Ms. Kaley's Classroom Room 24

Hi Everyone!

It came to my attention that the list of projects didn’t post under the projects tab.  Sorry about that!  I had put it on, but it didn’t get saved in order to be updated.  Those project outlines are now up under the Projects tab 🙂

This past week we tried the COW laptops and had all students login and have the program know where they are reading at.  Ms. Misha and I will be making sign in cards and once we get those out then we will have students bring home a copy so they can use the program at home too.  The school is wanting all our students to do 45 minutes per week.  They will at least be getting 20 minutes while at school.  This week only a handful of the laptops will be out so that cultural lessons and Imagine Learning can go on at the same time.

With the early out, the COW, and our salsa making lesson this past Friday, our cultural lessons from last week will be made up this week.

Ms. Leigh’s ErdKinder class visited our room this past Friday and she and I had the children identify different kinds of fruits and veggies and learn how to classify which is which.  After the lesson was over then students helped prepare the ingredients and students got to taste 2 different kinds of fresh salsa.

A social skills lesson our students worked on this week is learning different voice levels and when it is appropriate to use such volumes.  This will be a great segway to our CHAMPS class management system that will help our students be able to know when it is appropriate to use which voice level.

Fall Festival!  Annually MMA hosts a Fall Festival!  This is a time when our students are allowed to show off their Halloween costumes and get to have some fun doing games and events.  In order to help run our Fall Festival the best it can be we do need parent volunteers!  If you log into your Track it Forward, there should be 3 sign ups to choose from.

A message from MAPA:

Purchase your tickets online at:
https://squareup.com/store/mapa-9

Any tickets/wristbands purchased online will be available for pickup at the “ticket drive-thru” or at the will call booth the night of the festival. Pre-sale prices are good now thru October 11th.

Ticket Drive Thru dates will be: October 8, 9, 10, & 11 in the north east corner of the North Shore parking lot from 2:45-3:30 pm or October 8 & 10 from 8-8:30 am

October Field Trip!  Our next field trip is approaching!  Our class, Ms. Jill’s, and Ms. Mikaela’s class will going to Gibson’s Green Acres Farm on October 9th.  This is a Tuesday.  We will need parent drivers and also chaperones.  There isn’t a number as to how many chaperones we can have, so if you would like to stay at our field trip, please email me as soon as you can so I can put together groups.  Out of 3 classes, the farm is asking us to split them up into groups of 5.  This will allow each group to rotate through their stations.  Even though some of Ms. Jill’s and Ms. Mikaela’s students will be with some of our students our parent chaperones will only be responsible for those students in our classroom. Permission slips go out tomorrow (Monday), but if you would like to have a digital copy on hand, here is the permission slip.

Please begin to contact our room mother, Katie, of you are able to make a carpool for other students or you are taking your own child.  Please email her this information by Friday October 5th.  Thanks!

Kaley

Kaley Cover Letter

Parent Teacher Conferences are also on the week of October.  Our first round of conferences will be going over our observations and progress we know so far.  The MMA progress report will be given out and we will begin to make and review goals.  Students are welcome to attend if they would like, but are not required.  We are looking forward to building portfolios for our February PTC.  I will have sign ups for October’s PTC soon 🙂

Have a great upcoming week!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha

Hi Everyone!

Change Project:   Our 1st theme is almost at an end- ending on October 5th.  At Back to School Night there were large manilla folders given out.  If you didn’t attend then your child should have brought it home.  In that folder is project outlines for the year.  Our first project is on change itself.  Please refer to that print out or I have also included it under the Projects tab at the top of our blog.  The due date will be October 12th.

Monday September 24th is an Early Release date.  Please have your child picked up at 1:00pm.

Past Week:

All students are working on writing convention skills and are being taught to use capital letters at the beginning of their sentences, proper spacing, and the role of what a period does for a sentence.  Some writing groups have been working with knowing what a subject vs a predicate is in a sentence.  All students have been part of that conversation, but the practice for all students will continue into this coming week.  I’ve noticed some students needing some extra attention in writing lowercase letters when they are using uppercase letters and sometimes vice versa.  If you see your child not starting their letters at the top or are using capital letters when they should be using lowercase (or vice versa) please bring it to their attention and work on those skills at home too.

Something fun to do to help with your child’s writing and kinds of sentence skills is to hear your child do their 20 minute a day reading and while they are reading aloud have them say *Ping!* when they get to the period that ends their sentence.  As we get into question marks and exclamation marks too, I’ll give you some fun onomatopoeia for them too.  Doing this will allow those readers who read fast to remember to slow down and take a breath and also allow students to see that the sentence being said is a statement.

In cultural this week: History and Zoology

Level 1s: 1st kinds of calendars

Level 2s: Past, present, future writing and sentences. (They all did awesome at this!)

