Winter BreakING News

The children came back from break so excited to see each other and share their winter break adventures.  Instead of telling them not talk, I decided to channel their need to share into a writing experience.  We all became reporters and interviewed each other about our winter breaks.  Students asked a series of different questions to their classmates.  For instance:

Did you go anywhere over break?

Who did you spend time with over the break?

Did you read anything over the break?

What did you play with over break?

After several interviews, the students seemed to be well "talked" out.  So we moved to the writing.  The children wrote an article about their winter break.  They had to pretend to be a reporter and include the important details from their break.  The articles are hanging in the hall.  My favorite part is all the pictures of our award winning reporters.  Check out all the breaking news!

Toast to 2018

It was so wonderful to see my Connected Combo today.  I missed them!  I loved the break and time with my family....but I also have the best job in the world.  It was great to be back! We started 2018 at school with a toast....well, toast at least.  As part of our morning snack, we ate toast and "toasted" the new year!  We reflected on 2017 and discussed resolutions.  We, of course,  did some school 2018 goal setting.



The students made a 2018 foldable.  They had to list 2 things they wanted to improve on at school, 0 for something they would like to stop doing, 1 person they want to get to know better and 8 ways to be kind in 2018.  The blue foldable is in your child's envelope.  Check out what they wrote.  Wishing you and yours a happy 2018!

Twas the Night Before

Twas the day before Christmas break and all through the classroom.....

We had such a great day before break.  The students looked cute and comfy in their jammies.  We started the day with a great assembly.  Skyview High School came and gave a Christmas music sampling.  They were fantastic!  Then, we came back to the classroom and made blanket forts! The students had a blast!  While building, some students said this was like S.T.E.M.  Ha!  Sure is!  Once the forts were built, we had a read in.




We had sometime in the afternoon to be crafty.  We made these cute little ornaments and listened to Christmas music.

To end the day, we had a S.T.E.M. challenge. 



These students are so creative and love a challenge.  Their ideas were fantastic, and their presentations of the parachutes were excellent.  The challenge gave us an opportunity to talk about gravity, drag, mass, and friction.  We will be studying flight in the New Year, so this was a fun first taste.

Christmas Kindness

 We have been talking a lot about kindness and spreading love and joy through acts of kindness.  School wide, we have been performing acts of kindness and tracking them with a kindness chain in the hallway.  The week's homework was to perform a random act of Christmas kindness and write down what you did.  I was blown away by the great ideas.  Thank you for your tremendous support with our acts of kindness.

Hour of Code

We are up for this challenge again this year.  We love to code.  Click start to begin writing your lines of code.

START

We celebrated "Computer Science Education Week."  The week was declared to bring computer science into schools and promote student interest in coding.  The Connected Combo wrote over 2000 lines of code.  I see some future programmers in this class.  This year the favorite challenges were programming Minecraft characters, click here to be linked to the challenges.  The students had to solve puzzles to program characters through mazes.  While they thought they were "playing" they were programming with loops, conditionals, and algorithms.  Students used logic and problem solving skills.  The challenges also tested their persistence and "I can" attitude.  As the students moved up in levels, the students received video tutorials by gifted computer scientists in the field like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

You probably heard about our most exciting coding adventure: Dash and Dot, our classroom robots.  The students just love them! Using Dash and Dot and an app called Blockly, students are given missions.  For instance, the children had to program Dash to dance when it hears a clap.  I purchased  these robotic kits through a grant I wrote.  The grant was funded by my hero Mr. Tom Wardell and the Billings Education Foundation.  The students are doing amazing things!  You should hear the squeals of delight when they are successful.

We had so many great coding opportunities.  We played some unplugged games.  Our Osmos have a great coding activity where students manipulate blocks to program.  Of course, we have a couple favorite coding apps on the iPad, like LightBot.