather than 3's. This idea was important to understand once they were given the "What's Next" charts. 

4th GRADE MA

THINK DEEPLY.....TO THE EXTREME: We have not had a regular math class in two weeks!! Two weeks ago we had part of the class missing because of Camp Goodfellow. Last week we did not have math because of Thanksgiving break. We are FINALLY back on track.

Wednesday we reviewed a little with a couple Think Beyond cards and Thursday we started our end of the lesson  Think Deeply. This was a tricky TD with many steps which we did together. THESE GUYS ROCKED IT!!! While I guided the class, they were the ones telling me what direction we needed to go next and why. So proud of them, especially after such a long break!

November 13 - 17

BAILLY'S SUPER WORD OF THE WEEK

VALUE:

hold in respect and admiration

1st GRADE LA

PIG LATIN:

We started this week by finishing up encoding an English sentence into Pig Latin and practice reading it. Next, we almost completed encoding a short song. This took a little longer then planned because we did it as a class at the board. I wanted to make sure everyone translated it correctly into Pig Latin. 

This is because..... we will be singing the song in Pig Latin next week!!!!  Also, we will only be writing one more time in Pig Latin, I wanted to be sure EVERYONE was understanding it. We've had a couple of Rock Stars that knew Pig Latin from the beginning. We had some more Rock Stars shine when they explained how we would decide if a Y word in our song was used as a vowel or consonant. They remembered our trick, vowels sounds can be 'sung' and consonants sounds are 'trapped'.

2nd GRADE LA

WE MADE SOME CONNECTIONS:

This week there was NO HOMEWORK! 

We spent Monday reviewing our chapters. If you've noticed, your child comes home with a packet in their book. The packet is labeled  #0 and is NEVER homework, but simply used for tracking details in the book. Each table told us about a chapter from our homework. If that chapter had one of the items we track, they got to put a post-it on our wall. These post-its are quite a big deal for them AND I LOVE IT!! I love to see the excitement they have about the connections they are making!! 

Tuesday we worked on a vocabulary web for the first 10 minuets of class. We then used "table talk" to share our chapter 12 Reading Analyzer homework. I wanted the student so see what kind of connections their classmates were making to the reading. I wanted them to discuss what they each thought the main idea of chapter 12 was. When we gathered as a class to share what ideas the tables had in common or disagreed about, it opened up amazing communication in the class about the main idea and the connections they are seeing. It was great to watch the students feed off of each other's statements and how they are understanding Edward's change during his journey.

3rd GRADE LA

BEATRIX POTTER:

Last week we read a short biography on Beatrix Potter. This week we read her short story The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and filled out a Reading Analyzer. I went over the expectations of the Reading Analyzer (RA) because we will be using them for future readings. 

The RA, if done correctly and not rushed, is a great tool used to help grab a deeper meaning of what is being read. In third grade we are focusing on interactions. With our RA, we will be digging deeper to help see interactions in our readings as well. 

I will give the RAs back next week with remarks on how to dig a little deeper and use more detail from the text to cite evidence to support their ideas. They will use these comments as a guide when filling out their next RA.

4th GRADE LA

CAMPING, SMALL CLASS, AND PHOTOS:

This week we had a very small class because of Camp Goodfellow. With my two students, we worked on biography summery sheets and collecting photos for timelines. Next week I will have the other students from 4th grade and we will do the same. Once Thanksgiving break is over we will go to the computer lab and print pictures. If your child is behind I will send you an email and let you know what needs to be done at home. There has been plenty of class time to stay together. If anyone has fallen behind, it is because they have not been prepared for class with their biography materials. 

~Due to me being out of the classroom Thursday, we only had math one day.~

1st GRADE MA

INTRODUCTION AND RULES:

Wednesday I introduced the students to Grupo. The students were able to see the Grupo playing cards and identify the different attributes in the cards. We were looking at the number of sides and vertices of the shapes, shape names, number of shapes inside the larger shape and the kind of inside shapes that made up the outside shape. I demonstrated how the 'dealer' will lay down a 3X3 grid of cards. Each student pair will need to find two cards that have 4 of the 5 attributes matching. If the dealer approves the match, then the team get to keep the cards. The team with the most matches win. 

2nd GRADE MA

TRANSFORMATION TRIP:

This week we used transformation to move a triangle over across a worksheet. This worksheet required the students to decide if the triangle needed to  slide (translation), flip (reflection) or turn (rotation) to get in next position. The students were given a lose triangle to visualize and perform the transformation. The class graded each others worksheets and will be returned after Thanksgiving. 

3rd GRADE MA

GAME CARDS:

If students did not finish their Think Deeply from last week, they were to finish it Wednesday. Once students completed their Think Deeply they moved onto their game cards. The game cards are Think Deeply type questions or problems the student must create. Once they create a card they are then required to solve it. We will be using these cards later in the year. Like a Think Deeply, the game cards also show me if a student understands AND can demonstrate the lesson we have just learned. 

4th GRADE MA

THINK BEYOND:

With only having one math class this week and no math class next week, plans had to be switched up a bit. We worked on 2 Think Beyond cards Wednesday. Our Think Beyond cards are similar to a Think Deeply in the questions they ask. However, Think Beyond cards only have the students find the numerical answer, while in a Think Deeply, students need to find the numerical answer along with explaining how the answer was found using math vocabulary and other strategies leaned throughout the lesson.  One of the Think Beyond cards was found to be very difficult. Needless to say, they will see this again in our post Thanksgiving review.