Level 3s: Precambrian life

Level 1s: Vertebrates and invertebrates

Level 2s:  Animal research graphic organizer

Level 3s: Phyla of animals

This coming week I will introduce the mobile cart of laptops for students to work on a reading and math program called Imagine Learning.  This year, it is offered to all levels.  Students complete about 20 minutes each week (more is allowed and encouraged) and this program can also be used at home!  We will have the COW (computers on wheels) every Wednesday afternoons to get the students time in.

Friday we will team up with our Junior High mentor class and learn how to make salsa!

Have a great rest of your weekend and upcoming week!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha

Hello again!

Please let our room mom know if CAN drive and have open seats and are able to take other students. Katie can help you set up a carpool, but is looking to see who has availability 🙂

Please let us know so we can make sure the kids have rides and our class is able to attend the field trip. We are now good on having chaperones, but are just looking for our drivers and who needs rides. Thanks everyone!

Hi Everyone!

Volunteers needed:

I will be out of town beginning Wednesday.  If anyone would like to come volunteer some time to help check off works and help Misha with some afternoon activities then I am looking to 1 person during the times of:

Wednesday morning 8:30-11:00

Wednesday afternoon- 12:45-2:30

Thursday afternoon- 12:45-2:30

Friday afternoon- 12:45-2:30

Past Week and Upcoming Week:

This past week we went over the 2nd Great Lesson: The Coming of Life.  I showed them the Timeline of Life and how life began in the water and then went on to have the Ages of Invertebrates, Ages of Fish, Ages of Amphibians, and Ages of Mammals.  Birds didn’t get an “explosion” period, as other vertebrates did.  Students got the choice to color a timeline of their own.  This coming week I will talk to the students about the 3rd Great Lesson: The Coming of Man.  I don’t dive heavily into this.  I will read a story to them and talk about how their are theories of evolution and how creationism teaches these theories on how humans came to be on Earth.  Teaching them this way helps link all the Great Lessons together.

I am still working on UURC reading tests little by little.  Students worked on their Alpha Math U See placement tests and will continue to finish them and move on to Beta tests this week.

In Cultural this week: Geography

Wednesday afternoon was Geography lessons!  I was able to see the 1st and 3rd graders.  The 2nd graders Geography will be presented as a whole class lesson this coming Thursday as it will involve looking at the states in the northeast.  Students will learn what “demarcation” means and also learn about the Mason-Dixon Line.

Friday our students had their first art lesson with Ms. Trudy!  Ms. Trudy had them work on early cave drawings to tell a story- a great tie in to our upcoming 3rd Great Lesson!

Friday afternoon I read the students about Benjamin Franklin and who he was.  The students will be working on a kite follow up work where they can draw pictures of what Ben Franklin did.  These kites will be due this coming Friday.

This coming week Ms. Lana will be coming in Wednesday morning, Thursday morning, Friday morning and afternoon to teach lessons for me while I am gone.  Ms. Misha will be presenting an art lesson Wednesday afternoon and a Measurement activity.

Thursday is also Back to School Night from 6pm-8pm.  Come get your pretty parent flip book and project overviews for the year!

This coming Monday will also be our class’s 1st whole class Botany lesson with our school’s botanist Ms. Rachael Bush!  We will be at her lesson at 12:35pm-1:25.

Field Trip!

Again, if you can drive students to our field trip, please let Katie James, our room mother know!  misskt2558@yahoo.com  Please also let her know if your child needs a ride so our room mother and room mother assistant can see who needs what and who can go with who.  As your child’s teacher, I am not legally allowed to create carpools for your child.  Certified drivers will pick up in the school parking lot and drivers able to do carpools will park in the North Shore parking lot.  We need to leave at 11:45am, so if you plan on driving, please be there in the parking lots you need to be in at 11:30am.  We will do an early lunch and recess that day (Sept. 21st)

Thanks everyone!  I come back from Maryland Sunday, so we’ll see about a blog post next weekend.

Have a great upcoming week!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha

Hi Everyone!

Back to School Night is this coming Thursday night! I will be out of town for it, but please come to pick up your parent flip book and project overviews for the whole year! I will also have more physical copies of our weekly schedule if you would also like to have that too (it’s in the flip book you will get!)

I believe the time is from 6:00-8:00. Come visit Ms. Misha! She can answer questions about works, schedule, and our classroom.

Hello Everyone!

Permission slips went home with your child Friday.  If your child was absent I have them in the class 🙂  Please have permission slips back to me by September 18th.

Our field trip coming up to Weber State will need parent drivers in order for us to be able to go!  If you can go (even if you told me) would you please email me so I can create a list of the drivers. We are looking for certified and non-certified drivers 🙂  Thank you!  I am also looking for 1 more chaperone who is able to attend the performance.

