End of Week Updates!

I am so excited we have FINALLY finished all of our testing! Reading level scores are coming home in today’s folders and Iready will come home next week. We still have some sick students with makeups. So all grades will be sending them home next Friday.

Just a heads up lots of mistakes on the math iready with adding and subtracting from the tens column first which got wrong answers! We are practicing fluency facts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so that hopefully will be addressed the more we practice but I wanted you aware so you could watch at home. We always add and subtract starting in the ones place. Next week we will begin Eureka math module 4 and this is adding and subtracting through 1000. So we add in the hundreds column now too!

I forgot to add on my Valentines letter that all valentines are due by Wednesday, February 12th! This gives me time to sort and make sure everyone has something to pass out. Please label the bag with your child’s name. If anyone is able to donate aldi bags again I would be grateful… that is the easiest way for them to get all of their goodies home that day. We have 19 students.

For the all school field trip to the Henry Ford Museum not all students have to have a chaperone. We will do groups of 4. So I am looking for 4-5 parents. (* If you all want to come that is fine though to….). All paperwork for that field trip is due by February 21st but you can turn in sooner if you want.

Next week we continue with science, start social studies map unit, begin benchmark unit 6 on characters, and start eureka math module 4! Rest up this weekend… we will need lots of brain power next week! πŸ™‚

Have a great weekend!

Field Trip Announcement!

Hello Families!

We are excited to announce we are having a Buddy Classroom field trip. Montessori classrooms and lower elementary special education classrooms will be visiting The Henry Ford Museum on Friday, April 4th.

A few notes:

*All paperwork is coming home in your child’s folder today!

*All Kindergarten/1st graders will need an adult chaperone. (Montessori classrooms)

*Students will come to school then ride the bus to the museum. All chaperones will meet us at the museum. 

*No siblings allowed. 

*All paperwork and money is Due on Friday, February 21st. 

(firm deadline– we need to give numbers to them and get a check before spring break and that takes a few weeks).

End of Week Updates!

Super short week so these will be quick updates…

New books for book bags coming home on Monday. Just didn’t have time to get them pulled and get them out with the testing and juggling everything else this short week. I told them they can read library books or books at home until I get them new ones next week.

Next week we will be on Benchmark Unit 5 Week 3. We saved all of the spelling words and writing for that. So they get 2 weeks with these simple words! (brown, now, count, out, cow, owl, house, round, mouth, and town). I gave a new spelling choice board and told them to do 2 boxes they did not do last week and then do one repeat for a total of only 3 boxes due next Friday. You will see the date with Jan 31st πŸ™‚ If they did not bring the old choice board today I told them to bring it on Monday.

We did not get to Science this week with the short days and testing as well! Hoping next week we can get back to normal! Testing always adds in many more to dos….

Today we had an assembly… Super U. About being kind, following the rules, doing your work, and being a great friend. The kids enjoyed it and it was fun to spend our morning laughing and playing contest games with each other. Nice way to end a crazy cold week.

Have a great weekend! πŸ™‚

Rest of the Week Plan!

With three days off this week we are going to push Benchmark week 3 back to next week. We will not have time to cover what we need to along with finishing the iready math test. So they will get another week until we take the spelling test.

Please go to bed early tonight and have a good breakfast tomorrow morning before school! We will take the math iready first thing in the morning and finish up on Friday.

SCHOOL CLOSED Tues & Weds!

See the message below from the District office:

Greetings, 

Due to actual temperatures reaching single digits and below and windchill temperatures reaching -20 degrees, all Dearborn Public Schools will be closed on Tuesday, January 21 and Wednesday, January 22, 2025.

We look forward to seeing everyone back in school on Thursday morning.   

Here’s a link to our Cold Day closing- 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1edvXeqjD8qTCh0_F1BvH8qgyNWoTadrA/view?usp=sharing

Stay warm and be safe!

End of Week Updates!

Hello Parents! It was such a busy day I just had a chance to finally post!

We have had quite the week…. and got EVERYTHING DONE! It was quite impressive. We were able to finish our IReady reading and from what I have seen so far they did AMAZING! I am SO PROUD of them and how hard they have been working…. It truly is so cool to see their growth and how much they have learned this first half of the year. Scores will be coming home soon… I am still waiting for some makeups to be done and for us to do the math portion. I am continuing to do the phonics testing and will assess reading levels next week to turn in to the district by the end of the month. We will start Unit 5 Week 3 on Tuesday when we return from the long weekend to wrap up our technology talks and how inventions have helped improve our lives.

For Eureka math we are in Module 3 which is all about shapes! We built 2D shapes with spaghetti and moved on to 3D this week. We have worked on faces and vertices along with now talking about how we can use polygons to make larger polygons. This has branched into halves/thirds/fourths. We are going to continue working on this for the next few weeks because it will appear on the iReady math assessment!

In Science we started our new unit properties of matter. We will use our 5 senses to describe the properties of things. Great job to all of my friends who did their homework last night… they walked around and had their friends try to guess which beverage they were describing. If the friend got it right in three guesses they got a high five! Next week we will continue our science lessons.

