Our building was remodeled nine years ago. At that time new windows, air conditioning, and an elevator were installed. I was on the committee that planned the renovation, and we worked hard to maintain the integrity of the building. I love the original woodwork and hardwood floors. It is a beautiful building. We look pretty good for being 100 years old.
Our school is celebrating it's 100th anniversary this school year. The original part of the school building was built in 1914. There have been two additions since that time. In recognition of 100 years, each child and staff member received a centennial t-shirt on the second day of school. We all wore them to our beginning of year assembly. Afterwards, we went outside and had our picture taken by a photographer from our school district. What an fantastic start to the school year! Our building was remodeled nine years ago. At that time new windows, air conditioning, and an elevator were installed. I was on the committee that planned the renovation, and we worked hard to maintain the integrity of the building. I love the original woodwork and hardwood floors. It is a beautiful building. We look pretty good for being 100 years old. We also have the best school song anywhere. It was written about ten years ago by Judi Brown, who was our art teacher at the time, and the students. She worked with each class, so that all the students and staff had a hand in writing this song. We don't have many assemblies, but when we do, we always sing it. This is going to be a really awesome school year with a totally awesome 4th grade class.
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Playing games can be a fun way to reinforce basic math skills. We often play games in class to practice basic addition, subtraction, multiplication or division facts. This can be done by visiting certain websites on line or by making a game with craft sticks, like this one. There are also fun math games to play using a pair of dice or a deck of playing cards. Check out the math page on our class website for some on-line games, or download the PDF below which contains more than 75 ideas for math games. Here is a link to our Math Practice Page: http://msdays4thgrade.weebly.com/math-practice.html Download the Acing Math PDF for lots of ideas for math games.
Usually we use this blog to tell parents and other people about the things we are doing in our class. This time I am using the class blog to write to our class. That's because I'm not at school right now. If you haven't heard, I had surgery last Thursday, and I am home for a few weeks recovering and healing. I fell down the stairs on Christmas Day. It was a bad fall, and I hit my head and was unconscious for a while. I had lots of bruises, and right after it happened my ankle and back both hurt. I didn't find out until last week that I actually broke that ankle. I also fractured one of the bones in my foot. My ankle was healing, but the metatarsal bone was not, and that is why I had to have surgery, to pin the bone back together. Fortunately, the kids have Mrs. Cummings as their substitute, so I know they are in good hands. Dear Class, I miss all of you a lot. I hope you are working hard for Mrs. Cummings, and learning everything you can. Last Thursday I had surgery on my foot. The Podiatrist used a metal pin to fasten the two pieces of broken bone back together. Now my foot can heal correctly. Do you know what a Podiatrist is? It's a doctor who treats patients for problems with their feet and ankles. You saw the big boot I had on Wednesday. That boot reminded me of Darth Vader. Fortunately, the one I have now is shorter, so it is a little more comfortable. That's a good thing, because I have to wear it 24 hours a day. I even have to sleep in it. I cannot put any weight on my foot, so this makes it very difficult to get around the house. I have crutches. I also have a knee scooter. You put the knee of your injured foot on the seat, then you hold onto the handle bars to steer, and your good leg is used to push and move the scooter. It is much easier to use the scooter than the crutches, but there is a catch. How do you carry things? I have had to be a problem solver. I can't just carry a cup of tea or a plate with my dinner on it. I need to use my hands to steer and move the scooter. I use a bag, which I hang on the handle bars, to carry my things. I have to use containers that don't leak, so my food and drinks don't spill.
I live in a two story house. I can't take the scooter up the stairs, and it is too dangerous to use crutches on the stairs, so I have been sleeping in the living room. I never thought about these things before. I am very thankful that my foot will heal, and I will soon be able to get around more easily. Have you ever broken a bone or hurt yourself so you couldn't do things that are normally easy for you? How did you solve your problems? I have never missed this many days of school before, so I miss Phillips and I miss you. Please write a letter to me to tell me what you are doing. Use friendly letter form. Mrs. Cummings will remind you about the parts of a friendly letter. Here are some of the things you could write about.
Please have your letter finished and turned into Mrs. Cummings by Friday afternoon. I am really excited to read your letters. One of the other teachers will bring them to me. Your teacher, Ms. Day Did you see the great article in the Des Moines Register about our school election? This election was made possible by Mrs. Flomo and Mrs. Ford, who set up this amazing day. They thought of every detail. All of our kids registered to vote a few weeks ago. The polling place was set up with everything from voting booths to a table to check in and pick up your ballot. The fifth graders were our poll workers. Students even received an "I Voted!" sticker after casting their ballots. It was amazing. The results were compiled on a chart. We even had an Electoral College. Before voting, my kids watched this fun video which explains the whole election process. We are about to begin blogging. Our first step was to learn about using the internet safety. Next we learned about how blogging works by creating paper blogs. We wrote a personal narrative, mounted it on poster board, and decorated it.
Today we hung all of them up in our room. We spent time reading each other's blogs, and writing comments. We wrote the comments on sticky notes, and stuck them to our blogs. A good blog should be a conversation. We write because we want to share our ideas. Blogging provides a place to publish our work, and it's fun to have others read our work and comment. At Parent/Teacher Conferences you will have a chance to read our paper blogs and leave comments, too. Our next step is to go on-line. We've already started writing our first posts. We will let you know when we have published our first work. We are learning to write Personal Narratives. Last week we made Heart Maps. A Heart Map is used to inspire you as you are choosing a topic to write about.
To make our Heart Maps, each student started with a piece of paper with the black outline of the heart already on it. Then they wrote and illustrated
We made them colorful and interesting. Then we cut them out and glued them into our Writer's Notebooks. We are referring to them when we need an idea to write about. The Heart Maps are colorful and interesting. They will inspire some great writing. I can hardly wait to read the personal narratives that the class is writing. Have you heard about Class Dojo? Class Dojo is a website that helps us keep track of how we are doing each day. We started using it last week to help us make good choices in our class room. The website creates an Avatar for each student. When a student makes a good choice and shows responsibility about their behavior, I click on their name and give them a positive point. If they are making a poor choice like talking or not being on task, I remind them about their behavior, and they receive a negative point. A sign pops up telling what they earned or lost the point for. At the end of the day I give out Pawprints; one for each positive point that a student has earned during the day. At the end of the day, we can also look at a graph to see how our class did that day. We can see what we did a good job with, and what we can do better the next day. I have already seen an improvement in our classroom behavior. Students work hard and our room is much calmer when we are using Class Dojo, and it's fun to use.
Our first week was short, but we got a lot done. We did some brainstorming to come up with this list of things we did.
I wonder how much we can accomplish when we have a whole week. We are so lucky here at Phillips to have the technology that we do. Every classroom in our school has iPads. My fourth graders are fortunate enough to have both iPads and laptops to use. You may have heard that I'm a techie teacher, and I'm proud to say that I am.
In our class we will use lots of technology. We will use both iPads and laptops to improve our math skills, to read and do research, to take tests, and we will do lots and lots of writing. Many times we will write with pencil and paper, but other times we will use technology. Before long, all the students in our room will have their very own blog. There is no better way to share your writing and creativity by publishing it on the internet. Visit our website and blogs often to see the things we are doing and learning. |