Teal Team Times
Vol 3
Home Access Center
Progress Reports come out September 17th.
All Home Access Users are required to reset their passwords for the 2014-2015 school year. Default passwords have been set and are described below. All passwords are case sensitive.
Students: ID = Student ID, Password = First initial of student first name + first initial of student last name + student id (ex. Student Richard Davis = RD123456)
Parents: ID = email address, Password = First initial of parent first name + first initial of parent last name + KELLER (ex. Parent Abby Bingham = ABKELLER)Edmodo
Group Code: ir5fvj
Username will be KISD plus their student number (KISD is in all caps)
Password will be their initials and birthday (no leading zeros. aka may = 5)
This is the same as their regular computer logins with the addition of KISD in front of their student ID.
Example: Eddie Allan Poe, Student ID 123456, Birthday 06/19/2004
Username: KISD123456
Password: EAP6192004
Team Points
Language Arts
I hope you enjoy our “Gooneybird Greene” pictures. We had a blast. It was one of the best read-aloud experiences I have had in a long time. The point of the book modeled the narrative structure we are discussing and got the kids interested in writing and reading. We will be adding ideas to the back of our journals for our writing time...prompts that will help us pull from our own experiences and write about our life and things that are meaningful to us. I am trying to model good writing for them by also writing in MY journal when it is journal time. It shows them good writing (I think :) ) and also lets them get to know their teacher a bit.
We are finishing the placement tests on I-Station this week. It is giving me a good baseline on a specific reading level for your child and areas of strengths and weaknesses in reading. Once the placement tests are done, the program guides their lessons to the areas where they need more help. If they are a strong reader, the lessons get harder and the reading level goes up, so the lessons can push even my strongest readers to be better!!! I will be meeting with each kiddo to go over their scores, information will be in the back of their vocab folder (which we are making this week).
Information will be coming home soon about how to install I-Station on your home computers so the kids can work the lessons at home if you like. Each month they will do the assessment at school...once we know our usernames/passwords and are more familiar with the computers, it only takes about 20 minutes for them to do the test.
We are working through Narrative structure, learning about the conflict, climax, resolution, and rising and falling action. Some of these terms are new to the kids this year. We will also be working on routines in the room...getting going on some “stations”...where the kids will rotate through different tasks on different days. We will have silent reading and responding, I-Station or other technology, Word Work (here’s where they will work with their vocab for the week in class), writing (we will be working on writing more complex and detailed sentences), and meeting with me either in small groups or one-on-one.
We also go to the library on Thursday. These concepts will continue through the end of the grading period, with changing vocabulary words and writing each week. Expectations for their independent reading and responding in class will also grow as appropriate.
Social Studies
We will continue with map skills while exploring Native American Cultures and the various regions of the US in the next few weeks. We will look at the landforms and climate of the US regions and touch on how that helped form the cultures of the people who settled there.
We will also work with map scale (something many struggle with) and using directions to find places on a map (example: what town is West of ______, _____ is north of the lake on this map).
Math
Coming Soon: http://www.sumdog.com/ for some at home practice. This website is a great tool to practice math and it will allow us to play against each other. Yes even me, Mr. Gottleber, will be online some evenings to play against! I think this is also a great opportunity to earn class points as well!
This week in math started with a review of decimals via a Kahoot quiz. The students seemed to enjoy it and it was a great 1st BYOD day. I'm working on setting up a second BYOD day soon and will send out an email and remind about that when I have everything squared away. The decimal test was on Tuesday and it went well. Wednesday saw two more tests! These were short district assessments to gauge where students are.
We have transitioned from decimals to multiplication and will be starting division on Monday but I have a request for you. Please work with your children on memorizing their multiplication tables through 9x9. I think that this is a great place to look if you need ideas for how to go about this.
http://www.mathmammoth.com/lessons/multiplication_tables.php
We will start to have timed multiplication quizzes as well. Knowing their multiplication tables forwards and backwards is going to be essential.