February 23rd Week in Review

                                    
                            ~March 2nd~

  Read Across America and Crazy Hat Day

~March 10 and March 11~

No School

Parent-Teacher Conferences

~March 18~

           Parent Coffee with Sandi, 7:30 a.m.

~March 26~

     Our Seabury Auction!

     Wow, has this ever been another wild weather week with no school on Monday due to President's Day, a very snowy Wednesday afternoon where many students left early, a no school  snow day on Thursday and then a 2 hour late start day due to icy conditions on Friday. You just don't know what kind of day it will be until you get up in the morning! It's a wonder that we're able to keep it all straight!       

     We love teaching your wonderful Beacons! Unfortunately, mother nature's snowy and icy blast this week (and a federal holiday) prevented us from having another full week of school. Having said that, we worked very hard in the hours that we were at school!

     One of the highlights of this short week was going into Mrs. Head's room where we saw the Explorers dissecting lambs' hearts! Two of our Beacon parents are noted surgeons and they have a child in Mrs. Head's class as well. They facilitated the dissection and really helped make our science unit of learning about the human body come alive. One of the coolest things about this dissection is that the lamb's heart is approximately the same size as that of an elementary school child's heart. This led to a great discussion once we returned to the classroom! As many of your Beacons said, "Seabury is sooooooooooooo cool! We get to dissect in schooooooooooooool!"

           Enjoy your budding surgeon's "heart felt" photos below:

       

       

Week in Review, February 16th

Upcoming Events:

February 16 - Presentation Linda Silverman,

 Director of the Gifted Development Center in Denver, Colorado 

No School on February 17-21 for Teacher In-service and Presidents' Day

March 2nd-Read Across America and Crazy Hat Day!

March 10-11 - Teacher Conferences

March 18 - Parent Coffee with Sandi, 7:30 am

March 26 - Seabury Auction!

        This has been a fun filled, busy week in the Beacon classroom!  With Valentine's Day and the 100th Day of School occurring within 2 days of each other, the classroom has been filled with  LOTS of excitement in the air.  The kids enjoyed giving and receiving valentines and especially working on our 100th day writing and math activites. You'll enjoy the following pictures of the Beacons' 100th day of school glasses, working on their bookreports and receiving a $100.00. 

 

                                        100th day of school Pajama Day!Yeah!!

 

 

I'm working on my book report!

If I had a hundred dollars, this is what I'd do.....

Week in Review-February 10

Upcoming Events:

February 14 - Valentine's Day. Please see below.

February 16 - 100th Day of School!  See below!

February 16 - Linda Silverman, Director of the Gifted Development Center in Denver, Colorado Presentation

No School on February 17-21 for Teacher Inservice and
Presidents' Day

March 10-11 - Teacher Conferences

March 18 - Parent Coffee with Sandi, 7:30 am

March 26 - Seabury Auction!

We will have a Valentine's Day celebration on Monday, February 14th at 2:15.  We will have a snack and do a craft.  Please email our room parent if you can help.  Please have your child bring valentines for EVERY person in the class.  We will have boxes or bags for the kids to use to store these valentines. 

On Wednesday, February 16th we will celebrate the 100th day of school!  It will be pajama day for the kids and we will make pancakes for snack that day.  We want the kids to bring in a collection of 100 items to share with the class. 

In Language Arts, we have been working on plural nouns and apostrophes.  Many students confuse the use of apostrophes with plurals, so we have been working on changing these misconceptions.  These are things you can reinforce at home when students are writing sentences or stories for homework.  The students are also continuing in their novels.  Be sure to ask your child what is happening in their book.

We have finished and tested the chapters in math.  The Math Magicians are moving on to division, while the Math Magicals are beginning basic algebra concepts.  Division is a hard concept for many of the students. They can draw a picture or use multiplication to solve division facts. These are good problems to practice when driving in the car. 

Writers' Workshop continues with our action stories for the hard backed books.  Many of the students have finished writing their stories and are peer conferencing,  editing, or teacher conferencing.  We will be publishing these books on the computer in the next few weeks and will have a publisher's picnic once we get them finished. 

The Beacons are on their way with the science fair projects.  They all have great ideas for their projects.  We began our science fair journals this week.  Now students should be completing multiple trials of their experiment at home. They should complete these trials in the next 2 weeks, writing about what they do and the results in their journal.  Students should be finished with their data collecting and experiments by February 22nd, when they also need to bring in their trifold boards.  We will begin the boards on February 22nd at school. 

The students will also be starting their human body project on Monday.  We discussed how to use the fabric markers and the kids brainstormed how to draw their bones.  Be sure to ask about them  next week! 

In Social Studies, students have been rewriting the Mayflower Compact in their own words.  They also are completing the creation of 3 dimensional maps of the voyage of the Mayflower.  The maps even have floating ships!

February is upon us!

Upcoming Events

February 14 - Valentine's Day.  More details to come. 

February 16th - Linda Silverman,

Director of the Gifted Development Center in Denver, Colorado Presentation 

No School on February 17-21 for Teacher Inservice and Presidents' Day

March 10-11 - Teacher Conferences

March 18 - Parent Coffee with Sandi, 7:30 am

March 26 - Seabury Auction!

In Language Arts, students are continuing to read their novels.  We are also talking about adjectives and the nouns they describe.  The students are now looking up the Word of the Day in the dictionary to find the meaning and part of speech.

We will be finishing up our math chapters in the next week.  Look for the practice test to come home on Monday or Tuesday to practice for the test.  Keep working on multiplication facts!

The students took a short break from their hard backed books this week to write a few poems.  As a class, we wrote 2 possible poems for our auction quilt.  The students decided they like acrostic poems much more than rhyming poems.  They each wrote an acrostic poem about their animal and then another using adjectives about themselves.  We will be writing many poems during the month of April, National Poetry Month.

