Back-To-School Night

*Please don't feel obligated to read this entire post since it is quite long.  Consider this a resource to turn to for general information about our classroom.  If you attended Back-to-School Night, this is NOT new information, but can still be used as a reference if you need it.*

Here is some general information about our classroom for the 2015-2016 school year.  

About Me: My name is Mrs. Crook and I am in my second year at Kelseyville Elementary School.  Prior to that, I was teaching classroom music to Kindergarten through 6th grade students.  I am on the Technology Committee for the District and love working with various types of technology.  My husband and I have been married for almost 9 years and we have a 3 year-old son and a 1 year-old son.

Classroom Schedule:

8:00 - 10:00 English Language Arts

10:00 - 10:20 Recess

10:20 - 11:30 Math

11:30 - 12:20 Lunch

12:20 - 12:50 Social Studies/ Science/ P.E./ Library/ S.T.E.M.

12:55 - 1:25  English Language Development

1:30 - 1:57 Social Studies/ Science/ P.E./ Library/ S.T.E.M.

On Mondays through Wednesdays we do centers during part of our English Language Arts time.

Classroom Behavior:

I use Class Dojo in my classroom for behavior management.  This is an online app that gives students positive points for behaviors such as respect, responsibility, and participation.  There are also negative points in this system for things such as, unsafe behavior, talking out of turn, and bullying.  Students receive points that accumulate over 2 week periods.  Every other Friday I will give them an opportunity to spend their Class Dojo points.  If they don’t spend them they roll over into their “account.”  Class Dojo is accessible online or through their free app which can be found in both the App Store and the Google Play store.  (For a list of ways to spend points, see my earlier blog post on Class Dojo at http://crookclass.blogspot.com/2015/09/class-dojo-and-quick-glance-at-our.html

P.E. and GoNoodle:

Every Wednesday our class will be doing a P.E. activity outside.  Please send your child in tennis shoes on those days.  GoNoodle is our indoor P.E. activities that we do every morning as a transition time from reading groups.  These are fun videos that get the kids moving and give them a little bit of a break in the day.  GoNoodle also has a home version for parents and students and you can find that at www.gonoodle.com

Homework:

We only have one thing for homework which is the Reading Comprehension Log.  There is a small activity for each day that the student reads.  Read with your child 20 minutes every night (Monday through Thursday) and then do the activity on the page.  The actual homework paper is only collected once a week on Fridays.  Monday is focused on the Main Idea of a story they read.  Tuesday focuses on drawing the beginning, middle, and end of the book that was read.  Wednesday, students need to draw a setting from the book.  Thursdays they draw a picture to show what the problem was in the story and then write 1 sentence about that problem.  This doesn’t have to be the same book for alll four nights, but it can be.  If your child is more interested in picture books, then do a different one each of the four nights.  If your child is starting to show interest in smaller chapter books, then focus on a chapter a night.  This is very flexible and the main idea is to have students reading at home and critically thinking about what they have read.  Here is a copy of the reading comprehension log. https://goo.gl/nU2syH

Technology and Worksheet Free:

Just this year, Kelseyville Unified School District has issued a Chromebook to every student that stays on campus.  Every student has been given a district issued Email address with a password.  This e-mail account will follow them throughout their educational career in Kelseyville District.  In our class, we use the Chromebooks at least once a day.  Technology is a wonderful tool and we now have a greater accessibility for our students.  In our classroom we focus a lot on Digital Citizenship, which includes but is not limited to internet and computer safety, online etiquette, and learning through technology.  Google Classroom is a tool that is also used in our class on a daily basis.  The students respond to their journal prompts through Google Classroom.  We also use other sites in class including: iRead, www.typing.com , and www.frontrowed.com  Throughout the year students will be introduced to a variety of websites, some of which will require a username and password.  Please know that I keep a record of all of their usernames and passwords and they also have a copy of all of their usernames and passwords.  If at any point in the year, you would like to be able to access some of their site accounts, please let me know and I will be happy to send home a hard copy of usernames and passwords with your child.  Because of our frequent use of technology in the classroom, very few papers will be sent home.  We still do use paper and pencil, but most activities in class will be hands-on, manipulative, or computer-based.  For more information on my worksheet free philosophy, read my blog post at http://crookclass.blogspot.com/2015/07/worksheet-free.html    

Library:

Our class has a regular library time every Friday morning at 9:30.  Your child will get to check out 2 books each week, providing they turn in their 2 books from the previous week.

Field Trips and Volunteers:

In Second Grade we go on three field trips during the year.  Two of these are walking field trips in town and the third is a bus field trip.  We walk to the Kelseyville Firehouse on Main Street usually towards the beginning of November.  We walk to the Kelseyville Post Office usually in February.  Both of these field trips connect with our Social Studies program which has a big focus on community involvement and community workers.  Our last field trip for the year is to the Ocean at Fort Bragg.  We take a bus and are gone all day.  This is a great trip and very exciting for the students and teachers as we close our unit on ocean and tides pools in our science curriculum.  Details about each field trip will be sent home as we get closer to them.  If you would like to volunteer to be a chaperone on the field trips, you will need to fill out a volunteer packet from the office and have a current TB test done.  If you would like to volunteer and help out in the classroom, you will need to fill out the same packet with a current TB test.

