We had a wonderful first week! I was so excited to meet all of my students and am so lucky to have Mrs. Karn and Mrs. Porkorny on my team! My #1 goal is getting to know each child and keeping them safe, happy, and learning.
This week we introduced the new schedule to our kids. We were very proud on how well they can adapt to the chaotic schedule and how well they progressed over the summer. We worked on collecting data on IEP objectives and establishing a set routine that mirrored the hard work of Mrs. Southhall last year.
Our goal is to challenge our students and prepare them for middle school. We plan on doing a lot of fun activities and are excited to have Ms. Jen and her therapy dog Calena come into our classroom on Friday, September 13th and will continue every other week for the rest of the year. I sent permission slips in the Friday Folder.
One of my favorite books is Doug Lemov's “Teach Like a Champion.” I am excited to implement a few techniques in my class this year.
One being SLANT which stands for Sit, Listen, Ask and Answer Questions, Nod your head, and Track the speaker.
One of my passions is teaching reading. I kind of fell into it by accident and rised to the challenge. One of my education idols is Dr. Robert Marzano. Marzano is an educational theorist and expert. He feels that involving students in assessing their own mastery of classroom content has a direct impact on mastery and achievement. It is very important to always have learning outcomes up on the board. I would like to get our students in the habit of expressively communicating what they did in our class. Since some may have trouble with expressive language we can incorporate their talker and make the “I Can” statements easy to repeat while posted on our board.
This week we reviewed:
Spelling Words: the, of, a, and, to & 4th and 5th Grade Sight Word Assessment (Student A)
Wilson Reading: Introducing short vowels - a apple /ă/, e Ed /ĕ/, i itch/ ĭ/, o octopuss /ŏ/, u up ŭ
Vocabulary in Social Studies: longitude, latitude, equator
Writing: Daily Journal Prompts
Math: Review addition (Student A) & counting and identifying numbers from 1-20
Science: Introduced the Scientific Method by playing the game “Saving Fred” and Understand the nature of scientific inquiry by doing the experiment Mountain Dew Light Up Bottle. I am sad to say that it did not work like we thought it might.
