Spelling Practice

We are becoming active users of Spelling City!  Once the words are uploaded by me, the kids can go on the app and start practicing spelling words!  They can play games and even take a spelling test!  Once they have passed the test, they can go on to practice the challenge words for the week.  It is a lot of fun and we are becoming better spellers in the process!

An Hour Of Code

We are having so much fun! Code.org has been hosting an Hour of Code and we are definitely participating! Since computer science is the top paying college degree AND computer programming jobs are growing at 2x the national average, these are skills our students need! Plus, it is just fun! We have been using the iPad apps The Foos, Kodable, and Tynker. The kids can't get enough! Every day they are begging to work more! Some have even downloaded the apps on devices at home to play there!

Temperate Forest Animals

After spending most of the first quarter learning about the temperate forest and animals that live there, students wrote essays describing how 2 of their favorite animals were similar and different. They used the notes they had taken on the iPads to refer back to when they were writing. Once we had finished writing, we talked about different ways authors publish work. Of course, they all wanted to make videos of themselves reading their work!

Math Fact Practice

We have been busy learning our math facts! I have students learn the addition and subtraction facts up to 12. Right now we are memorizing addition facts. Students have until the middle of January to pass timed tests up to 12. Then, we will have an ice cream party to celebrate our success! The kids are really excited about it! We play games during math and use flash cards to practice. However, hands down, the favorite way to practice is to use the iPads!

Note Writing

We have been hard at work, putting our iPads to good use! We have been working on taking notes about the different temperate forest animals we are learning about. We have been using the app Popplet, which lets students create webs of their thoughts. Some students have even added drawings and photos to show what they know. Once we finished putting our notes into the app we started using them to write paragraphs about the animals we choose. We told about their habitat, food, why they are important to the forest, and why they are endangered (if they are). We are still working to edit and finish our final drafts of these paragraphs! It is so amazing to see the kids refer back to their notes to check facts and edit their work!

iPadding Away!

The week before school started we found out we had been selected to receive an HSD Technology Services grant! This grant covered 15 new iPad minis and several apps. This is one iPad for every two students! We have been so excited to start working with them! Last week we began playing with Popplet, an app that lets us share our thinking with others. We started by making a Popplet of fall ideas. Check out some of the great work below!

We will be using Popplet, Notability, and other apps this year to practice our note-taking skills, turn those notes into writing, and publish our writing in several different ways! I can't wait to see what these guys come up with!

Writing a Summary

Part of all students' homework each week is to write a summary of what they are reading. For some students, this may be a summary of the chapter book they are reading. For others, it may be a summary of a picture book they read at home. Since we have been working hard on how to write summaries at school, however, each child should be able to write about what they are reading. We have been practicing with fiction, using the anchor chart below.

Students need to identify who the story is about, <i>SOMEBODY. Then they think about what they WANTED. Characters never just get what they want, so there is a BUT something happened. SO, the character tries to solve the problem. THEN the story ends. We have found this to work really well for almost all fiction books and many non-fiction as well. If your child is still needing some support at home, ask them to tell you: Somebody Wanted But So Then Happy Reading!