Ms. Kaley's Classroom Room 24

Hello Everyone!

Track It Forward ride sign up reminder:  Please remember to let me know what your child’s ride will be through track it forward.  Our field trip is next Tuesday on March 5th.  It will be an afternoon field trip.  Pick up is at MMA at the North Shore parking lot at 12:30pm.  Students will eat lunch prior to going.  We will meet at Union Station Museum on 25th street around 12:50ish. Our tours and lessons begin at 1pm and go until 2:30pm.  Pick up will be at the Museum at 2:30pm.

Spelling Bee Tuesday!  This Tuesday the 26th will be Spelling Bee day!  We have our top spellers ready to do their best for Tuesday’s Bee day.  Our spellers will be: Franky, Alex, and Jax.  Joseph is our alternate in case someone is absent or backs out.  The Lower El Bee will be from 9am-10am.  Parents are welcome to come and watch.  Parents with those students in our bee are highly encouraged to be there to support their student.

Wednesday– Class Pictures rescheduled day!  With the snow last week, we didn’t have everyone.  Again, we will try this Wednesday!  Our class and other the other lower el classrooms will attend a Storytelling festival assembly in the afternoon at 1:30pm.  Any cultural lesson we don’t get to will be made up Thursday.  WSU is also bringing us science boxes.  Our 3rd graders will work with the dinosaur box this Wednesday

Black History Month in Class Project:  This coming week is History Week for our school.  The Junior High is preparing their projects for March 5th’s presentation day, but for our lower elementary each classroom is running activities, lessons, and readings on a topic of their choice.  Our classroom will be honoring February’s Black History Month.  We have been reading Scholastics and we also did a learning on George Washington Carver (the inventor of peanut butter) this past week.  This coming week the students will get to choose an African American to learn more about.  We will hang up our classroom’s research and displays outside our classroom.

As we get into March we will honor Women’s Month.  This theme’s new bucket is Interdependence (Feb 25th-April 12th).  We will focus on cultural acceptance, peace lessons and how things we know and use have progressed over time (clothes, food, inventions etc.).  We will also move from the USA states to begin a South America study.  The last theme, Liberty and Justice for All will be a North America study.

We are reaching a stage in our curriculum where reviews will begin to take place on lessons already learned.  New language lessons pertaining to our word study and grammar towers are tapering off for some levels.  As we get into March I am going to hold lessons on poetry, figurative language, storytelling, and combine what they have learned in word study and grammar into these lessons.  Next week we will get into new writing lessons on opinions as well that will take us to the end of the year.

Have a great upcoming week and rest of your weekend!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha

Hi Everyone!

Thanks to all that attended PTC with their child last week. I really enjoyed showing you our portfolio layouts and some of the snipits of works we do in the classroom!

This past week we had a great time working with who is trying to be in our Spelling Bee on February 26th, our Valentines crafting and activity morning, and Store Day.

This coming week there are a few things:

Tuesday- I have a morning meeting. Lessons will still go on as needed. During the evening is a free family Skate Night at Classic Fun Center in Layton. I believe that begins at 5:30.

Wednesday-Wednesday is Box Tops Day! It goes from 11am-1pmish. Wednesday will also be our class picture day of our school’s yearbook. This will happen at 8:45am.

Friday afternoon will be the bird show from Scales and Tales. Our show will be at 1:30pm

Our school is doing a schoolwide History Week event next week. Our classroom will be doing an in class learning and activity regarding Black History Month. Our little project activity will be displayed outside our classroom.

Hope you all are having a great long weekend and Happy President’s Day!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha

Hi Everyone!

Upcoming Week

Parent Teacher Conferences!– PTC is this coming week!  They begin on Wednesday the 13th and go until Friday the 15th.  My times start at 1:30pm.  On Wednesday at 1:45pm is my daughter’s PTC.  Since Wednesday turned out to be our busiest day, I will be there for that first conference halfway through.  These conferences are student led!  Our students have been working on samples to show in their portfolios.  We will not be handing out a progress report like before.  Since it is February, Utah’s state standards are goals for students to accomplish by the end the year.  If your student hasn’t mastered the standard yet, then they have until the end of the year.  Children learn at different paces and different ways, so please keep that into consideration.  Our portfolios have some really nice examples in them, so it should be fun for them to share!  I also will have DIBELS reading testing for the middle of the year also to give out.

Please sign up on Track It Forward at www.trackitforforward.com.  Sign in, click on event signs up (a green button) and find either Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday to sign up under the Ms. Kaley’s PTC!

Field Trip!– We have an afternoon field trip coming up on March 5th.  I have the information sheet to hand out to you.  If your child needs a ride or you can do a carpool then you can state that on our sign up sheet we will have out.  I will then send that information over to Katie, our room mom.  We will be going to Union Station on Tuesday March 5th.  We will need parent transporting for this field trip.  Pick up will need to be at 12:30pm.  We will arrive to the museum at 12:50pm.  Our tour and workshops are from 1:00pm-2:30pm.  Pick up will be at 2:30pm and then any kids needing to be transported back to MMA will then go home at regular dismissal. Our students will be learning about Utah History and American history as part of our USA studies for the year.

Valentine’s Day! -This Thursday is Valentine’s Day!  We are planning to have a Valentine’s Day activities morning in class since it is an early out day.  Students will be able to do a few crafts, some writing activities, decorate a Valentine’s Day “mailbox” for cards” and be able to distribute Valentine’s Day cards they bring in.  If your student has a piece of candy as part of their Valentine passing out then all cards and treats will go and stay in their bag.  Once they are done school and have permission to have some then they may.  To make distributing quick and easy, I recommend your student just writing their name on the “from” section instead of wondering about names in the “to” section.

