This week we are celebrating Dot Day!! The Dot by Peter H Reynolds is one of my favorite books! It is also one of my favorite times of the year when we celebrate that we all have greatness inside us, we just need to make a mark and see where it takes us!!
After a couple of days out for the hurricane and finishing testing for 1st, 3rd and 5th graders, we are finally back to normal days! This week we are celebrating Dot Day!! The Dot by Peter H Reynolds is one of my favorite books! It is also one of my favorite times of the year when we celebrate that we all have greatness inside us, we just need to make a mark and see where it takes us!! After listening to the story, kindergarten students are turning a dot into a picture. The older students are using Quiver to color a dot that they can move in virtual reality!!
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It was wonderful to have an extra day off this weekend!! I got to spend it with my family and closest friends watching my beloved Gators play (and not win!)
I was excited to come back on Tuesday to try something new with my classes. I had Nearpod lessons for K, 1, 2 and 4th grades this week. Nearpod.com is great tool to turn slideshow type presentations into interactive learning. Kindergartners did a lesson on Fall. They learned all about the season and got to draw and answer questions as we went along. 1st graders had a landforms lesson. We visited different landforms, as well as drawing pictures, answering questions and even playing a game. 2nd graders had a lesson on Sequoya. They got to learn all about this Cherokee Indian, and explore and practice the Cherokee alphabet he created. 4th graders took a virtual field trip to New York City to practice map skills. Overall, every class loved this fun way to be an active part of their learning. We will definitely be using Nearpod many more times this year!! It was an exciting week with the solar eclipse on Monday. What an amazing phenomenon to get to experience. Then, Tuesday was picture day, so big smiles all around!! Kindergartners got to listen to Book Book Book by Deborah Bruss. They are learning about animals in their classrooms, so we read about animals trying to get something fun at the library. They enjoy the story and we finish off by singing a version of Old MacDonald. 1st graders are continuing their book care lessons. After listening to the funny story Do NOT Bring Your Dragon to the Library by Julie Gassman, students created Chatterpix videos of book care rules we have learned over the past few weeks.
2nd graders have used Pic Collage to show the non fiction text features that they have found in non fiction books. They worked with a partner to identify and label the text features.
Happy 2017 school year!! We have had a busy couple of weeks starting out the school year!! We have gotten through all the grades orientations. It is always fun to see how much everyone has grown and to meet our new friends at the beginning of the year! Its fun to hear about everyone's summer and to share my wonderful summer with everyone! This summer, I became a grandma to this sweet little guy!! I can't wait to share all my favorite books with him!! Dowell Learning commonsThe Dowell Learning Commons is continuing to develop! Our furniture is really fun and easy to move around, but the real excitement is how we are able to see students using the space for collaborative learning already!! Every day students can be found working together and using the great technology available!! We are so proud of our 2 media scapes, 10 ipads, 20 laptops, Simplicity touch TV and 10 brand new touch screen desktops! Students can be found using any of these technologies to enhance their learning all throughout the day!
I can't believe how long it has been since I have written a blog post! So much has been going on! I am so sorry I haven't shared it along the way! I will try to put as much as I can in this post! 3rd 9 weeks ends today! It is hard to imagine we are only 9 school weeks from summer! Each class that I do a lesson with seems to have grown and matured these past few weeks! We have learned about a lot of important people in our American history these past few weeks. Kindergarten and 2nd grade both study Martin Luther King, Jr so we read My Brother Martin by Christine King Farris and Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport. Our lessons focus on the kindness that MLK Jr wanted us all to show. 2nd graders made wordles about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They worked in partners and small groups to brainstorm words that MLK made us think of and then they created Wordles. 1st grade learned about Theodore Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, and George Washington Carver. Our stories for these famous people were a little different this year. We read What to Do About Alice by Barbara Kerley. This tells the fun story of Teddy Roosevelt's oldest daughter. We read The Patchwork Path by Bettye Stroud about freedom quilts. Then each student colored their own freedom quilt square. To celebrate all things Seuss we had a SeussaPalooza on Dr. Seuss's birthday, March 2nd.
We had guest readers visit every classroom, our principal read to us on the announcements and all kinds of Seuss activities throughout the day. In the learning commons, we had a fun rotation with activities and stories from Dr. Seuss classics. It was a great way to celebrate our love of reading! It is always exciting to get back to school after the winter holidays. It is brand new start but the students already know the routine! It is always such a surprise how much all of the kiddos have matured since we have last seen them. I love teaching in January! This week in Kindergarten, we are reading a fun book to go with their hibernation unit. It is called Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep by Maureen Wright. In this book, Big Bear has trouble hearing Old Man Winter tell him to sleep. We find rhyming words while we read this story. After that silly story, we read a book on Tumblebooks called Lewis Cardinal's First Winter. This story gives us more information about how different animals get ready for winter. Then the students draw a picture of one way that an animal gets ready for winter. This week first grade looked at the standard that asks them to be able to retell a story using the major events in the beginning, middle and end of the story. We read Otis by Loren Long. As we read the story we talked about the big, main thing that happened in each part of the story. The students then drew pictures or wrote sentences to retell the story. Our 4th grade lunch bunch book club finished our first book, Nickel Bay Nick before the break. We started our new book this week. The best part was that our group grew and we needed to break into two groups! I am so happy that they are enjoying this book club enough to want to invite their friends!!
So much has been going on in the Learning Commons lately. Before Thanksgiving break, we had our life size eagle's nest return. This has become a tradition that the students and teachers love. Kindergarten learns about the bald eagle as a national symbol. To give the students an understanding of how big an eagle nest is, we build a 6 ft across eagle's nest. The students get to sit inside while listening to an informational book about eagles, and one of my personal favorites, The Perfect Nest by Catherine Friend. We did a fun QR code activity with 1st grade. After reading a Stuart Murphy book about numbers, we worked in pairs to read a QR code and then count the tens and ones. Finally we compared the number we counted to another number to tell if it was bigger or smaller. This is a favorite activity for 1st grade. 2nd grade created Popplets to tell about Oglethorpe.They worked in pairs to brainstorm and write popplets to show things they had learned about the founder of Georgia.
It is hard to believe we are almost to the end of the first 9 weeks of school. Everyone knows what it means to be in school and they are busy doing it!! The last few weeks have flown by, we had our Fall Break, and we have been doing a lot in the media center. This week has been a fun week! I have been coteaching with our Computer Lab teacher, Mrs. Pfeifer, for the 2nd grade. We have taught the students how to log into MackinVia and go to a great site called Tumblebooks. This is an expansive library of real books, that will read to you and show the illustrations in fun ways. The students love it! 2nd graders read the book Pigs by Robert Munsch. It is a hilarious story that Robert Munch himself is reading. The students then used KidPix to draw and write about their favorite part. Kindergarten read about Johnny Appleseed in the book Seed By Seed by Esme Raji Codell, . This wonderful story explains why we think of Johnny Appleseed as a hero. It was his good example that we should follow. After listening to the story, we draw a good deed we will do on a apple. The apples are hanging on an apple tree in the hallway, making us all examples to follow. First graders thought about the amazing Benjamin Franklin this week when we read Now and Ben by Gene Barretta. We were all amazed to learn about all of Ben's inventions and discoveries that we still use today. After reading the story, we used ipads to draw our favorite invention or discovery of Ben Franklin's. 2nd graders are learning about states of matter. so we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. While most things can be classified as a gas, liquid or solid, Oobleck can act like a solid and a liquid. After reading the story we touched and experienced some Oobleck! What fun!!
In 3rd and 4th grades, students were introduced, or reintroduced to ReadnQuiz. This is a program that allows students to read a book and then take a quiz to check their comprehension. Students earn points on the books they pass. Ask your child about his or her reading quiz goals!
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Mrs. PszczolaI have wanted to be a teacher since I was in 2nd grade, but I have always loved visiting the library. After teaching for 11 years, it was time to follow my heart- straight to the library! I love books!! I read as often as I can, all kinds of books. One of my proudest accomplishments is raising four amazing, book loving children. Archives
August 2019
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