Am I seeing double?

This week in math our focus was on doubles in addition and subtraction.  Our main question was "What does it mean to double a number?"  On Monday the students did some doubles work and then used the Double Cootie Catcher to explore more with doubles.  They were also introduced to some fun videos on doubles.  Check out this video that seemed to be the most popular in the class.

 

On Tuesday the class got to play Doubles Concentration.  It really had some of the kids thinking about addition problems and their answers.  If the first card they found was 5+5, then the match they were looking for was 10.  It seemed to be a fun game for the students, and I think they really know their doubles facts now.

The class made mini Doubles Facts books.  The students had to write in the equations for each picture and the answer.  Then of course, we had to decorate them.

On Thursday of this week, the kids picked cards and had to determine if the problem was a doubles problem or a doubles + 1 problem (or near doubles).  Once the students had solved the double, solving the doubles + 1 (or near doubles) problem was very easy because it was the original      answer  + 1.

Tuesday was the first time that students who turned in a coupon for Lunch with me were able to redeem them.  We had a nice group of three students (not all wanted to be in the picture) and it was really fun to have lunch with a few kids from the class. 

Throughout this last week, we also had students who turned in a coupon to pick a GoNoodle activity for the whole class.  I am definitely starting to see the more popular choices among the students.  Some of the students have been asking if they can color in some of our champs from GoNoodle, so here is a link to the Coloring Pages if they want to get a little creative.  This is just something they can do for fun, if they choose.

We also had a student turn in a coupon to share a story with the class.  It was very exciting to hear a fellow student read to us.  We heard "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss.

Today, the class was introduced to a new website, called Moby Max.  Here the students can do work in any subject.  Today we focused as using it as a math tool.  The class got very excited when they found out they could earn badges AND game time for answering questions correctly.  We will be visiting this site 2-3 times each week, during different periods of the day.  If for some reason your student wants to try some of this at home, please e-mail me at rcrook@kvusd.org or message me on Class Dojo and I will get you their username and password for the site.

A huge thank-you to all of the parents of Room 106.  I was able to meet with everyone for Parent-Teacher conferences during this week.  It was so great to meet everyone and get to know how we can work together to help the children.

What a Busy Bee week...

First of all, I apologize for not getting this posted sooner.  The weekend managed to slip away from me. Our last week in class was certainly busy, but there was a lot of learning going on.

In Math: We focused on using the strategy of counting on a timeline and counting back on a timeline can be useful strategies in solving addition and subtraction problems.  We used a variety of materials, including beans, bumblebees, honeypots, and beehives.

 

Counting on beans ---- 5 in the bag + 5 on the table is 10 beans total

We also figured out the simplicity of subtracting zero and subtracting all of a given group.  The class used paper tubes to create equations and then check themselves on whether they should subtract all of that number or zero in order to get the given difference.

In Writing:  This last week we focused on writing descriptive pieces.  The students were each given a partner and a Lego piece.  The partners had to write about their Lego pieces in a descriptive way, as if the others in the room had never seen their Lego piece.  We had some very unique pieces, not just your average Lego brick.

And how could I possibly get out the Legos and not let the kids play at least for a few minutes?!?!  After the kids finished their partner descriptive writing, they were allowed to play with the Legos.  We have quite a set of builders and innovators in this group.

 

In Science: We have been focusing on different properties of different objects.  This last week, we took that one step further and used our knowledge of different properties to determine how different tools might be used.  With the tools being from multiple rooms from my own house, including the kitchen, the garage, and the sewing area, the students saw a variety of tools and how they could be put to use.  The students recorded their observations in their science journals and even drew pictures of the different tools that we were researching.

Our tools ---- do you know the use for all of these tools?

(Shown from left to right: vice grip, seam ripper, magnetic pole, avocado slicer, needle threader, apple corer, pastry blender, and bottle/can opener)

In Technology:  We began our Friday technology session with an "unplugged activity."  I pretended I was a robot that needed directions to avoid other obstacles.  The students had to "code" me and give me directions that a computer or robot would understand.  After our unplugged activity, the students had a chance to try a little bit of code and programming on their Chromebooks.  We used kodable.com and we were introduced to the Fuzzies as each of the various codes were written.  These second graders did great with programming the Fuzzies to do what they wanted them to do.

It was such a great week!  Hopefully this week, I can get the blog post up sooner.  Enjoy your week!

*Reminder: This week is Parent-Teacher Conferences.  Students are dismissed at 12:20 pm Tuesday, October 4th - Friday, October 7th.  I look forward to meeting with everyone throughout this week.*

2016 Back-to-School Night Notes

*Do not feel like you have to read this whole post. This is mainly for informational purposes as needed throughout the school year. *

Back-To-School Night

Here is some general information about our classroom for the 2016-2017 school year.  