Wednesday– Spelling Bee testing day!  I will be testing our students to see who will represent our classroom in the Lower Elementary Spelling Bee on February 26th!  If your student is not wanting to participate in trying for the Bee, please have them do something creative with the list of words and have that in on February 26th.  This past week we had a fun Pokemon story written that was submitted because that student didn’t want to do the Bee.

Friday– It’s STORE DAY!  This is some of our student’s favorite thing that we do!  We will be doing it twice this year and this our first round.  Our students have been earning classroom money and some students have created little businesses to earn money from others.  Our students have learned about the responsibility of having a wallet and not to leave it around.  They have also learned about money exchanging and how that works.  For Store Day, students may bring items to price and sell.  These items they choose might be baked goods, snacks, crafts, books/games/toys no longer wanted (but good enough for someone else to have), a service (I’ve had some girls wanting to do nails). Talk to your student about fair pricing.  If your student has a big ticketed item and wants to do an auction, please help them prepare for that.  Store Day lasts most to all of our morning.  At the end of the year we do Store Day again with earning and this time owing.  The stores also get larger as we team up with multiple upper elementary classrooms.  Have your child bring on Friday: a blanket or towel to set up their “store,” small shopping bag to carry items, and if your child is selling some kind of food item please have it packaged up for easier buying and storing.

Tuesday– On Tuesday we will have our monthly Botany lesson with Ms. Rachael.  This will be from 9:35am-10:25am.  3rd graders will still go to computers and will join us in the Library after computer class is over.

Past Week:

This past week we got everyone back into their Large Maths.  The 3rd graders exceeded the expectations on missing multipliers/multiplicands/products, so we will advance them with more division practice next time.  1s graders got back into their stamp games and 2nd graders reviewed addition with triple addends to add up.  We did some Zoology lessons as well as Geography/3rd grade science.  2nd graders caught up on their History from last week.

Level 1s: Birds and external parts of a bird, The Compass rose and directions in the town game

Level 2s: Fundamental Needs of Humans continued, Metamorphic Rocks

Level 3s: The Earth/Sun/Moon relationship

It’s a Boy!  We got the call on Wednesday late afternoon that I am expecting a boy 🙂  The kids found out Friday and were very excited to finally know (as was I!)

Have a great rest of your weekend and upcoming week!  See you at PTC this week!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha

Hi Everyone!

PTC Reminder!

Reminder that PTC begin next week on Wednesday the 13th and are until the 15th.  Please visit Track it Forward to sign up for your time slot.  Right now we have 11 students signed up for their conference.

Past Week:

This past week we completed character ed from the Boosterthon group and then ended our week with the Fun Run!  Thank you to all those who contributed pledges.  Our class got up to 30 pledges!  On on class’ Pledge-o-meter we accomplished obtaining the Read-a-thon incentive.  On Friday the 8th of this week we will plan for students to bring in their favorite books to read.  They are allowed a pillow and blanket to use while they read.  They may bring multiple books.  Please make sure their names are in their books, just in case.  Thanks!

3rd graders checked in with me on their rounding skills.  We did larger numbers rounded to the 10s and 100s place.  1st and 2nd graders did a math standard check in on adding and subtracting within 20.  The answers or the numbers they are solving with are no over 20.  1st graders checked in to see if they understand the difference between signs and if they know what to do with them.  2nd graders had the same problems to solve, but the goal is to have 2nd graders fluent.

We went over Spelling Bee this past week and some students are already practicing.  Students have 2 choices when it comes to participating.  They may try their best testing to see if they are one of our top spellers.  I am going to start with small groups and then the winner from each of those groups will then go on to compete against one another.  This will let me know our two 2 spellers.  The student who comes in 3rd will be the alternate.  Even if a student doesn’t become one of our winner and still tries their best spelling then their participation counts towards this theme’s Spelling Bee contribution. Those students who do not want to spell towards the Bee will use the words on the Spelling Bee list I printed to come up with something creative to show me and Ms. Misha.  They must use the words not the list, but not all of them (just a few).  Students can create a game with the words, make extension works for our classroom, create a story, make silly sentences etc.  I am wanting to know the student’s choice by Friday.  Next week on the 13th I am going test for our top spellers.  The winners from our class will then have some time to study before the 26th of February.

Upcoming Week:

Nothing too much is coming up this week.  We will have an Earthquake drill Tuesday and we have Art on Friday from 8:40-9:30.  Everything else will be normal to our schedule.  There is some snow and winter weather moving in for the first half of this week, so please drive carefully this week with the rain and snow.  Please provide your child appropriate outside gear for recess.

If you want your child to have pizza on Fridays, please have pizza money to the front office by Tuesdays.  The form can be found on the MMM normally.

Baby on the Way!– This past Friday I announced to the class that I am pregnant 🙂  I am due in August as school starts back up.  Please remind your child to help me out when it comes to clean up time and helping out around the classroom.  It is helpful as I get bigger and helps me feel reserve my energy.  Thanks!

Skate Night Coming Up!  A Skate Night is coming up on February 19th.  A flyer to take home should be sent home soon.  Please refer to the MMM too for digital copies of those flyers.

Have a great upcoming week and Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

Ms. Kaley and Ms. Misha