Sad to say that because of low enrollment this year, some staff members were cut this week. We will certainly miss them! Luckily for 4th grade, those changes won't affect us much. God gave us Ms. Tester and Sr. Rita who have now offered to volunteer at our school.  HOW BLESSED ARE WE!! There are some awesome people in this world that we are blessed to know!

On Fri., we had a coloring competition in our class. The winners will participate in a contest from Milw Public Museum that Sr. Rita is organizing. On Monday, she will be helping our artists complete their contest registrations.

4th grade will be represented by Destiny, Paris, Crystal and Quintasia!!!
Make us proud young artists!!! We're cheering for you!

Children say the best part of our Daily 5 reading program is conferencing! I would have to agree! I love spending one-on-one time helping the kids become better readers. At this point, our stamina is getting stronger and stronger. There are still more interruptions than I would like, but we are progressing. When I can conference with 5 students per day we will meet our goal. Right now, I can usually conference with 3 students without discipline interruption from other students.
In the next month, I will be adding more activities, games and strategies for students to learn and try out.

Thanks to parents who have donated brownie mixes. I'm waiting for the right occasion to celebrate achievement in our classroom----any day now!

I'm still nervous about our field trip to Urban Ecology Center. The students voted for the WI Frog and Toad session. Ugh! I DO NOT want to touch a toad or frog. Yuck yuck yuck! But I'm sure we will have fun and learn a lot about creatures in our community. Can't wait.

Forgot a couple things:

We are still selling Freeze Pops for $1 this week to help pay bus costs on our field trip to Old World Wisconsin.

On Friday, the class store opened!!! Students used their SCS BUCKS to buy various items, including time on the keyboard to compose some music! (A few students did not have money left over to spend, but I'm sure they will work that out for next time.)

We had a rough week! Mostly due to students that still haven't gotten when the appropriate times to talk are in the classroom and also some schedule changes and mishaps.

For instance, on Friday, the leg came off the computer cart and everything fell off of it! Luckily, all the equipment is still working but it took quite some time to snap all the pieces back together and untangle cords. No students were hurt in the crash.

We have some great things for this next week . . music class starts!!! Computer lab starts!!!! I can't wait!!

Students are learning more parts of CAFE and Daily 5. Our stamina has grown. I am conferencing with students. We are going deeper into strategies of Prior Knowledge and Making Connections. Students have been working with autobiography and biography stories.  They were able to check out books in the library on Thursday, unfortunately, many students have not taken my advice to choose books at their reading level. Maybe they will know what I mean after this week when we use our books to write letters comprehending the book in their readers notebooks.

We've been working on many things, unfortunately, nothing to display in the halls yet. Look for something soon! We are putting the final touches on our I Am poems and Self-Portrait drawings.

Some of the summer rust has come off the brains, but we need to chisel away some more! Students are giving up way too quickly when I give them something they have to read and use a small amount of critical thinking skill. Parents, I will be challenging your children to stick with it, find strategies, try, try and try again, before giving up or asking for help too soon. Independence is a quality of middle school (and life) that we are working towards. Besides, there is great satisfaction in overcoming a challenge, your student should feel that satisfaction soon!

That's all for this week! It's a beautiful day, I think I will go mini golfing

It's Friday night, I'm exhausted! We have had quite a week! We practiced and learned 4 parts of the Daily 5 in Reading. The students are using the phrase "breaking stamina" and trying to build their stamina so that next week I can start to conference with individual students. 

We drew Self-Portraits today and I noticed that I have some great artists in my classroom! :-)

We are learning latitude and longitude in Social Studies and that same concept keeps turning up in Math with our coordinate grids.

We started selling Freeze Pops for $1.00 after school as a fundraiser for our field trip. And yes! Today they were actually frozen! Lesson learned: the pops do not freeze when place in the freezer in the box. We will sell them all next week too. Bring your money! Help us pay for the bus!

Parents and Students: DON'T FORGET TO BRING HEAD PHONES OR EAR BUDS! We will need these next week when we go to computer lab.

Mixed emotions today. I'm excited to be putting the finishing touches on the classroom and my plans, but a little sad that the summer went so fast! One more week til BACK TO SCHOOL!

I think I will be ready.   ;-)

I've cleaned, rearranged, painted and cleaned some more. I wish I would have thought to take before and after pictures, but I didn't. :-( 

Mr. Ron and Mr. Brown installed white boards this week and THEY ARE GREAT!! Everything is shaping up quite nicely. A few more days of vacation. . I can't wait to see my old students and meet some new ones!

Paragraph.

I'm working hard getting the classroom and website ready for the new school year.