About Me: My name is Mrs. Crook and I am in my third 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 10 years and we have a 4 year-old son and a 2 year-old son.

Classroom Schedule:

8:00 - 10:00 English Language Arts

10:00 - 10:20 Recess

10:20 - 11:30 Math

11:30 - 12:10 Lunch

12:10 - 12:30 Reading Groups

12:30 - 1:00 Writing

1:00 - 1:10 Recess

1:10 - 1:57 Social Studies/ Science/ P.E./ Read Aloud/ S.T.E.M./ Music

On Tuesdays through Thursdays 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. Students can turn in their Dojo Points on classroom coupons (see wall by door).

P.E. and GoNoodle:

Every Tuesday 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.  Please have your child bring their homework back in the folder each day.  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 all 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 last 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.  We use sites in class including but certainly not limited to,: 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 two field trips during the year.  One of these is a walking field trip in town and the second is a bus field trip.  We walk to the Kelseyville Post Office usually in the spring.  This field trip connects 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, and get fingerprinted.  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 and get fingerprinted.

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.  

I Spy... some mathematicians and scientists

This week the class has been working very hard at solving addition and subtraction problems using a variety of strategies.  We have been focusing on missing addends in addition problems and how addition and subtraction are related and create fact families.
Our room was full of undercover spies one day this week.  Their mission (which they all accepted) was to find the missing addends in the addition problems.  The class had a great time solving math problems with the lights off and the special spy music playing in the background.  The students managed to find many different math problems, even some in unexpected places like under desks.  Take a look at some of our super spy mathematicians.  They were so stealthy. :)

 

In science this last week we focused on the different types of properties that objects can have.  Our essential question in science this week was: What types of properties can be found in different objects?  We talked about things that are rough, smooth, soft, thick, thin, flexible, buoyant, bouncy, and magnetic.  Each student was able to participate in 3 different investigations into the different properties of objects.  At one group, the students had 4 different types of balls (golf ball, bouncy ball, basketball, and foam ball) and they had to determine how bouncy each ball was based on the number of bounces the ball did.  At another group, the students discovered which items (clay, coin, pencil, sponge, and small cubes) were buoyant in a tub of water.  The third investigation group had students figuring out which items (paperclip, bolt, string, and marker) were magnetic.  The class had a great time discovering the different properties of items.  Check out the amazing scientists from our classroom.

Testing Buoyancy

Testing Bounciness

Testing Magnetism

The science this last week is a perfect lead-in to our writing for this next week.  We will be focusing on writing descriptive words, specifically those dealing with the five senses, into the compositions for the week.  Now that the students have some in-class experience with describing different objects, they will have a chance to put some of those words into their writing, based on other classroom experiences.

This week was also Back-to-School night and we had a great turn-out.  Thank you to all of those who were able to make it that night.  We are going to have a great year with the Busy Bees!  If you were not able to make it and would like the information from that night, click here.

Upcoming Events:

Picture Day is Friday, September 30th

Parent-Teacher Conferences are Tuesday, October 4th through Friday, October 7th

October 4th - October 7th are Minimum days, with students being dismissed at 12:20 pm

Dominoes and Flip-Flops

Each week in class we have a set of Essential Questions that are related to our curriculum.  The idea is that the students are faced with a question that they will have a way to answer by the end of the week based on what was done in class.  Here are our Essential Questions for this last week:

English Language Arts - How do you find the perfect pet?
Math - What strategies can I use to help me solve addition problems?
Science - How can I classify objects?
P.E. - What different ways can I jump rope?
Music - How do rhythms help me remember things?

As you can see, we had a very thought-provoking week in Room 106.  Since it is still the beginning of the school year, I wanted to give a couple of brief summaries for our different curriculum for the week.

English Language Arts - We are piloting a new program called "California Journeys" during this school year.  We started this week off with the first story in this program, which for 2nd grade is "Henry and Mudge."  Many of the students found this story to be a lot of fun to read.  (As a little plug for reading time, there are quite a few books in this series and it would be a good place to start if you and your child are looking for something fun to read together.)  With our new program we have access to many online resources, including audio recordings of each of our stories, which the students were able to hear during our center time this week.

