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

Wear Lions gear/blue/grey/silver!

Tomorrow morning we will take the Iready reading test! Please have your child get a good nights rest, eat a good breakfast, and arrive to school by 8:20 so they are ready to begin our day in a calm peaceful way!

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. 🙂

Have a great weekend! <3

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! 🙂

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 🙂

Have a great Monday!

I hope you all had a restful and great winter break!!

Reminder tomorrow is a HALF DAY and school gets out at 11:30 am!

What a busy week! We had so much fun with holiday projects this week it seemed to fly by!

Thank you all so much for spoiling me as well. You did not need to send in things but thank you again. <3

I hope you all have a restful winter break and great holiday!

We are going to do the spelling test tomorrow to just get it over with! They know these words and will do great. You can either turn in spelling choice board tomorrow or Friday. Either way is fine with me. 🙂

I have collected all book bags and will keep them until after winter break. Your child can read books from home and the library to get their 20 minutes of reading each night.

On Friday we will have an all school sing along! We unfortunately do not have enough room to invite parents to this so we will be live streaming some parts of it on our schools Instagram page! You must be a follower of @howemontessoriandsped to see us go live and watch the video! We will stream a couple parts throughout the hour sing along. Reminder that this is not a concert …. this is simply a fun sing along to end our week and get us excited for holiday break. Special thanks to Mrs. Reed for planning and preparing the students.

Remember to send your child in holiday pjs on Friday so we can all match at the sing along.

VERY IMPORTANT—- The first day back in January- Monday the 6th is a HALF DAY with 11:30 am dismissal! Please make note of this!

All FINISHED candy cane grams are due back tomorrow morning! 🙂 We start spirit week tomorrow…. Remember to wear holiday hats/socks!