WELCOME to the 2018-2019 School year!
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Welcome to the Bailly's High Ability Program!
As you may know Bailly has a space theme this year and I can not wait to incorporate this into our school year.
OUR NORM
I will see my Reading/Language Arts (LA) students on Mondays & Tuesdays and Math (MA) students on Wednesdays and Thursdays. EXCEPT 3RD GRADE, due to a schedule conflict their math and language arts days will be flipped. On Fridays I will be at Liberty meeting and planning with the other elementary school High Ability instructors and teacher.
LEADER IN ME
I am very fortunate to have began working at Bailly the same time Leader In Me (LIM) was introduced. I try to incorporate the 7 habits as much as I can in the classroom to help reinforce the vocabulary and the commonality of the habit principles across the different levels of our lives. Our leadership paradigm of SEE, DO, GET will also be a concept I will be utilizing during the school year to encourage a positive growth mindset.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
I am from Ohio and a 100% Buckeye!! I received my bachelors degree from THE Ohio State University and am currently working on my masters degree at Indiana University Northwest. I love learning and firmly believe "you can learn everyday if you pay attention". This will be my third year teaching High Ability (HA) at Bailly and my past students will tell you I am also a firm believer in learning from our mistakes; this is be a lesson I constantly refer to in the classroom.
I am an avid runner and very involved in our local running community. I ran my 2nd 50 miler earlier this month while also currently training for my first 100K in October.
I have lived in the area for 11 years and absolutely love it here. Beside the amazing running community and running trials, the beach has stolen my heart as well. The dunes is my happy place, most loved during the off season when few people are around and I can simply listen to the waves collapse upon the shore.
Beyond education, running, and the beach, my life's number 1 are my 3 children. All of my children are part of the Duneland School Corporation ranging from elementary school to high school and between gymnastics, choir, track and cross country they keep me quite busy.
2nd GRADE LA
CONNECTIONS: In second grade, like first grade, our theme for the year will be the Concept of Connections. Connections have many applications in the real world; they allow us think outside the box and see how new ideas emerge from interdisciplinary thinking.
We will focus more specifically on the 'Connection of the Heart'. In all of our lessons we will be looking for how the generalizations of connections are incorporated with our reading and writings. This will teach the students to look at literature on a deeper level and with a different lens.
This week we started our lesson over the poem ELDORADO. We will continue this lesson next week introducing READING ANALYZERS (this tool will be used many time throughout the year) and utilizing a Venn Diagram to compare/contrast a picture of a knight with the poem.
3rd GRADE LA
INTERACTIONS: Third grade is all about the Concept of INTERACTIONS. We define interactions as 'two or more living beings or objects that communicate or react to one another with a reciprocal effect on both participants'. We will investigate this concept and the generalizations through different classical readings centered around human and animal interactions. We will also explore how interactions shape us and allow us to tell our stories.
Our lesson this week focused on INTERPRETING INTERACTIONS. This lesson has the students utilize the books "How to Speak Dog" and "How to Speak Cat" to connect specific animal behaviors to specific animal interactions. Not having the time to read the entire book, we focused on how to locate needed information efficiently in nonfiction texts. This lesson will also allow us to grasp the understanding of making sure our answers are supported by evidence from the text and not our opinions or assumptions.
We will continue this lesson next week while also discussing PERSPECTIVE when deciding if an interaction is positive or negative.
4th GRADE LA
SYSTEMS: We will be studying the Concept of Systems and its generalizations in forth grade. Systems will be identified as a purposeful interaction working towards a goal.
After familiarizing ourselves with the concept of systems last week we moved onto understanding that organization is a systems of procedures. We read the book "Thundercake" and begin to discuss how the book displays the concept of procedures within it. Ww will continue this lesson next week.
Last week all of the Math classes took their assessment tests. This is simply to see show me what the students may or may not already know about the curriculum we will be covering during the year. This test will also be given at the end of the year.
2nd GRADE MA
MEASUREMENT: In second grade math we are focusing on measurement. Last week we began our chapter on Length. The students were introduced to inch and half inch measurements along with the inverse relationship between the larger the units used to measure, the fewer the number of units needed and vice versa. We will continue this lesson next week while also learning how to measure to the nearest inch and half-inch and building our math vocabulary.
3rd GRADE MA
GEOMETRY AND MEASUREMENT: The first chapter in our math unit is over Linear Measurement. Lesson one of this chapter introduces benchmarks, estimation, and the difference between our estimate and our actual measurement. Tuesday we went over the centimeters and millimeters on our rulers and the importance of accurate measurements. This lesson will continue on Monday as well.
4th GRADE MA
FRACTIONS: FRACTIONS .... FRACTIONS .... FRACTIONS ... I LOVE FRACTIONS! We will be working with fractions all year. Our first chapter is 'Making Sense of Fractions'. I make sure we have a firm foundation on our knowledge of fractions so the students can enjoy this curriculum as much as I do!! This week, along with next week, we will be making fractions strips in order to understand the concept of equivalence, estimating, comparing and ordering fractions. Our math vocabulary will be increasing dramatically this year as well!!
WE'RE GOING TO HAVE AN OUT OF THIS WORLD YEAR!