   Math -  Our focus on math this week has been on Addition Strategies.  We started by talking about different ways to make 10 and each child made a visual using hands to represent the different addition combinations to get to 10.  We also worked quite a bit with some dominoes.  In discussing the commutative property in addition (or the idea that the two numbers in an addition problem can be read either way to get the same answer), the class had some dominoes and wrote it as one problem and then flipped it around to show the other problem using the same numbers.  Part of our study with the commutative property dealt with talking about how we can "flip" the numbers to different positions.  So the class designed their own pair of flip-flops with two different addition problems using the same set of numbers.  (These will be hanging in our classroom for Back-to-School Night.)

                                     

Domino Math

Science - The students this week were given bags with random objects in it and they had to decide how they were going to sort and classify their objects.  Within our class we had people sorting by shape, color, size, length, weight, flexibility, and texture.  The fun part about this one was that there wasn't any correct way to sort the objects, and actually it was interesting to see the variety of ways the kids saw the objects in different classifications.  With this the students also had to classify other objects in a more specific way.  The students had to decide which of the objects were "Easiest to hardest bend," "Hardest to softest," and "Roughest to Smoothest" and then write and draw about it in their science journals.  Check out some of the scientists in our classroom.

Roughest to Smoothest

Easiest to Hardest to bend (Most to Least Flexible)

P.E. - We have started some basics of learning how to jump rope.  As a class we discovered that it wasn't just about turning a rope.  We practiced regular jumps, hopping on one foot, jumping forward and backward, and jumping side-to-side.  We even had some students who wanted an extra challenge and tried a double bounce with a spin at the end.  Within the next couple of weeks we should start to see some real progress with jumping rope.

Music - Our class does a weekly music lesson every Monday afternoon.  Since I majored in Music Education, I like to bring this into our regular classroom.  Each of the students got to say their name in a fun rhythm so that it helps their classmates remember their name.  I think saying the name rhythms has definitely helped with that and has also made our classroom a tighter community.

Clearly, we have had a great week!  I hope everyone has a great weekend.  

*Just a Reminder - Back-to-School Night is Thursday, September 22nd at 5:45 in the Cafeteria.  Our classroom presentation will be from 6:00 - 6:30.  Hope to see you all there!*

A New Colony

This last week has definitely seemed like a bit of a whirlwind to me.  I have such a great group of kids and I look forward to getting to know each of them better as the school year progresses.  Besides, all of the normal learning of routines, procedures, and expectations, this new group of Busy Bees had a lot to do this first week.
The students started writing in their Think Books, where I give them a topic each day and they write 2 or 3 sentences that focuses around that topic.  This gives them a chance to do some free and creative writing.  The highlight of the Think Books this week for most was probably being able to decorate it with feathers, stickers, and all sorts of little things to really make it their own.  I absolutely love when kids can feel proud of something because they have helped create it.
I introduced a little bit of science this week.  Our focus was on "What are the different types of science?" We also talked about what qualifies as science.  The students went to 4 different science centers where they had to determine if that activity was science or not.  At the "Ice Center" they observed ice melting either in their hands or on the table.  Some students even found out here that when you slide the ice around on the table, it melts faster.  At the "Paint Center," the students mixed two different colors of paint and added that to their science journal.  At the "Attribute Block Center," the students had to sort different shapes and colors of blocks into different groups.  The last center, the "Cubes Center," had students taking apart pre-built items and creating new designs out of the snapping cubes.  After some time to explore, discover, and discuss the class was able to determine that all 4 of the centers were science....all different types of science.  As we continue throughout the year, we will be diving deeper into each of these areas of science, along with other areas.
Tuesday afternoons is our regularly scheduled P.E. time, and we began with some basic jumping skills.  The students had a great time jumping in and out of hoops and spots on the ground using two feet at once, one foot at a time, and skip-jumps where they jumped with one foot and landed on the other.  This was the introduction to our Jump Rope unit for the year.
In this first week of school, the class as a whole was able to earn a total of 300+ Class Dojo Points.  It averages out to about 20 points (or so) per student.  The class is learning very quickly that earning points can be very easy, as long as they are following directions.  It will be very interesting to see what our grand total is this coming Friday when I hold our first Class Dojo Store.
Throughout the week we also managed to get out the Chromebooks twice!  With having 1:1 Chromebooks in the classroom, I like to spend part of the year on understanding how to properly use the device.  While the Chromebooks are fun and we do many different things on them, I remind the students that we are very lucky to have such wonderful TOOLS (not toys) in our classroom.
So this pretty much sums up our first week as a new colony of Busy Bees.  Normally I would post pictures that went along with some of what I wrote about, but I am still checking on picture release permission forms and want to make sure that I am respecting what everyone is requesting.  Hopefully some pictures will make it up here this next week!

Here is to looking forward to a great 2016-2017 school year!