March 12 - March 16

Stephen Hawking (quote)

January 8, 1942 - March 14, 2018

BAILLY'S WORD OF THE DAY

Eager: enthusiastic and anxious to begin

1st GRADE LA

A NEW LESSON: We started a new lesson this week. As usual, our new lesson always starts with a message to decipher. By deciphering these messages the students must use clues from the title and other connections to find the answer. These clues always lead us into our next lesson, Connecting Words and Numbers - Text Talk. On Tuesday I introduced the students to the book Wumbers. This book connects number sounds into words. An easy example is L8 meaning 'late'. I asked the students if they ever tried to read licence plates and figure out what word or phrase the letters and numbers made. They didn't know what I was talking about...WHAT????.... I love trying figure them out. This lesson will help the students develop and apply phonological awareness, word recognition, spelling and vocabulary skills. 

2nd GRADE LA

THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX: We have started The Tale of Despereaux. It is written by Kate DiCamillo, the same author of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. We will be tracking the text to text connections we see between the two books along with text to self and text to world. The homework is the same format as it was with Edward Tulane, reading a few chapters (no worries, they are short chapters) and completing a Reading Analyzer.

HOMEWORK: Read chapters 10-13. Reading analyzer on chapter 12.

3rd GRADE LA

~We only met on Monday because of IREAD testing Tuesday~

T-CHART COMPARISONS: Monday we worked in two groups comparing our T-charts of the books, Me...Jane and the The Watcher. By comparing our charts and adding details discussed between classmates, students will have more information to help write their persuasive paragraphs next week. 

4th GRADE LA

PRESENTATIONS: We had 5 of our 7 students present their Biography projects. The students have worked hard and have done an amazing job so far!! We are noticing similarities within all of our Agents of Change and identifying that each agent had great determination and a an influence that guided them. I am impressed that the students have seen that not all reasons or influences were positive but the change they created was.  I had the students record each others presentations and will email these to you. 

1st GRADE MA

TWO LOOP GAME: This week we continued to work on categorizing the attributes of our shapes using Venn Diagrams. We then started a worksheet where the students were given the shapes located in the Venn Diagram and the needed to fill in the correct attribute. We will continue this again next week as some of the students are still struggling how to decide identify the missing attribute name. 

2nd GRADE MA

THINK DEEPLY AND REVIEW: On Wednesday we finished our Think Deeply over Lesson 2 Floor Design. This lesson required the students to use 3 Dimensional and 2 Dimensional shapes to create a playground floor design. Thursday we combined foam 3 Dimensional shapes to create different prisms, this was to review for our chapter check up we will be taking next week. I think these guys are more than prepared for it!!

3rd GRADE MA

700's CHART: Find the missing number in the ink spilled 700's chart. The student had to fill in missing squares in a 700's chart. To complete the puzzle, the students were given one number and had to utilize their knowledge of the ones, tens, and hundreds place value and the patterns the hundreds chart gives to answer the questions. 

4th GRADE MA

WHAT MAKES A YARD?: This week the students were given a list of fabric remnants less than a yard; they were then asked to put 2 pieces together to create 1 complete yard. Many found this to be easy, which it should for them at this point. Our next worksheet asked the students to create a complete yard by combining 3 or more remnants. We will continue to do the next week because the different denominators are giving some of the students trouble. There is a pattern I will have one of the other students point out on Wednesday, this will help those who are struggling see what the other options are.

HINT: If you have 4, 1/8th remnants, how is this similar to your 2, 1/4 remnants and your 1/2 remnant.     

January 22nd - February 2nd

BAILLY'S SUPER WORD OF THE WEEK

STAY HEALTHY!!! I miss you!!

This flu hasn't been very nice to my classes. I hope everyone who is sick gets plenty of rest, hydration, and lots of vitamins!!

1st GRADE LA
Letters truly are *MAGIC*

Word ladders: Last week the class was introduced to word ladders. A word ladder is when you take a word and transform it into another word in steps. Each step of a word ladder can only have one letter change at a time. This was a fun and challenging way to have the students work on word recognition, spelling and phonological awareness.

Anagrams: Last week's homework introduced students to phonological awareness by asking them to rearrange the letters S,O,T,P into a word. We then defined the word anagram and practiced the concept with the words DAD (add), FLOW (wolf), and BREAK (baker). The last one was a little tricky for us. This lead us into our next book, The Great Show-and-Tell Disaster. 

2nd GRADE LA

The Finish: Last week we went over our beginning of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane predictions and our end of the book predictions. We talked about what events changed our minds. I then had the student journal what some of their 'favorites' were in the book. I wanted the students to give an example AND explanation. In second and third grade, I stress the importance of complete sentences and taking into account that many times our audience is unaware of our writing prompt. Therefore, it is imperative for writings to clearly tell and answer our prompt.This week we participated in a Socratic Seminar. This is when the class was divided into two groups, an outer circle and an inner circle. Monday the inner circle were asked a list of questions and needed to discuss the answer to each other, not me or the rest of the class. While the inner group was discussing, the outer group needed to write 2 stars, a wish and an interesting idea. The 2 stars were good discussion points, the wish was something they wished the inner group would have brought up, and the interesting idea was an idea the inner group brought up that the listener in the outer group never thought of. 

3rd GRADE LA

Jane Goodall: This year we are focusing on the concept of interactions. We have noticed that interactions shape who we are. We are also seeing how interactions can identify character traits. Last week we were introduced to Jane Goodall. We watched an short clip about Jane and her early work observing and interacting with chimpanzees. This week we read the beginning of her autobiography. We discussed her first animal observation and the character traits we noticed in her and her mother because of this event. We then went around the room reading different interaction exerts from her autobiography. We will talk about these interactions next week.

