WE MADE IT!!!!! Today is the 100th day of school!

Even though it kept getting pushed back, we have completed 100 days of school together. Thank you so much for allowing me these days to get to know and love your children. I am AMAZED at all of their growth and absolutely love coming to school everyday because of each and everyone of them. I can't believe how fast time flies, and now I am starting to feel the butterflies about leaving them early at the end of the year.

Today, midterm reports are coming home. Yes, there is only a few weeks before we write grades. Snow days and delays caused assessments to take a lot longer than planned. Sorry! 

I am going to run through our weekly schedule and what we have done during this time this week.

Monday- Another day off, again because of the extremely cold weather and wind. 

For reading, we started our morning off with the first part of our Unit reading test on Tuesday. Again the students were completely on their own for this. If they needed help with a word, I of course helped them. :) We completed the second half of the unit reading test on Wednesday. Thursday the students were given more information about our big project over the Rain Forest. To introduce our unit the class listened to a very creative and expressive (I used many different voices) reading of The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. Today, the kids looked at research projects, PowerPoints, and reports written by previous students. Afterwards they had a chance to chose their top three choices of a Rain Forest animal to research. 

In Daily 5 and read through a Reader's Theatre script of the book A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon. This is a story about being true to yourself. Camilla Cream loves lima beans, but she never eats them. Why? Because the other kids in her school don't like them. Camilla Cream is so very, very worried about what other people think of her that she's about to break out in stripes!We will complete multiple readings of not only our script, but also the story and look at many different components of the story. These will include fantasy versus reality, cause and effect, inference, external and internal character traits, sequence of events, retelling versus summary, as well as take an indepth look at some great vocabulary words found in this story. 

In Language Arts, we continued talking about plural nouns (more than one) and singular possessive nouns (has an 's, something belongs or is owned by something or someone). After daily language, the students were introduced to a large project, one of many starting this week, their ABC Rain Forest Book. Students will be researching things in the rainforest for each letter of the alphabet and compile all their notes into a book, complete with a dedication and copyright.

For RTI, the students are continuing to work on their multiplication facts. Each day they will take a one minute time test over whichever factor they are currently working on. They are trying to make their way through our multiplication table. They started with x1 and will work their way up to x11 or x12. Each day also includes a review of strategies and working on one of our factors. Please help at home with flashcards or using the multiplication monsters that were sent home. 

In Math, we are continuing to learn about fractions. We have learned and reviewed the numerator and denominator, parts of a fraction, parts of a whole, and placing fractions in order from largest to smallest. We have also started to look at finding fractions on a number line and building fractions to be equal to one whole. Today, we are relating 100's day to fractions and decimals. 

Social Studies has continued in our atlas. We have learned about the seven continents (North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica) and the five oceans (Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, Indian, and Southern). Wednesday, we took a look at how to read a map, a graph, and a map key using the natural resource oil. On Thursday, we looked at where in the world you would find the United States, then where within the United States you would find the state of Iowa. We will take a short break from our atlases next week to work on animal research for our reports. 

Of course today is the 100th day of school, although we do not celebrate like we used to at the elementary buildings, we still found time to enjoy 100 minutes of reading while enjoying 100 pieces of snack mix. :) 

  

Upcoming dates:

Wednesday, February 5th- 1:15 Dismissal

Thursday, February 13th- Valentine's Party

Friday, February 14th- No School

Saturday, February 15th- Happy Birthday Eden! 

Monday, February 17th- I will be gone due to various appointments all day long. 

Saturday, February 22nd- Happy Birthday Morgan! 

Tuesday, March 4th- I will be gone to Grant Wood AEA all day for a PBIS meeting

Tuesday, March 11th- 1:15 Dismissal, Conferences 1:30-5:30

Thursday, March 13th- Conferences 3:45-7:30

Friday, March 14th-Friday, March 21st- No School- Spring Break

Monday, March 24th- Happy birthday Allie! 

Have a great weekend! I am hoping Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on Saturday and it will be an early spring! 

 Mrs. Jodie Yuska