Ms. Kaley's Classroom Room 24

Hi Everyone!

Assistant Change- It is sad to announce this, but Ms. Emilee has taken a full time position at her other job.  I have not told the kids yet, but I will by the end of this coming week.  If you know anyone who is qualified and would like to apply, please have them send their resume directly to Ms. Stephanie.  The position is posted on teachers-teachers.com too.  We will wish Ms. Emilee the best of luck on her new adventure!   

Mentors- This past week we had our Junior High mentors begin.  They are reading with a total of 4 students for 15 mins each and then they are helping our students with their works for the last half hour they are in our room.

PTC Sign ups!- I posted the sign up sheet for our first conferences!  Please see the post below this one to click on the link and sign up!  See everyone soon!

Project Clarifications- Okay, so to help with any confusion for our first home project, I want to go over some more details.  Their project is not a book report.  The hope is to not confine the students to one project idea, but to let them come up with their own kind of project and presentations.  Our first home project is to help them feel comfortable presenting a project by limiting the “audience.”  This month’s project is all about cultural.  Step 1: Your child is to pick from one of our cultural subjects (History, Zoology, Physiology (only level 2s do this), Geography, Botany (includes Ms. Rachel’s monthly lessons), Australia, Science (from their studio class), and Social studies (from their studio class)). Once they know their subject, they move to Step 2: Picking a lesson they have learned from that subject that has interested them.  Once they know that then (Step 3) they are able to come up with a project idea that they can do. I fully understand that different abilities are going to look varied.  When I mentioned that a piece of writing is needed, that can look like, for example, a picture labeling the parts from a lesson or some simple sentences to explain their project (more of an expectation I would get from a first grader).  However, some students may submit paragraphs or a PowerPoint.  All of these are just some examples that would meet the writing requirement.  The idea is to have the child excited about their learning and have them want to do the project.  

If they would like to replicate one of my lessons, but they get to play teacher with the explanation, then that is fine too.

Your child’s project is due the day you sign up for PTC.  So, if you signed up for Monday Oct. 17th at 4:10pm, then your child’s project is due to me on Monday Oct. 17th during school time (for example).

Please have your child keep their presentation around a max of 5 mins, so that it leaves us time to go over their other areas of learning and development.

Reading volunteers- Ms. Lori began her reading volunteering this past Thursday!  If you would like to help out our classroom with reading, please email me and let know.  Thursdays work well for Lori, so we planned on that day.  If another day works for you, I will work with you 🙂

Group lessons this week:

Level 1s: Great Barrier Reef, the beginning of what a numerator/denominator is in a fraction

Level 2s: Great Barrier Reef, perimeter of quadrilaterals

Level 3s: Great Barrier Reef, word problems, and angles in kinds of triangles

Weekly Writing: Exclamatory, Interrogative, Imperative, Declarative sentence examples

In cultural this week: Geography

Level 1s: Continent review, hemispheres and zones of the Earth

Level 2s: Tectonic Plates and Pangea

Level 3s: Layers of the Atmosphere

Upcoming Week:

PE and Music on Monday.  Please provide some sneakers for PE.

Wednesday afternoon will be our first Computer on Wheels time.  From 12-3 will be our class’ time to do IXL and MyOn while I pull for cultural lessons.

Lockdown drill– Also, on Wednesday we will have our first lockdown drill.  This past week the kids began discussing the clown incidents.  Friday we sat down at class meeting and I answered their questions about the clown incidents.  I told them that some people find that funny and that’s why we are seeing so much of it across our country.  I told them nobody has been killed and that they were safe here at school.  That lead us into what our drill was going to look like.  For your awareness, a lockdown drill at our school would mean that someone in the office would come over the speaker and say, “Please go into lockdown.”  We have a magnet on our classroom door that covers the locking part of our doors.  I keep our door ALWAYS locked.  A teacher would remove the magnet and shut the door.  Lights will be turned off and blinds closed.  Our language area is sort of boxed in and that’s where our students will gather.  Officer Child’s, an officer that patrols our school often, will be walking around during that time.  The idea is to make our classrooms empty.  If for any reason a lockdown was real, we would do exactly what I described.  When we are told so, each classroom has an emergency  bag with snacks, water bags, and books.  We would leave like we would in a fire drill and go to North Shore parking lot.  Each classroom has a parking space that they sit in.  This is where you would go if ever we needed to evacuate our school and parents had to pick up their kids.

Let’s end on a high note!

Fall Festival– Our annual fall festival is this Friday from 4-7.  Tickets will still be at the school on festival day.  You can visit the Maria Montessori Academy of Utah Facebook page to purchase tickets from home.

Picture Day!-  School picture day is tomorrow, Monday!  A picture order form went home this past week. I have Ashley’s so far.  You can also order them online 🙂

Take home reading homework- Homework for students reading at a preprimary-1st grade level began their take home homework.  If you forgot to turn in your folder, please send it Monday.  I print out the new homeworks and hand them out that day.  Any after that will be marked late.

*Alicia, can you email the Halloween/Fall party sign up sheets to the parents.  I’m looking through my email and can’t find the link you sent me!  Thanks!

Have a great weekend and upcoming week!

Cheers!

Ms. K