A Classroom Elf!

For the past 2 weeks our class has been learning all about friendly letters. We decided that we would write Santa a friendly letter, give him our Christmas lists and ask him to send us an elf on the shelf (Ms.Mitchell REALLY wanted one). Well Santa came through and this morning when we arrived there was a fun little scavenger hunt to refresh our sequencing skills, and to tell the students a little about our elf. They were so excited to see him and can't wait to see where he will be tomorrow morning. Here are a few pics of the scavenger hunt notes and of our little elf himself, Rocky. Ms. Mitchell's favorite thing about Rocky....why his purple and gold attire of course! GO ROCKFISH!!!!

Team Spirit!

This week the school has been celebrating Red Ribbon week to promote drug free students and Anti Bullying. Today the students wore their favorite team jersey to unite our school as a team against drugs and bullying. I may have been a little partial to some students......I think they know who Ms. Mitchell loves! :) HAIL!

Visualize/Analyze Character Traits

Last week we began our 3 week unit on character traits. Today the students put their inferencing skills to the test as they listened to "Brave Irene" being read aloud. Once finished they determined several character traits that Irene displayed in the story. Although the story did not tell us her exact character traits they did give us several clues. Students wrote down these clues to support each character trait they found. "Brave Irene" has been a huge hit with the students this week and they loved getting to hear it read aloud with the use of our technology package. Please ask your child to share this experience with you. I'm sure they can tell you all about Irene :)

Reading Circles

One of my favorite parts of our day is seeing how each of my groups interacts in their reading circles during centers. Yesterday I watched one group while they were together and it made my heart so happy! Seeing them discuss the story, talk about their favorite parts, and work together to answer comprehension questions, was amazing! I hope they continue to work this well together all year haha!

Virtual Pen Pals

My homeroom class is going to be participating in a virtual pen pal project with an English class at the intermediate school. Each week we hope to Skype with the class and discuss some of the things we have been working on. This will be a great way for each class to show of their learning skills! Hopefully if this works well we will be able to have more classes participate in this experiment as well. I haven't shared this news with my students yet but I can't wait to tell them! Thanks to Mrs. Davis at EIS for including us on this project!

Teamwork!!

So I must admit that last year I did a terrible job with my posts. They were very few and far between and I did not at all reach my goal of one post a week. This year I fully plan to reach my goal and keep this promise to myself. One post a week for the remainder of the year! I really want to keep my parents involved in the classroom this year and allow them to see all the great things we are doing. So with that here is post number one for the actual school year.

We've had a great start to our year and I am really excited about the group of students I have. It's funny but I actually went to high school with many of their parents (really am I that old??). I really wanted to try and start the year with a strong bond with my kids and earn their trust. Teamwork is my big word this year and I hope that my kids are just as excited about our team as I am. We started talking about the goals of our team, their goals, my goals, class goals, and we started jotting some things down on post its. I had all the students put their post its on the board and then together we made a t-chart listing all the things they could do to help us reach our goals and all the things I could do to help us reach our goals. I must say that I am truly impressed with their thoughts! I mean look at that t-chart!! Awesome thoughts from my awesome kids! Stay tuned as our year progresses and as we reach some of the goals we have set!

Lesson plans, folders and Scholastic OH MY!!

My Labor Day was spent prepping for the start of school! Ms. Mitchell has been trying to finish up the last few details before the start of school. I've labeled folders, created lesson plans, finished our behavior clip charts, cut out some fun game cards and gotten our first Scholastic Order Forms together (with the help of Saylor). It's been a busy weekend but I think I'm finally ready!!