The Bailly Beacon

Kindergarten LA & Kindergarten MA

Welcome to High Ability Kindergarten!!!!!

Getting to know you: Our first week together was a get to know you time. The first day of class I showed the students a “Welcome to High Ability” slide show. This was to introduce the students to me, the class and our classroom rules and procedures. The students also made name tags on the first day. If they were in my language arts class, they included something they loved on their name tags; my math students included their favorite number. 
The second day we played a 'get to know your class' game. We stood in a circle; I started the game by telling everyone my name and my favorite color. I then tossed the ball to a student and asked what their name and favorite color was. This continued until everyone had a turn. We also took a turn saying our favorite animal. We had a great first week!! I can’t wait to start getting into our lessons!

1^st Grade LA

Share with us: Coming back from spring break, these guys were EXCITED to share everything they did. Monday the students wrote two fun activities they did over spring break. If they had time, they also included a picture. 

Tuesday, they shared their writings with the class. I wanted them to concentrate on voice volume, eye contact, and the emotion of what they were reading. They were of course great presenters AND listeners. The writings were sent home with everyone except one class. On Tuesday we had a special guest at our school and one class was not able to make HA that day. I will return their writings next week.

1^st Grade MA

Think Deeply: What a time to have our Think Deeply, right after spring break..... Remember, a Think Deeply is a review of the lesson we've been studying. 

Together we reviewed what we were learning before break. These rock stars did a great job remembering how we were predicting, measuring, and comparing the area of different targets.  In our Think Deeply, the students had to use ‘transitivity’ to compare and measure the area for 3 shapes. I was so excited when most of them wanted to read their answer out load!!!! These first graders are AMAZING!

Second Grade CogAT Packets:

A pink packet will go home today.  It will include the CogAT screener results for every second grader.  Those who qualified to take the full, their results are also attached.  More information about the test and results can be found here.  Using your child's results, paired with Duneland's High Ability website, you can see how well your child did.   No worries if they did not do well on CogAT.  It shows their ability to make connections and is nothing taught in school.  At this time, we are not officially informing parents of those who qualified for HA.  We will save that for after we get their end of the year NWEA results.  Remember:  they need to only qualify through one path. (CogAT or NWEA)  Not both!  Please stress to your child to take their time and do their personal best on their next NWEA as these scores are used to qualify for HA.  Thanks!

2^nd Grade LA

Tale of Despereaux: HOME WORK: Read up to chapter 16, worksheet #5 question #3. The students now have a homework sheet that needs to be signed EVERY week. There are 6 days to complete the homework. A lot of students have the reading completed because they are using their time before class wisely!!! The students really like this book, better than Edward. We will be taking this book at a faster pace and writing more. I want the kids to keep their excitement about it!!! I am also hoping this excitement will encourage more creative writing….shhhhhhh… 

2^nd Grade MA

Square Inch Area: We started our math lesson reviewing what a square foot was. We had to make sure we know the difference between 12 inches and 12 square inches, a square foot. We needed to review because we are starting to work with square inches. Our “Build it Measure it” worksheet gave the students a dimensions. The students then needed to use our square inch tiles to find the different areas.

3^rd Grade LA

Writing and Fairy Tails: Monday I had the students write about their spring break. If they finished early I had them switch their writing with a partner. This was so the students could share with they did over spring break, but they also had to proof read their classmates writing. These will be returned on Monday. 

Tuesday I had the students work on a problem analysis worksheet over the fairy tale they read in class. They then started to work on a compare and contrast worksheet using their classroom fairy tale and their favorite fairy tale. We will continue to work on these next week.

3^rd Grade MA

Distributive Property: This week was a little crazy because of field trips. We practiced the distributive property of multiplication both days. We are partitioning arrays to help us visualize how a multiplication fact can be be broken apart into the sum of two other multiplication facts. I did not want to move ahead in our book unless I had the entire class.

4^th Grade LA

Mystery: Monday we did a short spring break activity to help calm the "back to school excitement" 😉. Tuesday we continued our mystery lesson. The students actively read a short mystery. When I have students “actively read”, I want them to highlight what they feel is important,  write notes on the side and circle words and/or ideas that they may not completely understand. 






After actively reading the mystery they needed to give me vocabulary examples from the text. It was a nice way to ease back into the swing of things.

4^th Grade MA

It’s All in What You See: We started a new lesson in math this week. We are continuing to explore spatial visualization and translating shapes from one quadrant to another. This week we also worked on reflecting polygons from one side of the Line of Reflection to the other. After a few practice rounds as a class, I had students create their own polygon and reflect it. Next, the students needed to switch with a partner and predict the other’s position and orientation of the reflection.  They got the hang of this in no time!!!