Will our Superbowl Prediction be Correct?

Phonics for Feb. 2-6: " oo" short vowel sound words

look, book, took, good, cookbook, foot, hoof, crook, brook, shook, any, most

Challenge words for bonus:  bassoon, barefooted

All the students that returned their monthly reading log got to pick a special reward today. Many of these students read way over 300 minutes for the month.   

 Our lunch bunch reward group was very small today. Lunch bunch is a reward for students that are displaying exceptional school behavior in all areas.   I hope to have many more participants next week.  

 We are working on ten, ones, and hundreds.  We have learned to write the numbers at least two ways. 

 We learned about a Bar graph today.  The students graphed their prediction for super bowl 49.   

 We learned about all the pertinent information that needs to be on a bar graph.  

Today was the day to cash in all Dojos for the past few months. Ask your child about their shopping selections.  A wide variety of  options were available to each student.  The students with the most Dojo's got  to make their selections first.  

Have a safe weekend.   Please remember to study for spelling, complete the weekly reading assignments and practice basic math facts if we do not have school.  I am going to try hard to stay on schedule, regardless of snow days.  We have a large amount of core content to address, and we want every academic minute to count.   

Spelling Assessment tomorrow

We worked extensively on the phonic skills oa, and ow.  We missed two days of direct instructional this week, so we spent a little longer helping students learn the phonics rules.  Hopefully the students are prepared for our assessment tomorrow.  We learned about where the vowel sounds need to formulate in our throats and mouths.   

 We have added a new movement program. We are using a program entitled  " Go Noodle."  Ask your child about the "chair" to help prepare our bodies for learning.  We are going to add several short movement and yoga activities to our day.  Especially during the winter months.  Research has proven that students that engage in at least 20 minutes of physical exercise twice a day, or 20- one minute breaks achieve higher levels of learning.  Movement is essential in Team Tipton.  

 Mrs. Sparks visited our room today.  She is  completing her masters degree in reading.  She is a long time friend of Ms. Tipton.   She helped in many ways during the morning portion of the day.

 We made a K,W, L chart as an introduction to our Penguin Unit.

Ask your child about the Read the Room activity.  The cards  introduced Penguin facts.    Tomorrow we will read each fact again and add to out "What we know about penguins" chart.  I know that the students will catch the errors that they thought were facts. 
  ( Penguins are part of the bird family, and they are cold blooded.)  

We will be adding lots of new vocabulary words to our word bank during this unit of study.  

The students rotated to a new reading station when they heard the triangle ding.   We didn't even have to use words to know when it was time to move to the next station.  

 Ask your child about their reading partner. The partners will change in February.  

Ms. Sparks lead the large groups in reading a penguin fact book.  t  

Ms. Tipton meet with the individual reading clubs.  Weekly reading homework will be sent home tomorrow.  Each reading club will have penguin leveled reading activities.  

We took a pre-test on place value.  Instruction will be geared towards each child's ability.  Keep in mind that all students take a pre and post test over the math units.   

We are using hands on materials to review tens and ones.  We worked on trading 10 ones for a tens rod today.  Tomorrow we will beginning our unit on addition and subtraction to 20.  Many students will work on number up to 100.   We also took our first Mad Minute timed addition test.  Everyone took the +1 assessment,  If your child passed the assessment, they will move on the +2 assessment.  It is imperative that the students learn their facts quickly.  Memorization of the basic facts will aid them for the rest of their lives.   

Jordan is one of the pet monitors this week.  She and Elin are taking good care of Alex .  

Alex wants to remind everyone that tomorrow is the last day of the month.  We will be cashing in our dojo's .  Also, all monthly reading logs are due.   

Code word to whisper to Ms. Tipton:  "Antarctica " 

100th Day of School

Today was the 100th Day of School. We celebrated the special day in many ways.  We started the day by describing the picture of the 100 year old women.  

 Then we watched as a computerized program slowly take away the years of aging.  Now we used new descriptive words to describe the younger version of the same lady.   This lead to a discussion about how the inner beauty was always presents.  Students made statements like, " It's what is in the inside that counts."

 We are back on our regular schedule.  We have Library every Monday at 9:00.  Please help  your child remember to return their library books each Monday.  We need to  utilize this excellent resource! Students are able  to check out two books on their level each week.

 Ms. Nelson always starts the lesson by giving each child a book buddy, and she reads a high interest book to the class.

 Today Ms. Tipton and Mrs. Nelson read a two voice readers theater about 100.

 The students are working hard to raise money for the Boosterthon Fund Raiser.   Remember that the $$ generated will be set aside to purchase an iPad lab and play ground equipment.

 The students worked hard to make a predicitve drawing of themselves.  The drawing/painting was entitled: "If I live 100 years".  They used adjectives to complete the story starters.

 We generated a list of adjectives about the students right now, and a second list about themselves at age 100.

 Alex was glad to get an opportunity to see the students working so hard.

 Mikeah is the student  of the week. Make sure and congratulate him.

 We made 100 day glasses.  

 Addie was the teacher assistant today.  She gave Dojo's for clean desk and area.

 Ask your child about all the activities that we did during math today. We made 100 multiple ways.

 Here is our "feet on" activity to illustrate that 10 feet=100 toes.