Friday, September 30, 2011

Fun and Busy!

We had book buddies! (Katherine)
We learned that living things need air. (Warner)
We watched a reading rainbow video about trees and we had to take notes. (Sydney)
We went to transportation day. (Katy D.)
We learned that nouns are a person, place, or thing. (Vivien)
Every single person in the class got to touch the Active Board today! (William)
We played Sparkle for the very first time during our phonics and word block. (Vivien)
We got to look in a race car. (Maizie)
We took the spelling test and then another surprise spelling test. (Caroline)
We got M&M's from the people who brought the old fashioned car to transportation day. (Rafa)
We got to look inside a camper and it was very fancy and big. (Ian)
We did a circle map and a tree map during writing. (Troupe and William)

Check back next week for a video of our class singing the Retell Glove Song!

Monday, September 19, 2011

I have a retell glove on my hand!

We ran out of time for Star Student today! (Katherine)
We learned about the Retell Glove! (Vivien)
When Mrs. Ziegler was telling us about estimation, we learned that a lot of teachers keep candy hidden in their desks. (Rafa)
We learned about celebrations from around the world. (Piper)
For the first time we put our songs and poetry folders in our desk. (Joel)
We learned the five rules of a sentence. (Sydney)
We made a circle map about celebrations. (Katie Grace)
In music I did a crazy dance! (Marcel0)
In music we learned the 101 Dalmations song. (Vivien)
We learned that estimation means guessing a number of things. (William)
In handwriting we learned how to form the letter h. (Harrison)
We brainstormed words for the ap family. (Maizie)
We started new guided reading stations today. (Caroline)

Questions for parents: Can you name a challenging word that belongs to the ap family?

Monday, September 12, 2011

A day in History...

We went to computer and used Starfall to do "All About Me" things. (Katherine)
We did learning stations for the first time today. (Troupe)
We talked about September 11th. (Caroline)
We talked about the two airplanes crashing. (Harrison)
I forgot my book bag! (Katy D.)
I had a good time reading with my reading buddy during learning stations. (William)
We brainstormed new words for our new word family. (Katie Grace)
We blogged today. (Warner)
We learned about the tens frame in math today. (Vivien)
Our T.V. has completely died, and it doesn't work anymore! (Joel)
We sadly ran out of time to do Star Student. (Maizie)
We learned what the Pledge of Allegiance really means! (whole class)

*Question to Parents: Can you name a challenging word that belongs to the "an" family?

Friday, September 9, 2011

Our first blog of the year!

Our first blog of the year!

Today we learned about conflict. (Vivien)
We had our first auction. (Rhodes)
We talked about patterns and some kids got to make a pattern on the active board. (Katherine)
We told Mrs. Ziegler our lunch numbers and since we all got them right we each got 5 cents! (Ian)
We ate snack earlier than normal. (Joel)
Today we watched a Franklin video to learn about conflict and how to deal with conflict. (William)
Officer Tuttle came to our class and talked to us about being a police officer. (Joel)
Officer Tuttle brought her puppet. (Marcelo)
Officer Tuttle read the book called "Officer Buckle and Gloria." (Vivien)
In music we sung happy birthday to Troupe and Rafa. (Piper)
Troupe brought doughnuts for his birthday. (Piper)
We took our very first spelling test today. (Rhodes)
Rafa was our star student and we learned that he has two cats. (Sydney)
We learned that Google can help you spell a famous persons name! (Marcelo)
We had a practice tornado drill!


A note from Mrs. Ziegler: We have had 11 wonderful days together! This is such a wonderful group of children and I can tell that we are all becoming fast friends. Today was very busy but I am excited to say that we got EVERYTHING on our schedule done except for one last discussion about the learning stations we will start on Monday! I wanted to explain Marcelo's comment from above about Google as well; Rafa was our star student this week and one of the things he shared with us is that he loves tennis and Roger Federer is one of his favorite players (along with Rafael Nadal). So we wrote this information on Rafa's Star Student chart but then as soon as we finished I told the class that I wanted to make sure I had spelled Roger Federer's name correctly so, right in front of the class (the projector was showing them my computer screen and everything I was typing) I googled Federer's name to make sure I had it right. Warner was surprised and curious about HOW I could spell it for google if I didn't know how to spell it. Great question! So I used it as a teachable moment and we spent about 60 seconds trying a few other names as well. For Rafael Nadal I just typed in the first three letters before Google automatically showed Rafael Nadal as a choice search, For John Isner we just typed "Joh" before he popped up on the list of possible search topics (this one really surprised me because I figured "John" was such a popular name that surely Isner wouldn't pop up until I began on his last name), we also did Taylor Swift which popped up after typing "Ta". Amazing. Knowing the huge role technology will play in the lives of these children is very important so anytime a teachable moment regarding technology comes up, I always run with it! I felt the need to explain this comment so you wouldn't think we are just spending our time aimlessly searching for famous people on the Internet, LOL!

Friday, May 27, 2011

Zachary Finds Some Swimming Creepy Creatures

We kept practicing and practicing our reader's theater. (Jayden)
We found little tadpoles (or something) outside and brought some in to look at with our magnifying glasses. (Preston)
We played sparkle this week for the first time this year! (Grace)
We wrote letters to fairytale characters. (Virginia)
We were supposed to have a fire drill today just for practice but we think it was cancelled because it started raining. (Connor)
Dallia lost two teeth two days in a row while she was brushing her teeth!(Will)
EOG's were this week but they are finally over! (Dallia)
We read our reader's theaters to our book buddies. (Caroline)
Next week we are going to take our EOQ math test. (Emily)
When the EOG's were going on this week we could not go to the front playground so we went to he back and for specials we went to the media center to watch reading rainbow! (Helen)
Today for math we worked on some time word problems. (Ford)
We decorated our pictures of fairytale characters. (Michael)
We shared some more Flat Stanley's this week. (Jacob)
Eleven Flat Stanley's have been shared so far. (Jayden)
Yesterday we had our compliment party. (Emily)
Mrs. Douglass might come visit us on Tuesday and she might bring doughnuts for us! (Connor)
I think the things we found on the playground are baby salamanders. (Michael)
We made up a new game called "Guess my State." (Ella)

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Annoying Gnats...

In music we watched part of a video about Nursery Rhymes. (Connor)
Only 17 more days of school left! (Michael)
We had a gnat problem in our classroom so the man from pest control came to take care of it; we found out that they were coming from the plants outside our windows. (Virginia)
We are learning about fairy tales. (Grace)
Yesterday Mrs. Tuohy came as our mystery guest. (Marie)
Tomorrow night is May Fest! (Luke)
Saturday is the Fun Run! (Emily)
We asked our mystery guest a bunch of questions. (Will)
Mrs. Tuohy brought a nurses jacket and a stethoscope. (Calloway)
We reviewed our 3-D shapes today. (John)
Mrs. Tuohy helps the Ronald McDonald House. (Michael)
We are doing a summertime countdown! (Caroline)
We finished our fairytale book reports today. (Calloway)
Today for phonics and word block we played Cherry Pie! (Emily)
We had a word problem for morning work that had my name on it! (Preston)
I got unpacked and started my morning work in just 3 minutes this morning! (Hampton)
For one of our stations we are doing Read the Room and all the words are written on sailboats. (Helen)
Zachary and I both lost our teeth on the same night this week. (Virgina)
Virginia read her tooth tale this morning. (Patrick)

Friday, May 13, 2011

Playing Scoot, loosing teeth and writing to our pen pals!

Today we were supposed to go to art but we actually got to go to P.E. (Connor)
Today we finished the math game called SCOOT! (Virginia)
Today we read the letters from our Pen Pals and then wrote one back to them. (Calloway)
My tooth came out! (Hampton)
For our spelling test today Mrs. Ziegler used one of our challenge words to give this sentence: "Last night Jackson was running around the house as if he were insane!"(Ella)
Almost EVERYONE finished their rain forest animal research project. (Helen)
I get to take the tooth journal home! (Dallia)
Today is Whitaker Spirit Day. (Virginia)
Today we had a minute math test. (Luke)
We have started SpellWell. (Hampton)
We had inside recess today. (Marie)
For minute math some of us got huge papers with a lot of problems. (Michael)
There are only 21 days left of school! (Ford)
Next Friday is May Fest! (Caroline)
Inside recess ROCKS! (Jayden)
Last night was the talent show and my sister was in it. (Helen)
Ford's minute math test already had the answers printed on it so Mrs. Mowad had to make him a new one! (Ella)
On our minute math test Mrs. Ziegler accidentally gave us 15 extra seconds! (Zach)
Ford lost the lid to our old estimation jar so Mrs. Ziegler got a new one for us today.(Luke)
We tried to blog this morning but Blogger was not working!(Patrick)
Today is my Pen Pals birthday!(John)

Question for Parents:

Have you ever had a pen pal? If you have, who was it and how did you know them?