February AIG NEWS
Panthers/Bronco Spirit Days
Wednesday spirit day: Individual spirit day> Students can dress up to show Panther’s Spirit! Your class can vote on who in the class shows the most spirit and is best dressed. You’ll then submit their name (Tara will send a link Wednesday AM or Tuesday PM) and they win a prize!
The fine print: Students can wear a hat for the voting in their classroom, but must take it off for the remainder of the day- esp. while moving through the hallways. Teachers can wear jeans if they participate.
2). Friday spirit day: This is a by class Spirit day> Students and teachers dress up to show their classroom Panther pride and “a guest judge” (or someone in house) will make the decision of which class showed the most Superbowl Spirt to win the Super Bowl spirit award AND a prize!
The fine print: Students CAN wear hats on Friday throughout the building, unless you need them to remove the hat during class or it causes a distraction to their learning.
Social Studies & Reading Update
Social Studies! We are very busy researching and exploring our Ancient Egypt topics, as well as taking notes and citing sources! Students are using their online Google Notecards and Sourcecards to take notes for their upcoming Rough Draft. Students will use an organizer to organize their thoughts and then write a very rough outline too in the next few weeks. We will discuss how to integrate sources into our papers, and practice writing introductions! Our Google Notecards and Sourcecards have all been shared successfully to me, and we will have a check-up this Friday! The students have the opportunity to research another ancient civilization in order to compare and contrast to their Ancient Egyptian topic. Some students have already started this process!
If you take your child to the Public Library to access texts and check them out be sure your student has a sticky note in the text with his/her name on it. This way it does not get mixed up with the EMIS Media Books in our classroom. The EMIS Media Books are stationed in my room and are not permitted to leave this classroom.
We are in the thick of our book I Am Malala, and have experienced full-fledged Literature Circles within the recent weeks! At this time, we have started utilizing Sandra Kaplan's Layered Model for Depth and Complexity with a Choice Board. As we explore this text we examine areas across disciplines, patterns in text, details in text, multiple perspectives, language of the disciplines, BIG ideas, unanswered questions, relationships over time, as well as ethics in our discussions and activities.
IXL is a resource we have at our disposal this year. Students should answer between 20 and 30 questions and just stop whether they have a 100 or not! Which is really hard for some of our students to do! I also encouraged students to screenshot some of their mistakes and the explanations given in order to go over them in class, as well as to keep as a reminder if they get stuck! The student is to write their Smart Score and the number of questions answered on their contract. They should not go over 30 questions and they know this! It is very tempting for them to try to get a 100% but I believe they should not continue to make the same mistakes over and over without asking me for help!
Very pleased with our EOQ growth this quarter thank you to all parents that are diligently making sure your child reads about 100 minutes independently each week! New Lexile Levels have been given to your student based on the iReady assessment this January, if you use Lexile.com you can find books on their lexile in their genre of interest! Some books at these lexiles will need to be approved by you due to the content. A great site to check about the content and appropriateness of the content is www.CommonSenseMedia.org. Another great site for locating appropriate text is Good Reads but I suggest you peruse it with your student!
Thank you for your continued support in all we set out to do to make your child successful!
Math & Science Updates
Buzz math Contact 7
the Evaluating Expressions, Simplifying &Combining, as well As both Equivalent Expression assignments need work.
There are links and notes in Learn to help as well as a Symbaloo with links & videos in Learn!
After this contract, Mrs. Lewis will give out Buzz Math mid year prizes. These will be some passes for the new school picnic area being built, some free choice passes, as well as candy.
I am in need of any donations for big end of year prizes for 100- 150+ stars, and great accuracy, and some other contests we will do.
The students would love Stencils , small I tunes gift cards, and small target gift cards. Please contact me if you would be interesting in donating.
Tenmarks
We use the majority of our Eagle time for Tenmarks, but if your child needs to redo an assignment, this is the only reason they should be working on this at home.
The first two assignments with Identifying Equivalent Expressions and Using
4 of the Translating Expressions only have 5 ?.
Students may skip ? they are having trouble on in Eagle time.
I am trying to monitor progress to pull students and pair them up.
EOQ scores
I am waiting on an updated score report, because their was a gridded response item missed my many that was a spreadsheet error.
It is possibly that many kids' scores will improve by up to 3 pt.
We had 100% mastery in both AIG classes.
We will continue to set goals for personal growth.
Continue the phenomenal work.
We will be taking our first CFA for this quarter on Evaluating expressions and Parts of Expressions on Thursday in math class.
Earthquakes & Digging Inside the earth(SCIENCE)
EArthquake quiz-Thursday, Feb 4th-Lewis
Friday, Feb 5th-Izzo
Earthquake Article-Due Friday, Feb 5th
* see more details on the calendar
Vocab maps-due Friday, Feb 12th
We will be digging inside the Earth with edible models next week as well as student presentations on a particular layer of the Earth!
Thank you for all who sent materials for this project!
Ratio Restaraunt
This week, on Thursday and Friday we are beginning Ratio Rest. Part involving Algebra.
This is an in class project. I am estimating the due date as 2/26 right now!
We will see how next week goes, but the children are so creative. In this part, they will be creating an algebraic model alphabet and expressions to go along with their Restaurant theme. Details and directions are on the Eagle time SMORE for this quarter.
Important Dates & Reminders
Friday, Feb 5th-Fun Friday for this week
Monday, Feb 15th-No School(President's Day)
Thursday, Feb 18th -Late work deadline for 1st 4.5 weeks for 3rd quarter