We will plan on taking the Math iReady on Tuesday morning first thing.

Although ….next week we have some pretty cold weather happening! Make sure to be watching Monday night in case they call a snow/cold day for Tuesday. I have no idea and we get the same call as you. I play volleyball from 9-10 and will post before or after if I hear anything. If we do get the day off then we will push back iready.

I also have to call in Tuesday night for Jury Duty! (next week just sounds so chaotic already!). So I do have a sub lined up in case they make me report. The students were very interested today when they heard about it. If I do not have to report and I’m at school then we will do the math iReady or do make up iReady tests on Wednesday since we only have until Friday to finish all of the testing. I will post on the blog the night before so everyone knows when we will plan on taking the math iReady and if i will be in or not.

Reminder no school on Monday in observance of MLK day!

Have a great long weekend and stay warm!!! I told the kiddos I will be snuggling my puppy Mabel to get some extra warmth! <3

End of Week Updates!

Such a busy week and this post contains a LOT of information….. please let me know if you have any questions after it! We are officially half way through the school year which means we are switching gears to get prepared for third grade. Everyone says their is a big jump between first and second grade… well.. their is another big jump between second and third grade. So I am adding some things in to better prepare them.

Occasionally things that we do not finish in group or during the day will be sent home as homework and I have told the students I expect them to finish it and bring it back in completed. Some have done great this week and others have not done it and had excuses. Usually this task would take less than 10 minutes and can be independently done by them. We had conversations about third grade and the responsibility falling on them. We are also going to be putting these things in planners to help them remember. Most of it will be reading things but occasionally it could be finishing up math papers. On nights they do not have anything like this they should be reading a book from their book bag. Homework should be done nightly!

In the upper elementary grades they have behavior consequences with think sheets and the responsibility room. These things are used when not so great choices are made and the student needs to reflect on the choice made. We really have had no instances yet that would warrant it, but being the second semester it is being introduced. We talked about it as a class and what would earn them a think sheet or responsibility room visit. An action could include swearing in the classroom, throwing materials or toys on purpose, screaming at others or an adult in the school, and destroying school supplies or school property were the main ones we discussed. These have not happened nor do I imagine they would but we have talked about why we do not want them to happen also. We are using the month of January to have warnings if we see something but I wanted to make parents aware of this procedure change.

Report cards come home TODAY! Please sign the envelope and return on Monday.

(*** Just an added note about report cards- the standards I grade each marking period can be different so it is possible to go up or down grade wise in an area based on what I assessed. For example- Marking Period 1– “Numbers and Operations/Base 10” was graded on number lines and place value adding and subtracting where Marking Period 2 — was using the eureka math strategies we used like making a ten, compensation, and adding like units. Your child could have earned a 2 in marking period 1 but dropped to a 3 in marking period 2 because different standards were assessed. This goes for the ELA standards as well. I choose different standards during the marking periods based on what Benchmark is focusing on in those units.)

Our handwriting books have now arrived!!!! We are starting with printing review but move on to beginning cursive strokes in a few weeks! The students are VERY exciting to start learning… as am I!

Reminder to keep all snow gear here in lockers and make sure it is labeled! Although this week it did not get above feels like 20 we will start going outside for recess once it does! If they have everything in lockers it makes it WAY easier and then they don’t freeze!

Last, we have had A LOT of tardies the last few weeks (this week and all of December). I have almost 1/4 of the class coming in more then 15 minutes late DAILY! This is SO HARD! We have morning work and get going as soon as we can each morning. It is hard enough to fit everything in during the day but having so many come in late adds an added distraction. Please try your best to be on time. I understand it happens occasionally but we need to be consistently starting our day at 8:25 am each day to not lose any more instructional minutes.

Heads up– An all school field trip will be happening on Friday, April 4th. Please plan ahead to chaperone. More information and paperwork will be coming home the beginning of February.. we just wanted you to be able to save the date. πŸ™‚

Have a great weekend! <3

Quick Updates!

Hi All! I hope you had a great vacation! Just wanted to give you a few updates….

This week we begin all of our new units! For math we will write in our planners each day what lesson we did. It will say M3L1. That means Module 3 Lesson 1. If you would like to do the apply lesson to match you may. This will help us stay on the same page.

For reading we have 5 books in bags weekly and I asked the students to read 1 book each night. I have moved on to the book room books and have access to new ones so hopefully I have enough of a selection to get us through to Spring break. They will continue to do spelling words and spelling choice boards each week through Unit 10 of benchmark.

In Science we begin our new unit next week- properties of materials which includes an experiment at the end! πŸ™‚

For Social Studies we will be learning about Maps!

Over the next three weeks we will need to complete the IReady reading and math test and the formal DRA reading level assessment. These will be scheduled and spaced out and you will know ahead of time before we take them. I will have the students write about it in their planner the day before.

It was so nice to gets all the hugs and see so many smiles this morning… They were excited to come back to school and I promised them we will slowly get back in to worktimes πŸ™‚

Have a great Monday!