Science has brought us into the world of touch.  We performed a touch test to find the part of the arm that is most sensitive.  The kids went through the scientific method to test their predictions about which part would be most sensitive.  This will help prepare the kids for the upcoming science fair.  You should have found a set of guidelines in the homework folder on Monday.  The brainstorming for the science fair project is due on Monday.  Please let me know if you need any ideas. 

In Social Studies, the students created 3-dimensional maps of the settlement of Roanoke and Jamestown.  They are continuing to learn about the first settlements in America and the voyage of the Mayflower. 

Next week Mrs. Gellert returns!  She will have many interesting stories to share with the students, so be sure to ask on Wednesday!  Here's to another wonderful week!

Week of January 27, 2011

Upcoming Events

Annual Seabury Update-Thursday, January 27 at 7 pm in the MPR

Middle School Showcase-Friday, January 28 at 6:30 pm at the MS

February 17-21 No School

We had a fabulous and fun field trip to the Pacific Science Center this week.  Students explored how the human body works by doing scent, strength,sight, reaction time, fitness, flexibility tests and much more.  Check out these pictures! 

 Check out the brains.  I remember that this is where this sense can be found from our brain hats!

 How many calories am I burning?

 Will this spinning wheel change my center of gravity?

I have a very slow reaction time!

 These pulleys make our muscles work!

 We are very excited about seeing the IMAX about beavers.  Did you know that beavers can chew down 400 trees a year?

This butterfly landed on me!

We are working hard in all subject areas in the Beacon classroom.  The kids are reading like crazy, enjoying their new books, writing their hard-backed books, working on multiplication and division facts, learning about the senses and the body, making maps for Roanoke and Jamestown and much more!  Be sure to ask your Beacon how to play the games Multiplication Baseball and Multiplication Top-It. 

Week in Review- January 19, 2011

Upcoming Events:

January 24 - Field Trip to Pacific Science Center

February 17, 18, 21 - No School

Many of our Beacon friends have become very sick in the last week.  We just want to let you know that we are encouraging hand washing at school and home.  We hope everyone is feeling better soon.

In Language Arts, students have chosen and have begun reading their next novel.  We talked about foreshadowing and how books will sometimes give hints about things that will be happening later in the book.  Students are looking for foreshadowing as they read and will be asked to describe at least 2 times in their respective books that they found this. 

In Math, we are beginning new chapters.  The next chapters work on harder multiplication or harder division facts.  Be sure to play games, work with flash cards, and quiz your Beacons about the multiplication facts.  Fact automaticity is to math what sight words are to reading.  We want all students to be successful with harder math concepts, and basic fact knowledge will help with those.  If students don't remember certain facts, ask them about a strategy for solving.  Also, if your student hasn't told you about the game Baseball Multiplication, be sure to ask!

Writing continues on the hard-backed books the students are writing.  Many of the students have multiple pages of details and action.  Some are working with peers to make their stories better and are editing their own work.  We will have a big party once these books are finished!

In Science, students looked at features of the eye.  They were able to see how the pupil changes based on the amount of light coming into their eyes.  They were also amazed by the fact that pictures are upside down on our retinas and that the brain is once again an amazing part of our bodies!  Next up is the ear and skin. 

In Social Studies, students are writing newspaper articles about the Colonial Times and the Lost Colony of Roanoke.  They are also learning fun facts about the first settlements.  Be sure to ask your Beacon about this at the end of the week!

Have a wonderful week!

Week in Review - January 13, 2011

The Beacons have been hard at work this second week back in school!

In Language Arts, the students have been reading about Martin Luther King, Jr.  We have had some really good discussions about what he stood for and how things have changed since his death.  We also read his I Had  a Dream speech to the students.  The students will begin reading new novels next week.  They can choose from 3 titles, The Cabin Faced West, A Lion to Guard Us, and Sees Behind Trees.  The first 2 of these books are stories about life for children in the Colonial Times.  The last book is about a Native American boy who has very poor eyesight and must rely on his other senses to live.  The students will once again be working on vocabulary building, writing summaries, and answering comprehension questions.

The Beacons have been working hard in math.  The Math Magicians group is learning the basics of multiplication and some tricks for solving basic facts.  The Math Magicals group is delving into division, with an emphasis on how it relates to multiplication.  We are finishing up the chapters this week and will be testing next week.  Look for a study guide to come home on Tuesday.

The new year has brought us to a huge project in Writers' Workshop.  Students worked for a few days last week on how to create a picture in the reader's mind using words.  They are now applying this idea to writing stories that we will turn into hard backed books.  We have lots of great story ideas out there, so be sure to ask your Beacon about his or her story. 

In Science, we have begun our new theme of the human body.  We brainstormed what we knew and what we were hoping to learn.  We are currently working our way through the senses and how they work.  The students have made a brain hat that shows what part of the brain is responsible for each sense.  Favorite quote about the brain hat..."I know why I am having trouble thinking of something to write.  My brain is on the outside of my skull, instead of the inside!"  We used our sense of smell to try to differentiate between different aromas and discussed how amazing the nerves in the nose are, telling our brains what we think of a smell.  Cayenne pepper was the best one, everyone's brain told them to stay away from it!  We also conducted an experiement to see how the taste buds on the tongue work.  We predicted what would happen if we put different foods on different parts of our tongues.  We certainly have a few kids who can taste sweet in anything!  More fun experiements and models to come in the next few months!

In Social Studies, the students are learning about life in Colonial Times.  They read about the lost colony at Roanoke, discussing what could have happened to the settlers there.  They are creating a book of information about these times and will be creating 3-D maps soon to show what life was like in Roanoke and Jamestown. 

As always, we love having your Beacons in our classroom.  Here's to another great week!