Coding with Mr. Kelly

Today we learned how to program games with Mr. Kelly! 

Last week, we received a new class member! His name is Cornelius. He is our stuffed mouse that reports to Ms. Griep at the end of the day to tell her how the day went and if we were being respectful. 🐭

This week, our classroom has a new school wide challenge called "Don't Break the Ice." This challenges us to be more respectful in the classroom. At the end of every day, we can earn an ice cube to add to our lake, if we have at least one or more letters at the end of the day. We don't yet know what our incentive is, but we will be getting hints starting next week! 

Today, Mr. Kelly awarded us with the Achieve belt! This means that our class has the greatest percentages on Achieve articles this week, for the fourth and fifth graders. 

This week, we have been working on many different activities. In math, we are working on Order of Operations, including PEMDAS and patterns. In writing, we are continuing to work on our Informational writing skills. Our class is almost finished reading the great book "Wonder." During reading, we have been working on painting a mental picture of important scenes. In Inquiry, we just started looking into the topics we are interested in further researching about Colonization. In word work, we just finished up our test and received a new sort this week. 

We just finished our basketball unit in gym class. Our last game was an intense game! 🏀 In Art, we posted our pictures on Artsonia, and we made Lego people. In Music, we have a concert coming up on Thursday, December 18th. We are practicing songs for our upcoming event. In SEL, 5th graders will soon have parent teacher conferences. 

Watch out for St. Nick tonight! 

Have a wonderful weekend from 302!

Last week, we started new units in both math, writing, and inquiry. For math, we are now moving into the Algebra unit. For writing, we are working on improving our Informational writing skills. For inquiry, we are starting to dive into Colonization of America. 

Our classroom is also working on a school wide challenge towards not having any physical contact referrals. We are getting clues every morning to find out what incentive we will have the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break.. And we think we might have already guessed it!! We also have a classroom challenge that is very similar, making sure we maintain "body basics" throughout the day. If the class wins this challenge, we can have a celebration that same Tuesday afternoon that we have the school wide challenge incentive!! There are lots of great incentives we are working towards these next few weeks!!

Keep up the great work 302!

Voting Day!

We had a mock voting for who would become governor!

Classroom Reading Kingdoms

Our very own Pyper being knighted as the queen reader for reading for the most minutes out of the whole school!

Below is a picture of our PAWS expectation chart for school behavior. Students came up with these ideas at the beginning of the school year together. When students are exceeding these expectations, they are rewarded with a ticket. Students can hang on to their tickets to find goodies on the Wild Cat cart. This week, we will have an incentive to work towards choosing a fun free app that we can play on our iPads during designated times. 

This week, we worked on filling our classmates' buckets. Today, we looked at our filled bucket letters. These letters were written to make each other's day. They were all nice and thoughtful. 

Also, this we worked towards our kingdom reading challenge. Some started their second reading challenge page, and we're all working towards first place. Today we made a classroom kingdom reading challenge shield that represents our classroom. 

We started our Daily 5 rotations and continued to read Wonder. Today we read books with our 5k and first grade buddies!

On Wednesday, we had a fire drill that the news reporters filmed! We did great following directions on our way out and back in. 

We earned a treat today because we had such a respectful, responsible day!

Have a great weekend!

This week, we had an exciting field trip at the Wisconsin State Capitol and the Madison Zoo. Students were able to visit multiple rooms in the Capitol, learning new concepts about our state government. The past few weeks in class, students have been learning about city and state government, so this visit to the Capitol was a nice way to add more information to their KWL sheets. We will continue the next few weeks learning about the national government and sharing our knowledge from the field trip.

Please remember to sign and have your child turn in their Rights and Responsibilities sheet or orange iPad sheet in order to get their iPads up and running!

Our classroom blog is finally up and running! We've had a great few weeks so far.

Tonight is Parent Info Night from 5:30 - 6:00 or 6:00 - 6:30. Please come with any questions you might have. Your child's participate is very important because it is a chance for you to learn more about their daily routine. I look forward to seeing you all!

Don't forget --- Our Field Trip to the Capitol and Zoo is this Thursday! Look for a note in their take home folders tomorrow for more details!