Hi there! We are officially one week into our new expedition, Revolutions to Resolutions! This expedition will cover three case studies: 1. Working Conditions in Industrialized America 2. How Working Conditions Change 3. Voices for Change Throughout these case studies, students will be learning about the working conditions that existed in our country during industrialization, how young people were affected by harsh working conditions, and the potential solutions to child labor inequalities that exist throughout the world. To start off this expedition, our class is doing a novel study of the book, Lyddie, by Katherine Paterson. This story follows a young girl named Lyddie and her journey as her and her brother are hired as servants to pay off their family's debts. We are already three chapters in, and students are really enjoying the book and our discussions over the text! Also new in our classroom is a program called Daily 5 that we are doing during our English Language Arts/DEAR time. Each day, we go through a mini lesson on one type of figurative language or part of speech. Students take notes of these concepts, including their definition and examples, and then complete exercises using the information. So far, students have learned about six different types of figurative language (simile, metaphor, hyperbole, idioms, onomatopoeia, and personification) and we have started singular, plural, singular possessive, and plural possessive nouns. At the beginning of the school year, students were doing a great job of taking their planners home and getting them signed. However, this seems to have really taken a dive. There are no consequences for unsigned planners, however, students are rewarded for getting it signed. Each day they have it signed, they earned scholar dollars. I will also be rewarding those who get it signed everyday during the week on Fridays. I believe that it is important for students to share their days and their homework with their parents/guardians. This instills in them a sense of responsibility and it keeps parents in the loop as far as what is going on at school and whether or not their students are staying on top of their homework. Please encourage your student to bring home their planner everyday and make time to go through some of their day with them. Thank you! Lastly, just as a reminder, there is not school tomorrow, Monday the 15th for MLK Day. I hope students enjoy, as their is not another day off until mid February! :) Please enjoy some pictures below from our expedition kick-off on Monday. Have a great Sunday! Ms. Kelty
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Hello and happy new year!
I hope your families all had great holidays! I know students had a blast at their intensives the week before break. I will be posting some photos from my intensive, along with some that I snapped during our community scholar dollar store. We've had a great short week. We worked on tying up some loose ends from our first expedition. Students picked out their best pieces of work from the working binders (where we put completed student work throughout the year) and moved them to their portfolios. Work that did not go into the portfolio will be coming home tonight. You saw some of it at conferences, and some is more recent, so please ask your student to share those items with you. :) We also took time to refresh our minds on the procedures and expectations of our classroom (I might have needed this more than them) and practiced certain transitions that we need to improve upon. We looked at the norms we created at the beginning of the year and updated them based on how the school year has been going. Next week will bring our new expedition! Parents, please check your emails for a message from Mr. McKay regarding this. I also ask that students bring winter attire on Monday, as our activity will take place outside that morning. More details about our expedition will come next week after our kick-off! Please don't hesitate to to contact me this weekend if you have any concerns or questions regarding Monday, or our new expedition. As a reminder, there is a 1:30 early out next Friday, the 12th, for teacher training, and then no school the following Monday, the 15th, for MLK Day. Also next Friday, students will be taking an SRI (Scholastic Reading Inventory) assessment, which just gives me a good look at their reading levels. They also took this at the beginning of the year. These scores help me see who I or Ms. Courtney can work with one-on-one or in a small group to improve reading and comprehension. Lexia, the online reading program that students do when we have computers, is something students can and should do at home if they have access to a computer and internet. If you have any questions about this, please do let me know! I hope you all have a great weekend! As always, please contact me with any questions, comments, or concerns you may have about our classroom! Ms. Kelty |
AuthorsMs. Kelty will post news and announcements about our class here. Archives
March 2018
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