Camp Read-A-Lot

Read~A~Thon, Camp Read-A-Lot started Wednesday, the 22nd!! The children are so excited. I hope you will continue recording those minutes at home. We will be honoring the top three readers, the students reading the most minutes, with a medal.  I know I have several students in contention for a medal. There is also a class trophy for the classroom that has the most students meeting the 300 minute reading goal. I have been telling all the classes that we are going to win! I may be slightly competitive! We NEED that trophy! Trophy and joking aside, this Read~A~Thon will only benefit our students. Extra at home reading makes a huge difference in academic success! Please work hard these next ten days and READ, READ, READ! If I can support you in anyway, feel free to call. Don't forget to join us at Reading Club every morning starting Wednesday, 8:00-8:15 in the library.

We are doing lots to stay motivated at school!  Our entire hallway is decorated to go with the camp theme.  Our classroom has been transformed to look like a campsite, including a reading tent and a fire.  The students are loving reading inside the tent or beside the fire.  Several of our centers this week our camp themed.  Wednesday, the students got a s'mores snack to enjoy as they logged their minutes.



Thanks for keeping me current with the reading logs.  Each time a child reads 30 minutes, they earn a badge.  First graders are collecting badges on sashes.  Second graders each have a banner.  We also have a place for students with 5 or more sponsors to sign.  Signing the wall is pretty cool, but the prizes from Mrs. Wolverton seem to be a bigger hit!  Students are also earning badges for exploring genres of books in class.  Every day during the readathon, we get a genre basket of 20 books from the library.  So far, we have explored poetry, realistic fiction, and mystery.  See if your child can tell you about genre.

We are also participating in some dress up days!  Read my shirt was a blast!  The children loved sharing their shirts, counting words, and even getting together in groups to make sentences.  Ha!  They are so clever.  Flannel Friday was a blast too!  Look at these happy campers!  They look like a group of Read-a-Thon champs to me!  Keep up the hard work.  Camp Read-A-Lot ends Friday, March 31st!

O'Lucky Day

We had a terrific St. Patrick's Day in the combo!  Our day started with a surprise.  Some naughty leprechauns had visited!  They made a mess with school supplies, left green footprints on the tables, and turned the toilet water green.  Tricky!  They even took our treats.  I had made the kids a treat bag with some candies and Lucky Charms.  When we came in, we noticed the green footprints and our BreakOut box!  The leprechaun had locked up all our treats!  Good thing he left clues to help us break out.  There were 4 clues to solve for the four locks.  Students grabbed their lock tracker and got to work.  Look at the concentration!







The best treat of the day wasn't the bags I made, it was the STEM projects!  The second graders presented their leprechaun traps and the first graders got to show off their rainbow bridges.  They all did an awesome job explaining both how their projects worked and the challenges that were involved in the design process.  Great work engineers!

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Blue Raiders Visit

With the NAIA basketball tournament in town, we were so lucky to get a visit from the Blue Raiders Women's team!  The women gave a school wide assembly on important character traits required to be at the top of your game: integrity, responsibility, respect, and sportsmanship.  The Blue Raiders are from Kentucky.  We wore our blue to show our support.



After the all school assembly, we were lucky enough to have the Blue Raiders come down to our classroom!  We did a shoot out graphing activity.  Students were working in groups with our Blue Raider players to count and tally shots.  After collecting the data students had to create and interpret a graph of the makes and misses.  I'm not sure who was having more fun, the college students or the first and second graders!  Hopefully, the extra shooting practice with help our Blue Raiders in the tournament.



Also with the tournament, we took some time to learn how a bracket works.  Every day this week, we have been having morning Tric-Trac tournaments.  Tric-Trac is a math game that can be played on the iPad.  Click here to see purchasing information.  Students would check their bracket partner at the beginning of the day and begin playing.  After the first game, they added their name to the next bracket. 



The first day of tournament play the students needed some guidance to work through the bracket.  By Thursday, I wasn't even making the bracket anymore.  Students used their recess time to come up with the pairings.  The Connected Combo is just the best.  Each morning, when we were down to the final game, we would turn on the game lighting and inspirational music.  The final two played their game in the middle of our morning circle and a champ was crowned.  In each days tournament, I witnessed those important character traits our Blue Raiders discussed: integrity, responsibility, respect, and sportsmanship.  Plus, I think the students had a whole lot of fun while practicing math skills.  Win, win, WIN!

Going Green with Green Eggs and Ham

Friday of our super fun Seuss week included Green Eggs and Ham.  In the morning, we ate green eggs and ham.  Delicious! Thank you to the Ms. Mindi and the Weigums.  The children LOVED it! Of course, we read the famous story.  Then, we did a graph of if we liked Green Eggs and Ham or not.  Most kids did!

Then, we did a rewrite of the story Green Eggs and Ham.  The students had to think of something they didn't like to eat and make some rhymes to go with!  They turned out great! The students had to work really hard on the rhymes.

We not only wore green for Green Eggs and Ham.  In the afternoon, we talked about "going green" for our environment.  We read Dr. Seuss's story The Lorax.  The Lorax has an important ecology lesson about protecting Earth's natural resources.  We read so many great Dr. Seuss books this week.  One of my favorite activities we did this week was writing book recommendations for our favorite Seuss stories.  So much thinking, writing, speaking, and tech-ing went into this project.  First, the students had to formulate their opinions and write a book report.

The second graders went a step beyond the book report.  We recorded their book recommendation in front of the green screen and then added sections of the book behind them.   Here are just a couple examples.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Suess!

  Thursday we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by participating in a school wide read in.  The first half hour of school all the students lined the hallways and just read.  Even the teachers and our principal dropped everything to read.  The Connected Combo wore their unusual hats to school Thursday to celebrate Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat.   Our Scholastic News was all about Dr. Seuss.  We learned many interesting facts about the famous author.  For example, Dr. Seuss collected silly hats because he thought wearing silly hats gave him funny ideas to write about!  It must have worked because he published over 40 books in his lifetime. We had special birthday cupcakes in celebration of Dr. Seuss.

Later in the day, after reading both The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, we did our daily graph.  Click here to hear the book rapped in 6 minutes. At the end of The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss asks if you would tell your mom about the adventure if it happened to you.  The kids answered the question in a graph; however, they didn't use their names....in case moms were going to see it!  Instead we used our "Thing" numbers!   Good news, most kids would tell mom!  The children also loved making the guided drawings of the Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Two.  They did a great job listening to directions and being patient with themselves.  I love that the drawings all turned out different but still look "right." Thanks, Miss Crystal for the fun snack, it was really inspiring during art today.

 We also read and discussed the rhymes in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  Dr. Seuss is a master rhymer.  We made our own rhyming hats. The students worked very hard on their rhymes.  I love how they used their tools.  Many students used word family sliders from around our classroom.  They also used the app Word Wizard.  Word Wizard is a moveable alphabet for $2.99.  The app says the words as the students build them.  It also lets them  know if words are spelled correctly.  So students could build and try words with the word family and check their spelling.  Awesome.  Many students found their hats were getting too big for their desks and had to move to the floor.

It was such a great day celebrating an adored author and illustrator.  Happy 113th birthday, Dr. Seuss!