DONE!

As promised, I have added the Magnets movie made by table 2. Their computer completely crashed in the process of creating their masterpiece and they had to start again from scratch. We were very proud of the effort they put into their project even though they were very disappointed the first time. What a great lesson the Magnet ladies taught us all!

We have had a very long week of testing and are grateful to be done. We are looking forward to our field day tomorrow at the high school. With our math and science curriculum basically complete we get to spend the next few weeks exploring American History and being really creative with our reading comprehension and writing activities. Ask your student about some of our awesome assignments. Stop by the school library next week to see our covered wagons.

We hope everyone has a great off track. Remember to practice your lines and songs for the "Awesome Alien Play". Keep reading as well to win more prizes- we will even have surprise prizes for our top readers. Be safe!

Happy Spring!

Wow! What a great few weeks we have had. The students in our room have been so busy. We finished our science study for the year by making iMovie review presentations. Each group created a short movie with pictures, sound effects and text. They are awesome. Of course the experience would not have been complete without technological issues but we did our best. Four of the five groups were able to present a finished film. One group is still working on theirs after their laptop completely crashed during production. We had a back up copy saved but unfortunately haven't been able to figure out how to reload it to iMovie. If anyone knows how, please share! Links to our awesome movies are to the right- ENJOY!

We are busy writing the lyrics for songs we will be composing over the next few weeks. These songs are the culminating comprehension activities that go with our fantasy books. After the songs have been created in Garage Band we will be filming music videos and adding titles and credits to our creations. We can't wait to see the finished products!

Please remember CRT testing is May 11-14th. Students should have brought home an "obnoxious green" testing note this week. Please check backbacks and under beds for the testing protocal.

Also please note our field day and fitness testing will be Friday, May 15th. We will be heading to CHHS to run the track and have a lot of fun. Watch for more information to come home soon. Please encourage your student to practice their fitness skills over the next few weeks. The standards are listed in their planner on the final page of the student handbook section.

Thank you for all of the very nice flowers, supplies and treats sent in for Teacher Appreciation Week. I have enough Diet Coke for at least a week and our classroom has never smelled so nice!

Welcome Back!

Hello Spring- scroll down below the bookshelf to see our new class pet, the spring frog! Hopefully you had a great off track. We returned SO ready to learn lots of new things. We have just started to study Electricity- our final science unit and are starting off on our Pioneer trek next week in social studies. For guided reading, we are enjoying leveled fantasy books. Please see them on the shelf to the right- you might need to click next at the bottom of the shelf to see your book. We are looking forward to writing our own songs to go with our comprehension. Eventually we will even be filming music videos to showcase them. We are starting to review lots of math concepts- ask a student how to find the product of 2/3 X 1/4. Hopefully he/she can explain it! We've been practicing.

We are continuing to prepare for our CRT testing by working on our deductive reasoning, problem solving and curriculum review. We are also using lots of new technology in our classroom. Our new Smart Board and document camera have been huge hits. The students are fascinated and can't wait to have a turn on them. We are so happy to have many new technologies available to us.

Hopefully we will have nice warm weather for the upcoming spring break. Please remember Wednesday, April 8th is a half day. Enjoy the days off!

Off track

Hi. I hope you are all having a wonderful break. Thank you for all of the well wishes, prayers and good thoughts you all sent my way while I was with my mother. She is recovering well and especially liked the cards the students sent her. It was nice to get to talk with all of you at conferences last week and discuss the progress our fantastic students are making. We had a great final week finishing our study of Heredity, ending our Geometry unit and completing awesome paper dolls to culminate our adventure stories. Hopefully you got a chance to see them while they were in the hall- they were so cool!

Many of the students are well on their way to earning their Coyote Pride awards. While off track they can work on their great brain projects, fitness times, arts projects, study states and capitals, memorize poetry and study their times tables to continue their pursuit of this award.

Please have a safe break. I look forward to seeing you soon!

We had another fantastic week. The kids looked super and acted wonderfully at the Symphony on Tuesday. We are finally getting the hang of adding and subtracting those pesky fractions. We had a lot of fun with our matter experiments and finished our unit with a yummy one. We made ice cream in zip lock bags and got to watch the change in state of the milk. The recipe, as promised- smile Sarah, is as follows:

Ice cream in a bag

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup whole milk
* 1 tablespoon sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 sandwich ziploc bag
* 1 gallon ziploc bag
* 3 cups ice
* 1/3 cup rock salt (table or kosher salt work too- it just takes longer)

Directions

1. Put first 3 ingredients in the smaller Ziplock bag and seal bag (Make
sure it is tightly closed!). Put ice and rock salt in the larger bag and then
add the filled small bag. Seal the large bag.
2. Squeeze bag until ice cream is thickened, about 4-8 minutes.
3. Remove small bag, unseal, and eat with spoon.
4. No need to even dirty a bowl!

Many of them were surprised the ice cream tasted so good =) The students also finished our study of the Constitution with the recitation of the Preamble. Of the 24 students who tested on it 20 knew both the verse and the meaning! WOW! What a great bunch of memories they have.

I will not be in class next Tuesday-Friday. My mother is having some pretty major surgery and I am going to help her and my dad for a few days. Not the best timing I know but I don't think we ever really plan for things like this. The class will be in very good hands. Miss Forsythe from the 4th grade will be our sub for Tuesday and Wednesday and Mrs. Buttars will take over for Thursday and Friday. The Valentine's party will be covered by our wonderful room moms. If you would like to help please contact Mrs. Dunbar. Thank you to all of the students who have made get well cards. It was very sweet of them to do so and I am sure my mom will love them.

Take care and have a great St. Valentine's Day