Mrs. West's Class: September 2013

Celebrate (July/August Birthday, 9/11, Show/Tell, & Reading Counts)

Wow, we have a lot of celebrating (or remembrance) that we have been doing lately.

Happy Birthday to Caden, Carter, & Reese!

Carter, Caden & Reese brought in goodies to share for their birthdays. We had Capri Sun drinks, Brownies, Gushers and stickers. Thanks Birthday friends.

We also listened to a little music and I got to see all of their cool moves.

I have also started the incentive program (Reading Counts) with some students. I will do a few students at a time as they become ready for the program. :) Elizabeth took her first quiz yesterday and passed with 10 out of 10. Way to go!

After earning 3 jewels on her clip for landing on "pink" for behavior for 3 times, Abigail spun the prize spinner and landed on "Show & Tell" so she brought in her elephant and told us all about it.

We have also talked about the September 11th attacks and heroes from 9/11/01 and decided to create "remembrance" posters to honor those who died and to celebrate our country being United. The kids did an amazing job on their posters. I will be hanging these up for everyone to see! Well done at cooperating in groups and working together. Above, Group 2.

Group 6

Group 5

Group 4

Group 1

Group 5 final poster

Group 6 final poster

Group 4 final poster

Group 3 final poster

Group 2 final poster

Group 1 final poster

Grits for Grans

Thank you to all the Grandparents who were able to come out to eat breakfast (Grits) with our sweet kiddos. Your children really appreciated you being there for them and loved sharing our school with you. For those that were unable to come this week, you can always join your child anytime throughout the year to eat breakfast or lunch.
Here are some bragging pictures!

Emily and her Grandparents

Blaine and his grandpa.

A.J. and her grandma

Abigail and her grandma

Jake and his grandparents

Brayden and his grandparents

London and her grandparents

Reese and her grandmothers

Brody and his Mom

Isabella and her dad

Caprice and her grandma

Lucas and his grandma

Prewriting

We have been learning about Prewriting this week as our first step of the Writing Process with the six traits writing series (which follows common core). We have talked about strategies that writers can use in order to prewrite. We have also talked about materials writers need in order to write and places where we can write.

Akilah shares her favorite place to write and materials she would need as a writer with her group.

A.J. shares her favorite writing place and materials with her group.

Today we made posters to hang around the room to help get our brains ready to write. If we forget what it means to prewrite, we can look at the posters for ideas on ways to get started. (Writers use prewriting strategies like the 5 W's (What, Why, Where, When, Who?), Ask & Answering Questions, talking to the others for ideas, drawing to get ideas, reading books to get ideas, and creating webs.) Emily, Lucas, & Elijah are creating their poster.

Jaden, Caprice, and Reese are creating their poster.

Morgan, Carter, Brody, & Briana are creating their poster.

A.J., Blaine, & Mason creating their poster.

Isabella, London, Akilah, & Abigail creating their poster.

Blake, Elizabeth & Caden are creating their poster.

iPads in the Classroom

I am so excited that our PTSO has raised enough money last year through our fundraisers, carnival, etc. that they were able to purchase our school its very own MOBILE iPAD LAB....woohooo! We have been using the iPads once a week (at least) to use a fun new app and apply it to something we are learning. The kids are so good with the iPads and are very creative! Check out what we have done. You may want to download the apps at home and have your kids play around with them.

Here is Group B showing me they are ready to get started!

We started off with a "get to know you activity" with the app called "telegami." In this app you can create your own avatar to look like you and design your background, mood, etc. We made our avatars, and then recorded our voices to tell something about ourselves to share with the group. As we recorded the voices, everyone had to go on their own so their voices wouldn't record in another person's video.

Abigail recording her voice.

Elizabeth was proud of her avatar and her background is our classroom (she took a pic of the room).

Ready to share with the group.

Group A is exploring the app and creating their avatars.

Eric is creating his background (he is also taking a pic of the room to use)

Brayden and his avatar.

Jake is super excited to get started on recording.

A.J. exploring the app

Brayden making his way to a quiet area to record his voice.

Blaine (back) and London (front) recording their voices.

We had a fun time using Telegami to introduce ourselves. We will use this app in the future to have our avatars read our stories we create.

Another app we played with this week is the "QR Code Scanner." These QR codes are popping up EVERYWHERE and it's good for the kids to know where they are and what they do/mean. Some kiddos have even spotted them around the school. I had them included in our first couple of weeks' newsletters. Here we are using the QR scanner to scan codes found around the classroom. The code sent the iPad to a sight word that was jumbled up. The kids had to work in partners to find the codes, scan them, and record the unscrambled sight words on a paper. They did a fabulous job. I let them explore alone on their own iPads afterwards. In the above pic, Akilah is scanning a code.