Happy New Year to all of you! I hope your holiday vacation time was a memorable one for your family. My family created some wonderful memories together by going to the Playa del Carmen area of Mexico, and the time we spent having fun with our daughters was precious. I was also very happy to get back together with my "4H" kids back at school on January 3rd! I missed them! We filled our first week back with lots of activity, that's for sure!
They are enjoying their 'Fantasy Island' map project, and final drafts are being perfected. We should be able to mount them on the hallway wall next week! It was actually suggested by some of the students that we should write a story about the communities they've created! Well, I jumped right onto that idea! What a great way to extend this map skills activity into a new writing experience! We are also transitioning to the study of how Wisconsin's landforms have been influenced by glaciers, and that leads us to comparing and contrasting the different regions of our state. Somewhere with all this investigation going on, we will also begin our new science unit centering on the planets, sun, moon, and stars. Hmm, maybe we need to add an extra hour to our school day!
It's been a week since we've begun practicing the current spelling list, and we are scheduled to take that test on Tuesday of next week. Many of our students could use some extra practice and quizzing at home to be better prepared for this. I have instructed them to keep the printed list of words in their Take Home Folder, so that it is always with them at home and at school. In math, we began Unit 5 upon returning from the Break, and so far students seem to be grasping the new concepts of extending large numbers in order to add and multiply them. This unit is where it will hit hard if students are still shaky on their basic multiplication facts. I have noticed some students have been putting in some extra effort to practice their basic facts, and it shows! Others need to kick into some extra practice as well, and it will make a very big difference with all their math work. If families could manage to set up a regular 10 to 15 minute time most evenings to use flashcards or the 100-Facts sheets that were sent home (you can ask for more from class if you need them), it would be SO helpful. This is the year to nail all basic facts skills down for quick recall.
The West Middleton Geography Bee will be held next Friday, January 13, at 8:40 am in the multipurpose room. Representatives from each of the upper grade rooms have been announced, and our representative is David Pertzborn-Jensen! Congratulations to him, and we will all be there to support him and cheer him on. Another academic contest is coming along, and that is one involving the writing of Haiku poetry. We have begun our preliminary introduction to this Japanese form of poetry, which involves descriptions of topics in nature! These are great poems with which to begin a study of poetry and writing in general, because skill with description is important, and these poems are only 3 lines long, with each line allowed only 5 syllables, then 7 syllables, and then 5 syllables again. So you may await some beautifully descriptive writing coming home during this month.
You should have found a letter from Mr. Rykal in Take Home Folders this past week describing the MAP Assessments (Measures of Academic Progress), which all district students in grades 2 through 5 will be participating in the next two weeks. We will be taking these assessments in the areas of Reading and Mathematics, with each test taking a maximum of one hour. Our class will go to the computer lab for each of these multiple choice tests, and each student chooses the correct answers by a click of the mouse. What makes these assessments unique and especially helpful is that they are adaptive - meaning that once students start answering, the computer adapts each subsequent question in response to how accurately the students answers the previous question. If they respond correctly, difficulty of questions eases upward. If they respond incorrectly, difficulty will ease down. Eventually a skill level is reached which is considered 'instructional' meaning they are at a level where they are likely to get about half the questions at this difficulty correct. As teachers, we are able to immediately receive a report that lists actual skills in reading and math which identifies what our students are secure with, which skills are currently appropriate to be teaching them, and which skills would be next to come. We can better target instruction for each child - since the test is customized (we have described it to the kids this way: "The computer builds the test just for you."), we can then design our instruction for the particular needs of each student. We really like how the results are immediate, so we can start with this information right away. The information is saved, so that when we do this again late in April/early May, we can track their growth, and on through the next years. If you have any further questions about MAP, just let me or Mr. Rykal know. The plan is to begin this winter, and by next school year, this assessment will take place three times per school year, able to track skill growth and progress over the years through middle school.
This past Friday, our classroom enjoyed a PIZZA lunch in our room, compliments of the WM PTO! We had earned this treat by winning the Box Tops contest, and I must say - pepperoni pizza tastes a lot better than soggy cream pie running down my face! :) We hear that another contest will take place later this year, so our students are excited to keep collecting. Keep your eyes open for Box Tops, and your scissors handy! (We have begun our new 'stash' in my desk drawer!)
A housekeeping note: Would you be so kind as to send in more Kleenex boxes and possibly, more Chlorox Wipes? We have run out of the supply with which we started our school year. Thank you for your donations to keeping our classroom as healthy as we can make it! Until next week - enjoy clear, dry roads like I am (though I know some kids with new snowboards and sleds aren't so happy!) Melanie Hannam
No comments:
Post a Comment