4th GRADE LA

Slides: Last week and this week we have been starting and finishing our slide show presentations. We are all a little off on timing because of students getting hit with this flu bug. While I wanted to be done with the slides and monologues this week, we will need to push it back a week.

1st GRADE MA

Angles and Attributes: Last week we learned about the 3 different kinds of angles: acute, obtuse, and right. The students were given protractors made of bendy straws and with a partner had to find a specific kind of angle. Once they found the correct angle, they had to show me and then were able to look for more. They had to do this for all three types, and were fantastic at it! We then did a "Angle Sort" work sheet. Students were given different shapes and had to color coordinate the different angles they saw. Right angles had to be green, obtuse angles blue and red angles needed to be red. The worksheet helped the students take the hands on learning from the protractors/angle search to finding and labeling angles on paper.  

This week we were introduced to the term attribute. We defined attribute as a describing word, a characteristic of something. The students discovered that angles are an attribute of the shape.
Our discussion of attributes lead to our One-Loop Game. In this game, I place a group of students inside a circle and a group outside. The remaining students sitting in their seats needed to identify the 'secret attribute' all their peers had in common inside the circle. The answer, they all had on blue shirts. The One-Loop Game evolved into playing it with 4 shapes, with 3 different shades, and 2 different sizes.  

2nd GRADE MA

3-Denominational: Last week we had a blast dipping our 3-D shapes we created from straws and pipe cleaner into bubble solutions. The purpose of the was to see what 2-D shapes created the faces of 3-D shapes. We then had to write a Think Deeply explaining what we saw in our cube. Along with a square we saw a HYPER-CUBE!!! Our Think Deeply had us explain what the difference was between a square and a cube. As a group we distinguished the difference between faces, vertices, sides and edges we saw in the two shapes. 

This week we took 3-D shapes to the next level using Tangram blocks. We used our blocks to count the edges, faces, and vertices in triangular prisms, rectangular prisms, a cube and a parallel-piped. We listed these in a chart which enabled us to see similarities. We will continues looking at these patterns next week. 

3rd GRADE MA

Patterns in the 100's: The past couple of weeks we have been working on multiplies and the hundreds chart. The students had multiple hundred charts and needed to find and color different multiples in each chart. For example, for the first chart the student needed to color all the multiples of 2, red. Along with coloring in specific multiples they also needed to list different pattern they noticed. Once this was done for multiples 2-9 we made a list of all the pattern we noticed. Thursday the class was divided into partners answering questions about the different patterns seen. Exploring these patterns helps them develop a deeper understanding of the number system. 

4th GRADE MA

Equivalent Fractions: The past couple of weeks we have been working on equivalent fractions. Last week the students were given a sheet of paper and were told to find the value of the following sections 5/12, 1/4, and 1/3. While finding 1/3 and 1/4 can be found easily with simple folds, the students then realized they had to use the common denominator in order to find 5/12. Once this exercise was completed we went ahead and worked on a workbook page. On this worksheet the students were asked to fold and label a separate sheet of paper according to fractional portion of 'stories' located on the font page of a 'newspaper'. 

January 8th - January 18th

Bailly Super Word of the week:

IMPATIENCE:

unable to wait or demanding results immediately

1st Grade LA

The Disappearing Alphabet: Last week we read The Disappearing Alphabet. The book was placed on the overhead to allow the students to clearly see what happens when a letter is removed from a word. This book gave us silly examples such as, if we lose the letter "P", a banana peel would turn into a banana ell. We then began our first Reading Analyzer. We use Reading Analyzers to help us think more deeply about sorties and poems we read. They help students take a deeper look at feelings they had during the reading, what kind of image or description went through their mind, what they thought the main idea the author was trying to get across and what were some  key words in the story.  Students will use this in upcoming grades as well.  

2nd Grade LA

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane: WE FINISHED OUR BOOK!!! On Tuesday we were able to finish the last chapters of our book! If your child hasn't told you about the ending, you should ask them. The look of shock, surprise, and disbelief on their faces was amazing to watch. To hear them say how much they "loved the book", they "want to keep the book", and they "want to get the book" lets me know I did my job. They found the connections! The story is littered with connection between different characters, feelings, and lessons. We will continue using Edward Tulane for a the next novel study.

I have already chosen the title for our next novel study. I haven't said anything to the students about it because I still want all of their attention on the last of Edward Tulane. 

3rd Grade LA

The Flowers: The past two weeks we have looked at 'interactions in poetry'. We read the poem, The Flowers by Robert Louis Stevenson. This poem celebrates the interactions with nature and a child's imagination. After we read the poem aloud, we began to fill out a Reading Analyzer together.  Together we discussed key words through out the poem and what made them key words. Alone the students needed to finish the rest of the reading analyzer. I wanted to see how each student understood the poem by digging deeper into their feelings while it was read, their understanding of what part was important and what the main idea and key points were. The Reading Analyzer also had the students tell me what interactions they noticed within the reading. 

Leading into the NEXT lesson, the students needed to fill out a vocabulary web on the word "naturalist". A vocabulary web, like a Reading Analyzer, helps us look deeper in to the meaning of the word. 

HOMEWORK: At the end of each lesson students have been assigned a homework assignment. The students are given 6 days to complete this writing and drawing. Each assignment has consisted of a journal entry replying to a writing prompt and a drawing associated with our lesson. PLEASE make sure you are asking to see these journal entries before they are being turned in. Many are coming in incomplete.

4th Grade LA

Timelines: Class time for timelines is OVER. If your child has not completed their timelines they were sent home over the weekend to be finished. The ones that are done look GREAT!!! For the next two weeks students will be working on our slideshow and monologue. The slideshow is being done on Google Slides and can be accessed through any computer with internet. When our presentation dates get closer, I would recommend having your child practice their monologue at home in front of someone.