This week, we continued with our daily routine.  Students continue to make progress in all of our subjects, as well as behaviorally.  Monday, we were able to celebrate the birthday of Roald Dahl, the feature author for September.  We had cupcakes and punch.  Our class is also reading The BFG to celebrate Roald Dahl month.  The students have been given a journal to keep track of our class reading and their independent reading of Roald Dahl books.  If the students keep track of the reading from now until December, once they've read three Roald Dahl books, they will be able to submit a form to receive a prize for Roald Dahl celebration.  Our librarian has put out several Dahl books, and I have many in the classroom for the students to enjoy.

I hope that everyone enjoyed their Labor Day extended weekend. 

This week our PBS (Positive Behavior Support) focus was Accept Responsibility.  Tuesday morning, the 3rd grade class held an assembly to address ways we can Accept Responsibility at Emerson.  Thank you 3rd grade!

On Tuesday our class got right back into working on learning our daily routine.  We start each day with morning classroom procedures (making our lunch choices, getting our chairs, putting away our things, returning our homework, etc) and then go directly into Structured Recess when the 7:45 bell rings.  After Structured Recess, the students attend their daily specials class.  This year, Joplin is on a rotating Special schedule.  We now have A-D days that rotate on a daily basis.  For our class A & C days are PE/Music days, B days are Art days and D days are Library/Computer Lab days.  We are still getting the hang of knowing exactly which day we are on, but it will all fall into place over the next few weeks.

After specials, we move directly into Writer's Workshop.  This week, we worked on writing using the four sentence types (declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory).  We also made a list of our Fierce Wonderings, those questions that make us think but may never be answered.  The students really had some deep thoughts during this session, which made for some great conversation!

After Writer's Workshop, our class moves onto Math.  This week we focused on equal groups, arrays, and area.  Students need to continue studying their multiplication and division facts to help them solve more complex problems.

Math leads into lunch.  We continue to share our lunch with the Kindergarten students.  5th graders have been a great help in teaching the K students the ropes in the lunch room.  The behavior has been so great!  The 5th grade will be enjoying a lunch in the classroom (our outside if weather permits) next week, due to their excellent cafeteria behavior!

When we return to our classroom after lunch, we go into a period of time called Eagle Time, as the year progresses this time will be dedicated time for students to receive additional assistance in areas where they may struggle.  Right now, we are using this time to talk about current events through watching the CNN Student News Podcast (more information about this podcast is available at cnnstudentnews.com).  After watching the news, we listen to our current class reading.  Right now, in celebration of Roald Dahl month we are reading The BFG.  It is a humorous book that I really enjoy sharing with the students.

After Eagle Time ends, we move into our Reading period.  During reading period students may participate in Individualize Daily Reading or we may read as a whole group from our reading book.  This week, we started a theme in our reading book called Nature's Fury.  Our first reading selection was about earthquakes.  We will also be reading about storm chasing and volcanoes throughout this section.

After reading, is free-play recess.  I know this is a favorite of a lot of students.  It allows for a lot of good social interaction and exercise after a long day in the classroom.

Once recess is over, we return to finish up the day in either Social Studies or Science.  Remember, Mondays & Wednesdays our class will be in Social Studies with me, and on Tuesdays & Thursdays our class will be in Science with Ms. Lawrence.

If you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to co

This week, we began to work on our daily schedule.  We tried to follow what will become our daily routine as closely as possible, while still working to develop good habits of following procedures throughout the school building.

We spent time during our writing period developing a Writer's Notebook and learning about different ways to use the Writer's Notebook to keep ideas for future writing.  On Friday, we had a guest speaker.  Richard Porter, a local poet, came to speak to the class about his use of Writer's Notebook.  We all enjoyed having him join us for Writer's Workshop, and look forward to maybe having him in again throughout the year to talk about other aspects of writing.

In math, we have been focusing on refreshing our basic multiplication and division skills so that we can move on the more in-depth ways to use our skills.

In reading, we have been working on independent reading tasks, and will start Reading Workshop next week.

We have started switching classes on Tuesday and Thursday with Ms. Lawrence's class.  We have Ms. Lawrence teaching Science on those days, and stay in with Ms. Asbell on Mondays and Wednesday for Social Studies.

We got our classroom computers this week, an exciting day!  We reviewed our classroom user policy and then explored our classroom website.  We continued with our team-building activities this week.  Our SOAR expectation this week was Show Respect.  The 5th grade lead the school in an assembly on Monday morning about showing respect.

Students came back to school on Wednesday, August 18.  This week we focused on learning SOAR procedures for Emerson, specifically those behaviors students should follow in all settings.  We also spent a good portion of our time getting to know one-another.  Our computers should be in place by the end of this coming week.  I know we'll be able to do so many exciting learning activities.  I'm looking forward to a great school year for 2010-2011!

Our last week of gifted for 2009-2010 was this week.  We had a field week.  The students were split into continent teams and then played a series of games from around the world.  What a blast!  I wish all of my students a wonderful summer!

This was our last week of in-class gifted.  Students finished writing scripts and producing movies about their countries.

See, Run, Do was this week.  Students spent the afternoon in teams working to recreate a poster made by the teachers.  What an amazing exercise in effective communication.

More research this week.  We are learning things like how to say hello in our country of choice, as well as popular destinations and foods.

We spent much of our days engrossed in studying our country for our movies.  They are going to be great!