Do you know Crankenstein? Of course you do! We all turn into a Crankenstein when our coffee is cold, someone eats the last piece of pizza or you drop your phone and crack the screen. No matter how old you are, we all have a little Crankenstein in us!
We've had a great time enjoying this storybook and writing about what makes us cranky. It's super-fun way to teach students about how to use transitional words (first, then, next, finally) and write about a topic we're all an expert on: ourselves! We even brainstormed our own success-criteria checklist!
This task has been an excellent way for students to implement the feedback they've received over the last few weeks around their strengths and needs as writers, not to mention an opportunity to create one very cranky character!
It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is here and our little family in room 208 is already over 20 days old! Everyone is busy earning Wow Tags, learning about subtraction with re-grouping, reading so it sounds like the way people talk and writing with a specific purpose in mind!
We've made many memories together already and it's time to clean up my phone and share them with our blog visitors! Here we go! We have about seven words that we're done with when it comes to writing. Our goal is to use more sparkly, descriptive, fancy words instead of words like: cool, nice, fun or bad. So what's a teacher to do when a kiddo like Joey comes to school wearing a sparkly shirt with the word "nice" on it! Thanks for the chuckle Joey! #imsoconflicted
As part of being good members of a community, we're working on two goals right now: reciprocating when asked "How are you?" in a conversation, and using "my pleasure" when it feels right. It's so heart-warming to see the boys and girls engage with each other this way and think more critically about how they communicate.
We've also had some fun learning all about the importance of persevering and collaboration when we spent time working on jigsaw puzzles. It was a great opportunity to practice the skills we all need when we encounter challenges where solutions do not come easily to us and we need to stay cool and compromise with others.
On Thursday, we celebrated Fall Y'all day and made "Friendship Mix"! Each ingredient was an important reminder of things in our lives we are grateful for. Making our mix together was a delicious way to reflect on our blessed we all are.
A big thanks to Mrs. P, our classroom assistant, for capturing this part of our day for us! We're working our way through our math songs too! So far, we know the counting by 3 and 4s song. This week, we started on the 6s song!
Thank you to all the boys and girls and their families for a great start to the school year! We're well on our way to a very successful and memorable year together!
A repost from 2015: Y'all this is some good math stuff right here. I created this chant to help the boys and girls at our school remember their doubles facts. I then enlisted the help of these great kids, who I think have a future on the big screen, I'm just sayin'. Please watch this video a million times with your own children until they have those fact-eroos memorized! And just think, when the kids in this video make it big, we can all say, "We knew them back when they were just gettin' started!"
