Second Week of School

We are still learning the rules and procedures but slowly incorporating Readers and Writers Workshop, EDM (Everyday Mathematics), and Daily 5.  We have library every Wednesday, students will be able to checkout a book soon.  For math, we are still exploring with math manipulative.  This week we have been working on building our classroom community to make it a positive experience.  A fun activity that we did was creating a fruit salad that represent our classroom and the students we would like in our classroom.  We had strawberries (the kind kids), blueberries (the kids that listen and follow directions),  marshmallows (the kids that share), peaches (the kids that uses kind words, such as please and thank you), and yogurt (this is the happiness we feel when we are in school).  Then there was a rotten banana (these are the kids that are bullies, put others down, pushes in line, and so on).  The kids did not want the rotten banana in our yummy fruit salad.  We discussed why having a rotten banana was not good for our classroom and the kids did an excellent job explaining.

Then we also discussed the concept of being a bucket filler and bucket dipper.  An explanation about this concept can be found on this website: http://www.bucketfillers101.com/

I am making a slight change to our clip chart behavior system.  With too many colors, the kids are getting very confuse so I have decided to eliminate the colors pink and blue.  The meanings for red, orange, and yellow will remain the same.  Every child will still start with the color green each day and if they stay on green, they had a great day.  If they go to purple, then they had an excellent day! 

Make sure to check the JUNGLE folder daily and remove the papers that do not need to be return (usually papers that do not require a signature can be kept at home).  Scholastic book orders are due on September 21.  There are two ways to place an order: online using the code or sending check/cash with your child in an envelope by the 21st of this month.

Parents/guardians we ask that you say goodbye to your child in the morning in the play court and leave as soon as you see me coming out to pick them up.  This will help with transition.  Thank you for your understanding.

Here are some pictures of the students exploring math manipulative and making our fruit salad.