2/28 - 3/4

 Happy March!

Thank you to everyone that donated to the basket filler project. We collected hundreds of items for foster families in North Eastern Wisconsin. 

I think he was very confused why I was taking the photo, haha!

Upcoming Events:

• 2/28: NDLC day: wear purple

• 3/1: Dress Like a Husky: wear black and white

• 3/2: Wear Kaukauna Gear

• 3/3: Dress like a teacher

• 3/4: Dress like a leader

• 3/4: Knowledge-a-thon and movie celebration, Knowledge-a-thon envelopes due!

• 3/8: 3rd Base due for Timber Rattlers

• 3/13: Daylight Savings Time Starts

• 3/14: No School for Students

• 3/17: Wear Green

• 3/18: Field Trip Forms Due

• 3/25: Field Trip

• 3/29: All bases due for Timber Rattlers Program (see below)

Field Trip

We are going on our next field trip! We will be going to the Paper Discovery Center in Appleton. The form will be sent home on Monday 2/28. The field trip will be the morning of our half day, 3/25. It will be similar to our last field trip where I have 4 tickets provided for chaperones, but all are welcomed! You might have to pay the adult admission ticket price if I get more than 4 interested.

Leader in Me

For the month of March we will move to learning about Habit 6: Synergize. This habit is about a group working together towards a common goal. Every leader has their own strengths they bring to a group, it's important to highlight those strengths while working together! 

Here is a family resource that you could read over and even complete some activities as a family!

3/3-3/4

I wanted you to be aware that I will be out this week on Thursday and Friday using my personal days, in case I am not able to get back to you right away with emails. If there is anything pressing you can call the school and they will pass along the information to the substitute. Thanks!

Researcher's Workshop:

Last week was FILLED with experiments, all having to do with different types of materials and their properties. We tested out materials that had insulating properties that allowed us to hold on to a hot water cup. We also used hot water to test the melting point of different types of candy: chocolate, gummy bears, and hard candy. All experiments were giving me a run for my money, making sure everyone was very careful with the hot water (and not eating melted gummy bears). But of course, the students did great! Here are a few photos I captured:

2/22 to 2/25

 Upcoming Events:

• 2/21 No School for Students

• 2/22: 2nd base due for Timber Rattlers

• 2/22-2/25: Basket Fillers Service Project

• 

• 2/28: NDLC day: wear purple

• 3/1: Dress Like a Husky: wear black and white

• 3/2: Wear Kaukauna Gear

• 3/3: Dress like a teacher

• 3/4: Dress like a leader

• 3/4: Knowledge-a-thon and movie celebration

• 3/8: 3rd Base due for Timber Rattlers

• 3/13: Daylight Savings Time Starts

• 3/14: No School for Students

• 3/17: Wear Green

• 3/29: All bases due for Timber Rattlers Program

Spelling Words This Week:

• does
• were
• any
• right

Reading

The last few weeks we have been working hard on solving longer and longer words. Now we are going to make sure we know what these words mean! We are going to focus on vocabulary and how to figure out what words mean if we are unsure. Some great questions to ask this week while your child is at home are, “Can you show me a word that you didn’t know it’s meaning?” “What did you try to do to figure out what the word means?” “Is there a different word you could put in place of it that would make sense?”

Math

We will be starting math homework back up this week! This week we are continuing to work on telling time. The goal of the unit is to be able to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes. Any extra work you do at home is great! Have them try telling time on different analog clocks around your home.

Photos:

Valentine's Day was great and flew by without me capturing any photos, but thank you for your work getting valentines and mailboxes ready. Students had so much fun passing them out and then looking through their "mail". We had a great day!

2/14 to 2/18

Upcoming Dates:

• 2/14 Valentine’s Celebration, wear red or pink. Also bring in your mailbox for all of the Valentines!

• 2/21 No School for Students

• 2/22-2/25: Basket Fillers Service Project

• 3/4: Knowledge-a-thon

• 3/13: Daylight Savings Time Starts

• 3/14: No School for Students

Spelling Words this Week:

• back
• away
• been
• were
• any
• does
• can't

KAT

Our school-wide Knowledge-A-Thon is quickly approaching. This is one of NDLC’s biggest fundraisers.  We sent home the KAT questions and fundraising envelope last week.

We will be practicing the KAT questions at school during our morning meetings.  However, please take the time to practice them at home too! 

The KAT will be held on March 4th.  This day is meant to be fun, low stress for your student.  We will celebrate as a whole school with Movie and Popcorn too. 

Math:

This week we will take a test on our latest unit about subtraction.

Also, this week we are starting a new unit about telling time to the nearest 5 minutes and organizing data. This week we will focus on clocks, both analog and digital. We will look at how clocks are organized and have games that practice telling time. Any extra work you can do at home with clocks would be great! There are some great apps for practicing telling time but also talking to your kids about it and having them practice reading time at home is all great!

Leader In Me

This week we continue our work around Habit # 5: Seek First to Understand.  We will be talking about honesty.  Students will understand:

–why being honest can be difficult sometimes

–what lying reveals about our character

–the consequences of developing a habit of dishonesty

Reading

In reading we are having lots of fun learning methodical ways to solve words, long words with multiple syllables.  We have talked about splitting longer words between two consonants in the middle of a word, between double consonants, what happens to the vowel sounds between, and more!  If you are reading with your student, be sure to let them work through solving tricky words.  Don’t tell them.  You could stay, “what else can you try? Does that make sense? Does that look right?”

Writing

In writing students are off and writing realistic fiction.  Last week we focused on picking ideas that give us strong feelings. We want ideas that are connected to what we know, what we have done before.  Then we worked on planning an idea.  Taking what we know and adding some twists to it to take the characters through a problem and a solution.  You can support your student by talking about ideas they could write about.  For example: if you were skiing as a family you might say, “this is a good thing to write about.” Then you could practice telling the story together.  Storytelling is a strong link to students being more successful writing narratives.

Photos from 100th Day:

2/7- 2/11

 Upcoming Dates:

• 2/9: 100th Day of School

• 2/14 Valentine’s Celebration, wear red or pink. Also bring in your mailbox for all of the Valentines!

• 2/21 No School for Students

• 2/22-2/25: Basket Fillers Service Project

• 3/13: Daylight Savings Time Starts

• 3/14: No School for Students

Valentines Day Celebration:

We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day with our friends on Monday, February 14th.  Feel free to send Valentine’s boxes and cards as you finish them up at home. We’ll find a place to store them in the classroom. Here is the list of our class:

Leader In Me

Last week we talked about Seeking First To Understand. We did an activity with cup telephones (cups attached with string). Students had to take turns listening and talking.  Thinking about how we need to communicate clearly to be understood and listen attentively to understand.

 We will continue this week by talking about listening with your ears, eyes and heart. 

One way, I as the teacher, have been modeling seeking first to understand is when there appears to be a “problem.” I model stopping to ask the students to explain so that I can better understand.  

Math

We are coming to the end of a very long unit.  We will be taking the end-of-unit assessment this week.  This unit has been very challenging.  We want students to walk away being flexible problem solvers who always look at a problem thinking about the best way to solve it and always asking themselves, “does that make sense.” As readers we teach students to continually ask themselves if the words they solve make sense.  Students need to have that same level of critical thinking in math.  

I have spent a lot of time over the past weeks reinforcing that the exact answer is less important than their process to get there.  So often students are off by one or two, in their answer, but were critical thinkers who followed a process that made sense in solving the problem. 

Reading and Writing

We ended both of our reading and writing units last week.  We are very thankful for all the families that were able to sign on and join us for our poetry café.  The students blew me away with their courage to share! All poems were sent home on Friday in a little booklet they had made. We will be starting a new unit this week about fictional writing.

Our last reading unit revolved around fluency, good habits for reading longer and longer books, and looking for literary language in our stories. We ended our reading unit by creating goal clubs. Students would meet with their club each day and they were helping each other reach their goals. Each day we had a leader of the club that would check in with each member to make sure they were prepared, they would give feedback, and they would give compliments. They did very well with it! Here are a few photos: