A couple of weeks ago we wrapped up our Global Read Aloud for 2014. The students loved The Fourteenth Goldfish! It was an excellent novel and we were able to enjoy connecting with other students through our blogs and Edmodo. After meeting a class located in Windsor and talking about the book with them, we had the chance to Skype them! We had a few technical difficulties, but were able to enjoy a 20 minute conversation with them about the book and the places we live! We have plans to read another novel with them after the first of the year!
Earlier this school year we were lucky to receive another donation from Donors Chose and the generous donors of the Caring Classroom Community. The Gates Foundation also contributed to fund half of our donation request! I was lucky to be able to request many new books for our classroom. Many of them were picture books to be used to grow our reading and writing skills! We also received hardback copies of the book The 14th Goldfish to participate in the Global Read Aloud.
Thank you Thank you Thank You! We are excited to be participating in the #GRA2014 (Global Read Aloud) for the second year. This year we will be reading The 14th Goldfish. We are on chapter 4 and are already hooked! We look forward to blogging about the book and connecting with classes all over the world. We already have another resource room looking to connect with us. If you would like to read our blog check out: http://kidblog.org/aslaksonsallstars/ .
We are excited here for the Holiday season! What an amazing time of the year to think about others and celebrate traditions. We have decked the classroom out as we have collaborated and created a tree to bring cheer to the hallway. We will continue to add to our tree as we complete projects in the next few weeks. We have begun thinking about Holiday traditions and look forward to creating a class tradition collection. We will also be looking at doing a Random Acts of Kindness Drive as we talk about ways we can help others.
One project my reading groups are looking forward to is putting themselves into snow globes. What would your world look like and be like if you were inside a snow globe? I have a feeling there will be a few Minecraft worlds complete with snow! Be sure to take time to enjoy the season and spend time with family! If you are looking for gifts to buy your child I highly suggest books! If you need any ideas please ask! Our classroom has a wishlist as well: Classroom Wish List There is so much to be thankful for in Room 103! I am thankful each and every day for the opprotunity to work with the awesome kids that come through my door. I have such a hard working group of students. It always amazes me that despite the challenges that face many of my students they are setting high goals for themselves and making great strides in meeting the goals! I am thankful also for the parents I work with! Thank you for trusting me each day to do what is best for your child and working as a team! This past month we have been working on wrapping up our Global Read Aloud. Fifth grade is complete and sixth grade is working to finish Out of My Mind. Last week my sixth grade students published a PSA. We are gearing up to be able to share the impact of the R word in March as a part of the national day of awareness. I was very impressed with how well my students worked together to create a stop motion video on how hurtful the R-Word is. The students created the stop motion and then imported their clips into iMovie to add sound effects and spoken text.
In sixth grade math we continue to work on multiplication. In fifth grade reading we are reading 13-Story Treehouse. The kids are enjoying this hilarious story! This week we also worked on word parts, word origin, and writing strong sentences. In sixth grade reading we have continued reading OOMM. What a fantastic book! We have spent time reflecting and responding to the book via our blog and on Edmodo with other classrooms we are collaborating with. We look forward to connecting with other classrooms on the books as the year goes along. It has been powerful to connect beyond our walls. Hex 1 is now complete. It is hard to believe that we are 1/5 of the way through our school year together. It has been a fun and learning filled seven weeks! On Friday students began new specials. Other classes will remain the same. Next week is student led conferences. I plan to attend all conferences as long as there is not a conflict between students. If you would like to meet with me for an additional conference please let me know and I can schedule that. I will be handing out first hex progress reports at that time. This week we have a special week planned! We are going to have a WONDER week! This week we will spend time wondering, exploring wonders, and creating our own wonders! We will also continue reading our Global Read Aloud novels. The group reading Out of My Mind had the chance to Skype last week about their connections and thoughts. We hope to have the Marty McGuire group Skype soon! My fifth grader reading group last week created a book trailer for the book Jedi Academy. We are looking forward to finishing up Marty McGuire so we can begin our next novel. Mrs. A. has a perfect one picked out! Here is the book trailer the 5th graders created: It has been an amazing last couple of weeks since my last up date. We celebrated Homecoming and spent the day with our parents at Freaky Friday! It was fun to have all of you here for our day or at least a part of it.
Star Wars Reads Day was a great success! It is fun to see students getting excited about reading. We are very appreciative of all of the sponsors who sent handouts for my students. We are awaiting one more special surprise that should be here in the near future! We are very involved in the Global Read Aloud right now. Both of my reading classes are blogging and connecting with other classrooms. It is fun to see who is commenting on our blogs daily. Sixth grade is also connecting with other classrooms via Edmodo. Along with connecting we are increasing our reading and writing skills. Both books have a great message as well! It is a short week next week, so we will not have spelling words or a fluency passage. Enjoy Next week we have lots of reading activity going on! Students in my reading class will kick off Global Read Aloud 2013. This is an event in which students all over the world will be connecting while reading the same novel. Students in my class will be blogging and Skyping with students in other classes. We are very excited! There is more information about the novels we are reading under the 5th and 6th grade headings above. Fifth grade will be reading Marty McGuire and sixth grade will be reading Out of My Mind.
On Friday we will celebrate Star Wars Reads Day a day early! All over the country on October 5th book stores and libraries will be celebrating the books inspired by Star Wars. We will be doing reading activities in my classroom and reading from the graphic novel Jedi Academy. Hello Friends,
Last week we finished our #DotDay celebration! You can read more about our week from the menu above. This week we will be preparing to kick off the Global Read Aloud #GRA2013. We will be reading novels alongside other classrooms all over the world and connecting with them. The 5th graders will be reading Marty McGuire and the 6th graders will be reading Out of My Mind. We are hoping to blog and Skype with other classrooms to share what we are learning and expand our thinking. Next week is Homecoming and Freaky Friday! We are excited to be celebrating Star Wars Reads Day alongside Freaky Friday! Mrs. A. has been receiving all sorts of awesome things in the mail to help with our celebration! Wow have we been busy! Classes are in full swing and we have worked on getting all of our routines down. This week we have had fun celebrating #DotDay. We have connected with classes all over the United States to share things we are doing for #DotDay and hear from them about their week! It has been fun getting to know each other more in our classroom as we share how we will make our mark this week! Feel free to check out more information about #DotDay from the menu above. We have added 4 states to our 50 State Quest so far! Not too bad for two weeks into the school year! We are busy planning now for Freaky Friday and hope I that you get the chance to spend at least part of your day following your student in school! It is a fun and exciting day! I promise not to make the spelling words too tough that week :-), but be prepared for your test.
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