September 18, 2015

Wow! What a fun filled week for our fundraiser. It was so exciting to come in each day and see what different ensembles everyone was wearing to school. Today the high school football players and cheerleaders joined us for our culminating pep assembly launching elementary school night at the football game. There was even some silliness from the teachers, but you will have to ask your children about that one!

This week we had our summative test regarding our understanding of multiplication. Those final tests will come home next week in their Friday Folders. We also began working in small strategy groups targeting specific strategies that are individualized for each student.  We launched another component of the Math Daily 3, Math With Someone. The students worked in pairs playing the game, What's Your Product? The students are continuing to build stamina while they work on Math by Myself. Next week we will begin learning about division. 

We have begun individual conferences during our rounds of Daily 5 and we have had some small groups as well. Next week we will have more opportunities for small strategy groups that will help the students build their proficiency with reading and writing strategies. 

We made an anchor chart for the classroom to help the students understand the meaning behind each letter grade. This is the first year the students are receiving letter grades so it is important for them to understand what that grade reflects in terms of their performance. Each letter grade relates to how they are understanding, how neat and complete their work is and how much effort they are putting forth. This also can be an indicator to them of times when they need to tune into when they need to ask questions when they aren't understanding or are unsure of their understanding.