FYI:

Good Afternoon,

We’re excited to have you and your students join us for our student matinees on September 21^st! Attached is information about parking on the campus of Weber State University at the lot closest to the Val A. Browning Center for the Performing Arts, where the performance will be held. The address of the building is 3950 West Campus Dr, Ogden, UT 84408.

Students can be dropped off by the U shape road in front of the building. If you don’t want to run into traffic with the school busses, you can drop your students off just below, as it’s a short walk up the hill into the building.

If you are planning to stay for the show, be prepared to purchase a parking pass for the few hours you’ll be watching the performance. The total run time of the show is 72 minutes, with no intermission. Seating for each performance will begin 30 minutes prior to the start of the show (9:30 a.m. seating for the 10:00 a.m. show, and 12:00 p.m.seating for the 12:30 p.m. show).

Thank you!

Marian Kedziora

Administrative Assistant

Tanner Dance

Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts & Education Complex

1721 Campus Center Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84112

Office: 801-587-3726

marian.kedziora@utah.edu

Hello!

Our first full week of school days went off to a great start!  This week the students were introduced to their planners, their Scholastic Daily Starter warm ups, and Spiral Math.

Click on this link to see our classroom’s planner: Work Planner 2.0 This year I added little images to help students quickly see the subject area.  This icons will be helpful reminders where to record their work.  The first graders are doing really well with the planner and it will take them a few weeks to get the hang of it.  2nd and 3rd graders are taking to it like ducks to water.  They are old pros and are doing excellent planning themselves when they plan to do their follow up works.

Reminder: if your child isn’t completing their follow up works that are due or part of their lesson I will send a kind reminder email for them to complete their work at home.

Work expectations during normalization: From the first day of school until October 1st is our period of time we call in Montessori “Normalization.”  This is a very important adjustment period for students to learn the classroom expectations.  As the weeks go on during normalization I look at the progress and adjust students work capabilities and also move them to any groups I think they need to be in.  All the groups I have cover most of the same content, but it is just the level of difficulty that is adjusted.  Some times the child is in the right group, but the work needs to be adjusted individually.  Ms. Misha and I always look to see what your child needs.

After normalization ends then I will look at putting together reading helpers.

Field Trip September 21st.: The permission slips are made, we are still waiting to see about transportation.  I have 2 chaperones who emailed me and I can take 2 more chaperone helpers (please email me if you can).  Show is at 12:30pm and should go until around 2:00.

Lessons from this past week:  There are so many lessons I give throughout the week that I cannot mention all of them. however, the schedule that I posted last week and the hard copy I handed out during Sneak a Peak went off to a great start!  I was able to try out our new lesson schedule and all the lessons on that plan were given.  I wasn’t able to complete all the UURC reading tests for the new students, so I am going to work on that this coming week.  Math U See math testing for the beginning of the year began also this week.  All 3 levels were given the 100s chart to see if the basics can be shown.  If your child wrote a number backwards then technically it is marked wrong, but a note is made that they “know” the number and need a numbers handwriting lesson.  I also made notes if your child had to use any of the concrete materials we have in our class to help them complete it.  This week, I will be giving the next tests called the Alpha and Beta tests.  Every level will be given the Alpha first.  It is a test that looks at basic  adding and subtracting using 1 digit numbers (the units).  If your child gets a passing grade on the Alpha and might be able to complete the Beta test, that test has a few parts to it: rounding, multi-digit adding and subtracting, time, and word problems.  Your child will have all of this upcoming week to complete it.

We began working on first writing prompt to see where the kids are.  Our first 12 weeks will be all about writing Narratives.  Each week I will give the class a whole group lesson and then they continue to work on their skills during their writing group and by themselves.

We did History and Zoology lessons this week.

History #1: Big Bang lesson, Story of Time

History #2: Big Bang lesson, Roman Numerals lesson from 1-10

History #3: Big Bang lesson, Clock of Eras

Zoology #1: Living and Non-living

Zoology #2: 5 classes of vertebrates review

Zoology #3: 5 classes of vertebrates review and intro to invertebrates chart

Whole class science Fridays– Intro to Scientific Method and 5 senses walk outside.  Recorded then shared what we saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and felt.

Next week, the students will be introduced to their next daily expectation work called Word Work.  It is a work that each student has in their binder and walks them through daily activities with word exercises.  The next expectation after that will be Text Time.  Another work that will be in their binder. They will be reading passages to work on for the week and answer reading and comprehension skills.  By the week of September 17th, my hope is to have all 3 expectations going simultaneously.

Have a great long weekend!  Happy Labor Day and upcoming week!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha