Last Day of School

Hello families!
I just wanted to send a quick note to say thank you for sharing your children with me this year.  They have changed, grown, worked through bumps in the road, stretched themselves, and I think most importantly...believed in themselves.  I am very proud of who they are and they should be too.  We gave them flashlights today with a little note saying "You shine the most when you are _____".  Each child has a word written just for them.  I expressed to them that when they enter those doors next year in September for third grade, to remember their word, to remember they can do this, and that they are ready!

Thank you very much for the flowers and gift.  It is greatly appreciated and thoughtful.
I wish you all a wonderful summer!
-Megan DeKing

Week Ending 6/8/18

Hello families!
We've had a busy week getting ready for our field trip, today's family time, and much more.
This blog will be a little different format as there's a few things really important to call attention to.

Thank you for coming in this morning.  I am truly proud of each of them.  They have come so far in their own ways and they need to be proud of themselves and remember who they are as they head into 3rd grade!   The words they used to to describe themselves are now on their lockers so they can see them each time they are there during the day.  The words they chose are an indication of a group that is ready to move on and ready for the world!

Important information:

• Color Day will next Tuesday, June 12, starting first thing so please be sure your child has a good breakfast, puts sunblock on at home, brings a water bottle with their name on it, and arrive to school on time.  
• Monday, June 18th is the Book Swap!  Please send in some gently used books (send early next week) the kids can swap for new-to-them books for summer reading.  
• Friday, June 22, is our last day off school with a 12:00 dismissal.

Our field trip yesterday was great!  HUGE thank you to those parents who chaperoned!  Our class wrote letters at the end of the day about the trip and it was wonderful to read all the fun they had, the excitement showed through in their letters!  

Here's some pics from our day:

Week ending 6/1/18

Hello families!
Can you believe it's June already?  We've been very busy this week finishing things up and moving on to our final sets of units for the year!  3 weeks left this year!

Important information:

• Color Day is scheduled for next Tuesday.  Your child came home with a sheet the other day regarding their color.  Please have them dress according to the weather as well.  
• Field trip information is below.  Please read it carefully.  
• We hope we'll see you at our family celebration next Friday at 8:30!  It will last about 30 minutes.  
• The last day of school is June 22 and dismissal is at 12:00.

Field trip information:

• Field trip is Thursday, June 7th.
• Please send your child to school with a lunch with your child's name on the bag.  Please send it in disposable packaging such as a brown paper bag or large Ziploc bag.  Thanks for your help with this!
• Do not send money with your child.  We will not be visiting the gift shop and the chaperones have been told this as well. 
• It is very important that your child arrive to school on time that day as we will be loading the buses shortly after gathering together.  

Homework:

Now that June has arrived there will no longer be homework assignments for the remainder of the year.  However, reading practice is always important.  Please continue to read nightly now and through the summer as it is very important to maintain all the growth they've made this year.  

3, 2, 1 things you should now about our week...

3 math activities we completed were working on counting base 10 pictures and quickly identifying groups of 100s, 10s, and 1s and adding accurately.  

2 science ramp testing we completed was studying what happens when the ramp gets steeper and what happens when friction is added to the ramp. 

1 writing activity we completed was our last opinion prompt of the year.  Students wrote about their favorite summer activity! 

Week ending 5/18/18

Hello families!
We've had a great busy week!  We've been wrapping up our math and butterfly units and delving into our writing workshop unit.

Important information:

• If you have any tissues, cleaning wipes, or paper towels...we would love them!
• Please begin sending your child in with 2 paper bags.  1 will be for artwork after the art show and 1 will be for our work at the end of the year. 
• Color day is June 5th and our Museum of Children's field trip is on June 7th.  More info coming soon.  
• Save the date!  Friday, June 8th, 8:30 we will be having an end of year writing celebration.  We hope you can join us!  

3, 2, 1 things happening in room 250!

3 science activities we completed this week were identifying the parts of a butterfly, comparing a moth and a butterfly, and identifying and drawing the stages of the plant life cycle and butterfly life cycle.  Today we let the butterflies go and the students' loved it!

* Ask your child to name 4 parts of the butterfly.  

2 writing strategies for poems we worked on were writing poems with line breaks to make our poetry more interesting to the reader and writing poems based on wonderings or questions we had.  

* Ask your child what they have been writing about in poetry.

1 fabulous activity we had this week was a visit from Mr. Joe and Ms. Vida from Ghana.  They are wonderful, engaging, and share so much knowledge with the students!  

* Ask your child their favorite part!

** Be sure to check your email for some pics from their visit!

Week Ending 5/11/18

What a beautiful week it's been!  The weather has been so great to get outside, play games, run around, and just enjoy the warmer temperatures.  I hope you've been able to get outside for some family time as well.

Important information:

• The Art Show is Thursday, May 24th in the evening.
• There is no school on Monday, May 28, for Memorial Day.  
• If you have any wipes, paper towels, or tissues, please send them in for us! Thank you!
• If you're looking for some great Fun Friday activities to do with your family this summer, here's a list of free things going on all summer: Free Friday Summer Activities

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week here in Room 250...

3 math activities we worked on were solving a stretch your mind problem called Color Day and determining the distance and the time it would take to get across the gym.  This is important because it allows students to solve the problems as their mind sees it and gives an opportunity to explain how they solved it to other students in the class.  We talked about how we may get to a specific answer...but how we got there could be very different and that's part of being good mathematicians.  In math we also talked about how measuring with one common tool is important such as a meter stick, versus different sized kids, and then we practiced measuring each other with a tape measure and comparing our heights, and more.

2 activities we completed in science were observations of our growing caterpillars and chrysalis and we also observed our growing plants.  Many of them are much higher than last week!  

* Ask your child what they noticed about their plants.

1 new unit we began this week is poetry for reading and writing.  This week we focused on how poet's decide what to write about, poets write what they know,  and what or who is important to us so we have ideas to write about.

* Ask your child one idea they wrote on their poetry heart.  

Have a great weekend!

Week Ending 4/27/18

It's finally starting to feel like Spring these days!
We've had a busy week wrapping up some units and we started sharing the China projects as well.

Important information:

• Thursday, May 3rd, is an early release day with dismissal at 12:30.
• China projects are due on Monday, April 30.  This project is a great way for your child to be showing how they can manage a long term project and be proud of it in the end.  Please be sure they are here on Monday.  The expectation of a due date are very important.  
• If you have any extra cleaning wipes at home, we'd love to have them!  

3, 2, 1 things we've been doing in room 250...

In reading workshop, we listened to many stories and we learned how camels got their hump, how beetles got their beautiful colors, and why the turtle's shell is cracked.  

* Ask your child about one of those stories.

2 math skills we've really focused on this week were measuring and data. Students needed to measure carefully arm spans and jumps of those on their team.  They showed great team work and I was impressed with how they worked together and supported each other.  We then took that information and created a bar graph and frequency line to discuss what we noticed.  

1 China lesson we finished up was learning about the Chinese New Year.  

* Ask your child to tell you one thing they learned about the Chinese New Year.

Week Ending 4/13

What a beautiful day today!  I hope this is the start of warmer weather and more sun!

I hope you all have a wonderful break.  Be safe, have fun, do activities together, and enjoy the time you have together!

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week...

3 math activities we worked on were the Coin Task and students could choose which task they worked on.  If they felt they wanted to stay with the coins and find the combinations, they could do that or they could choose to try the next coin task which gave less information and required some more thinking on their own.  We also worked on Hitting the Target, where again students could choose to work with whichever set of numbers they felt comfortable with.  On Thursday, we worked on using an open number line but the way (the jumps) could be however they were comfortable with as long as they could explain their strategy.  We also started working on compensating numbers and some students chose that way to solve as well.
* Giving students more choice with which task they are working on has added a nice buzz to the classroom and it's interesting to see that they are really picking which task fits them.  Knowing which task is right for them is a wonderful skill and we've asked them how they felt about their choice to reflect.

2 Pourquoi stories we heard for a read aloud and practiced reading with a partner for fluency, teamwork, and reading practice were How Grandmother Spider Got the Sun and How Chipmunk got His Stripes.  We also heard as a read aloud, Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears.
* Ask your child how Chipmunk got his stripes?

1 lesson we worked for social studies was focusing on the urban and rural areas of China and comparing the 2.
* Ask your child one thing they saw in the urban areas and one they saw in the rural areas.

Week Ending April 6

Hello families!  Can you believe it's April already?  We have less than 50 days left this year!

Important information:

• If you'd like to do some book shopping for yourself or for our class, you can do so at this link and browse books for your child and shop the Wishlist for our class. Book Shopping
• Please send in any tissues, paper towels, or wipes you may have a home that you could donate to the class.  Thanks in advance!
• The week of April 16th is vacation week.  

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week:

3 skills and activities we've been working on during reading workshop are identifying the lesson in the fables we've read, reading fluently with our partners a fable and deciding whether to read together or take turns, how to help each other with words respectfully if needed, and how to read like we talk, and today we are working on readers theater for fables.  Reader's theater helps students read fluently, build their confidence to read in front of the class, and allows for another expression of fables.

* Ask your child which reader's theater they participated in today.  

2 math skills we worked on were telling time and making/showing arrays. Since students have reviewed time before and arrays were easy to catch on to, students were given three choices each of those days to work on which area of time or arrays they felt they needed to the most.  The activities available were anywhere from practice telling time, to elapse time, to solving a larger problem using timing of a football game.   The arrays activities were also a variety from the basic skill, to showing more thinking, and to using different numbers.  Students are working on how to choose an activity that is just right for them, what to do if it's too easy or too hard, and how to reflect on their math choice that day.  We've been having more professional development in the Responsive Classroom area of academic choice and I'm really looking forward to adding more of it into our regular routine.  

1 fun visitor we had today was the Museum of Science sharing with us a presentation on Life Cycles. 

* Ask your child, "What is the largest living thing?"  Parents - Do you know what the largest living thing is?

Week Ending 3/23

This has been a busy week,

Important Information:

• Even with the temperatures becoming a bit warmer, be sure to still send snow pants and boots so your child can go on the field and the play structure at recess as it's still snow covered. 
• Friday, March 30, there is no school.

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week...

3 math skills we worked on this week comparison number stories, understanding and discussing data, and stretching our minds with some more logical and thoughtful work.  

2 stories we focused on as we began our folktales tale unit were The Lion and the Mouse and The Ant and the Grasshopper.  We have been working on understanding what folktales are, comparing them to realistic fiction, and understanding the lessons in the stories we read.  

Ask your child what the difference is between folktales and realistic fiction and what the lesson was in The Ant and the Grasshopper. 

1 activity we did was fly to China.  We were visiting Mexico and now we've moved into China.  Perfect timing for our field trip today to the Chinese Cultural Center.
Ask your child 3 activities we participated in on our trip.

Week Ending 3/9/18

Hello families!
What  a busy week it was, even with a snow day.  I hope you all were able to enjoy some family time together and stayed safe and warm.

Important information:

• If we missed a conference due to the snow day, I'll be sending you an email from Sign Up Genius to reschedule.  
• Our field trip the Chines Cultural Center is on Friday, March 23rd.  More specific info to come next week.  
• Please remember boots and snow pants for days when there's snow on the ground.  Thanks!

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week...

3 literacy skills we have been focusing on using the text Ivy and Bean have been making predictions using evidence from the text to show why you're making that prediction, identifying how the characters have stayed the same or changed so far in our reading, and understanding what a turning point is in the story.  

*Ask you child what the turning point was in our book.  (The turning point was when Ivy wanted to help Bean hid from Nancy and they began to become friends.)

2 math skills we've been working on (and are finishing up this week) are understanding how old someone is based on their year of birth and how old that person will be when we are their age.  

* Ask your child to figure out how old a family member is by giving them the year, such as 1958.  They will solve on an open number line starting at 2018 and working backwards to 1959 to determine that person's age.  THEN ask them to figure out in how many years your child will be that person's age.  Lots of math thinking and discussion happens here!

1 writing/social studies skill we're finishing up this week is completing our non-fiction informational books on Mexico.  We have brainstormed chapters, researched, and now it's all coming together for a final project.  It's so exciting!