Dec. 20th

We had a wonderful week full of Christmas Activities.  The students were wonderful. We played math games, read Christmas stories, sang songs and watched a Christmas movie.  I hope everyone has a safe and fun Holiday. Merry Christmas.
Mrs. Kitchen

Dec. 13th

The students have been doing some wonderful work this week. Their handwriting for morning work has been impressive.  They are catching on to regrouping and they were able to complete more of their summaries.  The students are excited to be doing service to earn money for our class store which will be this Tuesday.  We will be having a Christmas Activity most of the day on Friday.  Mostly Caroling, Christmas Stories, Math Games, and sharing about the traditions the students researched from Europe. 

Math Tasks are due FRIDAY.

READING CHARTS were due two weeks ago, but I will still accept them.

We have had a great time with indoor recess.  We have colored, played games, and built many objects with blocks.

Dec. 6th

We had a great week filled with making ornaments for our Christmas Garland as we studied traditions from Europe.  We also wrote a persuasive letter to Santa explaining why we deserve a certain toy.  We started regrouping this week in math.  We practice different strategies to regroup.

Nov 23

I hope everyone has a fun and safe THANKSGIVING!

Nov 15th

Book Order is due Friday Nov. 22.

*Remember your math task is due on Friday.  We are working on preserving.

Math Task Hint: In class we have been grouping numbers by 2’s 5’s and 10’s.  If the children can make groups of 10’s it will be easier to solve the problem.

*Our goal for November is for everyone to have passed off up to +2 and -2 on drills. (We are doing +9, -9 out of order.)

*The whole class has finished their first round of FRY PHRASES.  We have started over again. They now have to pass each list of 5 times in either 30 or 45 seconds.

*We finished our “Thanksgiving” writing this week and made a cornucopia.  We talked about a collage and layering things on top of each other as we made our cornucopia.  We have noticed that moon is waxing each night.  We made group postcards of the continent of AFRICA. 

NOV. 8th

We had another great week.  We finished Fact Families in Math and we are working on more number sense.  The students should be finished with their doubles on Drills.

Reading Calendars are due.  We started to talk about the continent AFRICA and are learning about the difference between states and nation.  A little about government, elections, and voting.

Nov 1st

We had a great Halloween Party that lasted the whole day.  We worked hard on Halloween Math games and read lots of scarey stories.

We took a final math test. Look for the scores in your students homework packets.

We are working hard on our summaries.  We are at the hardest part, "THE MIDDLE".  We have been working on asking questions using the words "WHO,WHAT, WHERE, WHY AND HOW."

In math we well be taking our test on "Friends of Ten" and the hundreds chart.

We made postcards of a place we have visited or want to visit in North America.  We ate hotdogs, apple pie and lemonade and learned the song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".

We are going to be doing a Halloween math project and would love to have clean-dry pumpkin seeds.  We will be using them on Halloween.

Can't wait to see all the costumes.

Oct. 18th

We have been working really hard on our Halloween Stories.  I have spent lots of time asking the students the "WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW " questions to get them to think.  Instead of writing summaries this week we worked on using the same format to write stories.  It has taken two weeks to complete.  We are not finished.  The students are going to be reviewing them the next to weeks in school as well as using them in their homework.  So keep them.  They are dong great!

Have A GREAT FALL BREAK

Oct. 4th

Thank YOU Parents for coming to support your children.  I was able to talk with every parent.  There is very little homework for Fall Break.  Have a great time and be SAFE.

September 27th

I feel we have made lots of progress.  I gave the students a math quiz today and everyone of them did a great job.  Also our Dibbles Test (WPM)  was given today and we charted how the children are progressing.  There were lots of happy children who made great progress.  Our Butterfly is going to come out of her chrysalis on Saturday (We think).  We have worked hard and we can see progress.  It was a wonderful week.

September 20th

We have been trying to get into a regular routine with all of our subjects.  This week has had a lot of fun activities, but were able to get to every subject everyday.

Reading: We finished up talking about decoding strategies and started the very first part of writing a summary this week.  We tried to write about the setting and the characters.  Most of the groups just copied what I wrote as we discussed the story together in small groups.

Math: In math we have been drilling and playing games on +10 or -10 and "Friends of 10".  We started to add 2 digits together that the outcome is larger than 10.  But our strategy was to make one number a friendly 10 then add.  We also did a worksheet to help us understand the position of numbers on the hundreds chart. 
Social Studies:  We are working on our map unit and figuring out where each of us fit into our big world.  We made a map of our home, neighborhood, and school.  When we finished it we got to put a stamp in our Passport books.
Science:  We are just waiting for our chrysalis to turn into a Monarch Butterfly.

Some of the children need to work on writing complete sentences and the usage of their sight words.  They will be tested on them every Friday.  Also our math drill test are on Wednesdays.  Many of the students have been doing a great job on their "Fry Phrases", be sure to help them at home with math facts and Fry Phrases.

You have wonderful children. 

September 13th

I had a great trip to Thailand and China.  It was fun to keep the students informed about my travels.  I was so excited to see them and find that they had been well taken care of.  Mr.  Schlappi reported that they were fabulous and well behaved students.  We are back in full swing of work and learning.  As I corrected spelling, vocabulary and sight words sentences I was so impressed with the scores and especially the good sentence structure.  Your children are amazing.  We have a fun week ahead with the Read-a thon and Walk-a-thon.  I will have everything your children need for the Read-A- Thon.  So they can just come and relax.  If they want to bring a pillow, blanket and a good book they may.  I will furnish all treats and drinks.

Aug. 23rd

We are off to a great start.  Each one of the students are great.  I am looking forward to a great year.
Remember, I will be gone from Aug. 29th to Sept. 11th.  I am looking forward to a wonderful year.
Mrs. Kitchen

May 18th

The children did a great job on their Readers Theater. We enjoyed the cookies and the lemonade.  Thank you parents for supporting your children.  We have one unit left in Math --multiplication and we are reviewing everything we have learned this year.  We continue to build stamina and fluency in reading as well as reviewing all the elements of fiction and non fiction literature.  We just finished our unit on rocks and we are going to do gravity next.  We finally finished our travel of the continents and had all our passport pages stamped.

May 10th

We have been working hard on our Readers Theater and finishing up our pattern and measurement unit in math.  Almost everyone has passed our 2 digit addition and subtraction with 90%.  Hopefully this week we will get there.

May 3rd

This week we have been finishing up testing and working on subtraction and addition.  We started to prepare for a Mother's Day Team that will be on May 16th.  There will be more information coming.

The animal reports that are coming in look FABULOUS!

Language Arts:  We have started the DRA testing and we published our twisted fairy tales.
Math:  We have learned all of the strategies for subtraction and are working on perfecting our favorite one.
Science:  We are working on our inquiry water projects.

We had a great field trip to the Living Aquarium.

April 19th

We have been getting ready for the DRA Test at the end of this month. This week we wrote a summary for a non fiction text and are trying to improve our WPM. 

In math we have been working on different strategies for subtraction.  We worked on using negative numbers this week.

In science the students have been studying on weather, temperature seasons,  or water.  They are filling out an inquiry approach workbook, where they get to choose anything they want on one of these topics and write about it.  Next week they are going to make a poster of what they learned.

We have finished our unit on Twisted Fairy Tales.  You will be able to see our publish work at the Art Fair on Thursday.

April 12

We have been working on fluency and building wpm in reading.  I have been trying to encourage the students to read and love it and to build stamina.

In math we have been working on subtraction strategies for double digit  and on 100's place value.

Science we having been using modeling clay to make animals for our habitats and we started our unit on Weather.

 For Social Studies we had an Australian Barbecue and made post cards for that country.

In art we have been using oil chalks to make designs in our name.

Spring Break

Have a fun Spring Break!!!!!!

March 22

We have been working hard on our habitat models.

March 15

The Leprechaun came today and left us STARBURST and Lucky Charm's, his favorite cereal.

Reading:  We have been working on visualization and using the 5 senses.  We looked at or summaries and highlighted them to see where we were doing really well and where we needed to imporve.
Math: We are working on different strategies for addition, some of them are:  Breaking down in 10's & 1's, decomposing by finding a friendly 10,  keeping 1 number whole and using the number line, and regrouping.
Science:  We finished our unit on habitats and now we will start making models of habitats and then we will compare them to each other.  The letter for the animal report will go home on Monday.  Here is a copy for the requirements:

Dear Parents,

All year we have been working on Non Fiction Text Features.  And now we are going to put all our knowledge to use on making our own animal book.  The students have started to research and gather information about an animal that they have chosen to write about.  They can use these notes and any other resources they can find to make their animal book.   The students should have brought their nonfiction text features book home with them to help with writing their book.

 Animal Book Requirements:

·      Cover: Title, author, picture (copied or hand drawn)

·      Table of Contents: Chapter Headings and page numbers in numerical order.

·      5 Chapters:  Heading (title), 1 Main Idea and at least 2-3 sentences that support the heading and main idea for each chapter.

·      At least one illustration or drawing.

·      At least one photograph. (Can be black and white)

·      Captions under drawings or illustrations.

·      Labels under drawings or illustrations.

·      Glossary:  At least 3 words in ABC order with definitions.  (The words in the glossary should be in Bold or colored in their book.)

·      Index:  At least 3 words that appear in the book that is of interest.  They need to be ABC order with the page numbers they appear in their book.

·      Map of where in the world their animal can be found or other information that fits in their book.

·      Diagram of anything interesting on their animal.

Some of your headings could be: Babies, Adulthood, Food or Eating Habits, Predators, Habitats, Fun Facts, Hunting, Camouflage, Life Cycles, What Humans Use Them For, Nocturnal or Diurnal, Hibernate or Migrate, How To Take Care Of This Animal, etc.

We will project these books and the children will be reading these books to the class.

These reports are due May 3^rd.

MARCH 8TH

This week we worked on visualization in reading.  In math the students are doing wonderful on adding 2 digit numbers.  We did regrouping today and they did marvelous. In writing we wrote persuasive letters to the Leprechaun. They will be hanging in the hallway.  In science we worked on habitats and some of the students started to research for their reports on an animal of their choice.


We are going to be doing a science project were we are making our own habitats.  If you have any extra plastic containers that strawberries, cookies, etc come in, Christmas garland or fake leaves that you would like to donate to our class we would appreciate it.  I will be sending home a recipe for salt dough that I would like all the children to make.

March 1st

Today was the end of the trimester.  I am really proud of the students.  They are working hard and doing a great job.  This week everyone turned in their HOMEWORK.  Thank You for working with your children at home.

Feb 22

Reading:  The students wrote fabulous summaries this week.  I was so proud of them that I took them to show Mr. Rencher.
We are continuing to study about adding details and characterization to fictional text and finding the main idea and supporting details in non fiction.

Writing: We wrote persuasive essays on why you should vote for them to be President.

Math:  Everyone scored above 86% on our Time Test, but our goal is 90% or higher so 4 students are still working on reaching that goal.  We started our unit on geometry and adding/subtracting 2 digit numbers with regrouping.

Social Studies:  We finish our unit on the Antarctica with a feast on canned food consisting of tuna, corn, beans, and pears.  The students made their post cards of what they would do, wear, visit, eat, and why they would/wouldn't recommend a visit to Antarctica.

Science:  We started to our unit on Habitats.  We learned about habitats in grasslands, streams & rivers.

Feb 15th

We had a fun Valentines Party and lots of candy and kind words for everyone.
Reading:  We have been working on writing 3 supporting details for our try/ wins and recognizing  the main idea and supporting details in non-fiction text.  We wrote similes about Valentines Day in the shape of a heart.
Math:  We are almost finished with our clock unit and will be taking the test this coming week.
Science:  We finished our unit on Matter and took the test.
Social Studies:  We talked about Antarctica and patriotism.