Communication:

The best way to get a hold of me is through Email at rcrook@kvusd.org I will get back to you within 24 hours.  You can also call the school and leave a message at (707) 279-4232 x106.  Most communications I send out to you will be through either the class blog at crookclass.blogspot.com or through the Class Dojo messenger.  The class blog will be updated at least once a week to give you an idea of what happened in class, generally, and if there are any upcoming events for our classroom or the school.  I also do have a Twitter account if you would like to reach me that way @rcrook_rcrook

Many thanks to all the families that were able to attend Back-to-School Night.  

Digital Citizenship and SAMR

First of all, let me say that my heart goes out to the people that were affected by the Valley Fire.  It has definitely been a trying time for our area.  For my school in particular, we were in school for four days and then had this last week off to accommodate safety precautions and for any displaced families.  While we have only been in school for less than a week (technically), I was very anxious to get started on my DALLA project of digital citizenship.  In a classroom where we very rarely use the typical worksheets and pencils, digital citizenship is a very important topic to me.   My DALLA (Digital Age Learning Leadership Academy) project is starting to make a bit of progress now that school has officially started.  In the first week of school we did one lesson on digital citizenship with a focus on "Safe Places to Go on the Internet."  As a class we discovered there were so many possible places for us to see and explore on the internet, but we also talked about some very basic rules.  #1 Always ask for permission #2 Go to the sites that are best for you and #3 Only talk to people you know.  This was a great way to start off teaching my students how to navigate on the computer in a safe manner.  The lesson itself comes from Common Sense Media (https://d2e111jq13me73.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/uploads/classroom_curriculum/k-2-unit1-goingplacessafely-2015.pdf) and gave the students some real experiences in dealing with the internet.  Our class all went to kids.sandeigozoo.org which offered a variety of activities for the students to participate in, including games, videos, live animal cams, and informational reading about different species.  We talked about how this is a safe place to go because it was given to them (my students) by their teacher (me), and they had all turned in internet permission that had been signed by their parents.  Later in the week, we had a little bit of free time to explore more on the computers using the internet and the students were given three different choices of sites to visit, one of which was the San Diego Zoo site.

Many of my students were able to take the information about being safe on the computer and internet and translate that to being safe in our neighborhoods and communities.  Already, I was able to see how my students are making connections between classroom and life experiences.  

As I think about this project so far, and bring it to the idea of SAMR (substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition) I am beginning to see how to more accurately apply the idea of SAMR into  my own classroom.  This particular lesson on going to safe places seems to be a modification.  Students learned how to go to safe places (while talking about physically going places and how to act) and then got to try out a "new" way to go places by using their student Chromebooks.  While the idea of going to safe places doesn't change, the way we got there was much different than jumping on a bus and travelling to the San Diego Zoo.  My students seemed to have a great time navigating around on a website knowing that they could go wherever they wanted on the site.  The students were so excited about this lesson, they asked when the next digital citizenship lesson is happening.  Our next lesson focuses on searching based on the alphabet and will be happening this coming Monday!

Class Dojo and a Quick Glance at our First Week

Class Dojo is becoming a very popular way to manage classrooms using digital tools.  Our class is using Class Dojo this year and already the students seem to love it.  Each student has their own avatar little monster (some have even personalized this through their home connection).  Throughout the week they receive points for positive behaviors, such as being respectful and being a learner, and lose points for any negative behaviors, such as not being safe or not being on task.  After this first week of school, I think the students are really starting to see how this works.  With  my portable device I can walk around the room and send (or take away) points to students.  In my class I project the points on the screen throughout the day so that the students can really track their behavior and progress during the entire day.  Every other Friday, students will have an opportunity to spend their Class Dojo points.  The picture below shows how points can be spent...and yes there is roll-over in my classroom.  Just in case it is too hard to read, 5 points = a sticker, 10 points = a fancy pencil, 20 points= class coupon (anything from wear sunglasses in class to switch desks for the day), 45 points = choose a GoNoodle activity, 65 points = eat lunch with the teacher in the room, 100 points = a bee pencil topper, 200 points = a bee reading tracker, and 300 points = a bee finger puppet

This first week of second grade has been busy and very exciting.  The next picture will give you a brief idea of what our focus has been in each of the different subjects.  Look for this picture each week to see what new things your students has learned throughout the week.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Fred the Worm!

Today for S.T.E.M. Friday (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) the class got to participate in saving Fred the Worm.  Fred the Worm (a.k.a. a gummy worm) was riding on his boat while wearing a life jacket.  His boat tipped over and somehow his life jacket managed to get underneath his boat, but luckily Fred managed to stay on top of the boat.  The task for this afternoon was that the students had to help get Fred his life jacket back on and get back on top of the boat.  Doesn't really sound like that bad of a task, right?  Well, the students quickly found out that they couldn't touch Fred, his life jacket, or his boat with their hands.  All they were able to use was 4 paperclips.  At first each of the students decided that this would be easy.  After about 15 minutes of struggling to get poor Fred his life jacket, there were definitely some frustrated students in room 106 today.  Some students began pairing up and finding ways to help each other by using an extra set of hands to help save Fred.  By the end of the task, every single student was able to get Fred the Worm in his life jacket and back on top of his boat.  It was so great to see the students so excited about something so small.  One of the big things with S.T.E.M. Friday is that it gives the students a chance to be challenged and maybe venture into an area they wouldn't think is normally their regular comfort level.  While saving Fred the Worm, as with all S.T.E.M. activities, the students were constantly talking and discussing ways that might actually work to solve the problem.  The class today was definitely using their problem solving and critical thinking skills.  The pictures might give you an idea of what the students had to work with today.