Thank You Parents for coming to SEP's.  I was able to visit with every parent.  Your students are doing wonderful.  I am so lucky to be their teacher.  Thank You for all your work.  We had every student bring back their homework this week/  WOW!!!

Feb. 1st

This week we have been working on making inferences, main ideas and supporting details, telling time (O'clock & half past).  We turned liquid cream into solid butter; read about and took notes on "gas".  We finished our unit on the Continent "Asia" by eating on a mat with chopsticks rice, won tons, and sweet & sour sauce.  We even had a fortune cookie.  Then the students made their post card of touring Asia.  Finally we  took a number sense test.  We had a great week!

Jan. 25th

This week we talked about Human Rights and Martin Luther King.  We made a "Dream Quilt". We took the DRA and every student made lots of progress.  Some of the students have started to bring in their Graph Projects.  They are looking really good.  We finally got to go to recess on Friday. Yeah, warm temperature!

This week we worked on writing summaries for fiction books and finding main ideas and supporting details for non fiction books.  We started to take our DRA reading test.

In math we finished our workbook on graphs and took a pretest on Telling Time.

This week we got a homework assignment on graphs.  Here is a copy of the assignment.

The next two weeks homework in math is to take the survey, included with this letter, that our class took and make 3 different graphs using the information.  They are to make a pictograph graph, tally graph, and bar graph using the information from the survey.  Then they need to write 10 questions using the information. Five of these questions need to involve an equation.  We have practiced using words such as most/best, fewest/ least, more than, less than, and altogether when we ask questions about the graph we study. Please use the big paper to attach the 3 types of graphs, the 10 written or typed questions, and the survey. 

The students have finished their workbook on graphs and they should be in their homework folder. They may use it to help them with the different types of graphs as well as ideas for questions for their project.

 We will use one graph project a day as part of our unit on graphs and math work to look at and answer the questions the students have written.  These papers will also be hung in the hall for everyone to see and they will be graded as follows.

***Project Due February 2, 2013

Graph Homework Grading Rubric

Pictograph Graph

Accuracy 10pts

Neatness   5pts

Tally Graph

Accuracy   10pts

Neatness    5pts

Bar Graph

Accuracy    10pts

Neatness     5pts

10 Questions

*Complete sentences 1 pt. per question

*Uses key words: most/best, fewest/least, more, altogether, etc.

(5 questions that you can write an equation.  Example:  How many more people like oranges than apples?) 3pts per question

Neatness 10 pts.

Survey

Attached to project 4 pts.

Name on paper 1 pt.

                                                                                               

The students have 2 weeks to finish this assignment.  Those who turn it in the first week can earn $100 of our class money.

Thanks,

Shiree Kitchen

  I forgot to add that each project needs a title and the keys labeld.  So everyone will get extra credit if they put a title and have the key's labeled. 

GOOD LUCK!!!

Jan. 11th

This week we have been reviewing how to write a summary and finishing our unit on MONEY.  We took the test on Friday.  Your child should bring home their test in the Monday Folder.

Jan. 4th

Reading: We just finished the first two days back form Christmas Break.  We read 4 different books that compared the story "The Three Little Pigs"  and we tried to analyze the character of the wolf.
We also figured out supporting details on an article in the National Geographic that talked about symmetry.
Writing:  We wrote a personal narrative on one event that happened over Christmas Break.
Math:  We added nickles and pennies to our unit on money and did two pages from our graphing workbook.
Social Studies:  We kicked off our unit on Asia by exploring different physical characteristics from previewing books and looking at the map and globe.  We wrote down facts that we learned form this activity.
Art:  We made snowflakes to decorate the lunch room.

It was a busy two days.  I think the favorite part for the students was that they could not go out to recess because of the air quality so they made different Islands using geometrical shapes.  (They made this game up all on their own.)  They also got to use the modeling clay to sculpt  with.