Room 301 From Day to Day

Las Colinas Elementary-IB World School

2010-01-09T23:52:00.002-06:00

It has been quite sometime since a new post has been added and many things have happened during that time.

From October through December, I was the cooperating teacher for my first student teacher, Ms. Schroeder. It was a very rewarding experience for me and for the class. Ms. Schroeder was an excellent student teacher and was a big help during the first semester. The class and I wish her the best of luck in her teaching career. Please keep in touch.

During this time, we had two students move away. Lissette and Sung Min will be missed and we hope they are loving their new schools.

The most important thing that happened to Las Colinas Elementary during the fall semester was that we finally received notification that all of our hard work had finally paid off. We are now an Authorized IB World School. It is such an honor to now be an official part of such a prestigious organization. And it is really more than just being able to say we are an IB school...our students are gaining a new way of looking at the world around them and will be better citizens.

We are now gearing up and getting ready for the upcoming TAKS tests. Our first test as 4th graders will be the TAKS Writing test on March 3. The students are doing a great job writing and will continue to improve as the weeks wind down to test time. I must thank the 3rd grade teachers for doing such a great job of spending time focusing on writing. It is much easier to fine tune the writing of 4th graders if they already have the basics for good writing.

IB Authorization Visit

2009-09-09T11:14:00.003-05:00

Our class, along with the rest of LCE, is busily getting adjusted to the new school year and preparing for our IB Authorization visit next Monday and Tuesday. We have worked very hard over the last two years and continue to work hard at taking on the various attributes of an IB school. Our students are working to become more international minded by taking on the attributes of the learner profile. They realize that these are things they should demonstrate no matter where they go in this world. It is great to see the students realize that although there are differences throughout the world, over all, humans have certain things about them that are universal.

We have begun working on our first Unit of Inquiry focusing on the Central Idea that areas are broken into regions based on similarities. We are currently looking at it with a Texas focus but will soon take it globally so that they students can see that this is the case everywhere and not just in their immediate surroundings. The students in 4th grade are currently working on a jigsaw project where each group has a region of Texas to become an expert on and create a PowerPoint presentation to share with the class!! They are doing a fabulous job thus far!!

The students are also learning to formulate questions based on the key concept question stems. These stems help the students to form questions that go a little deeper and are much more though provoking. They are learning that this is applicable in any subject. Our Wall of Wondering has already received several pondering questions that students are currently researching to find the answer to. It is so great to see them take on ownership of their learning and realize that it is not my job alone to help them learn.

Welcome to a New Year in 4th Grade

2009-08-31T15:56:00.003-05:00

Room 301 welcomes a new school year and a new group of students. One week is completed, and the class is working to learn each other and the new 4th grade expectations. I love that each year is a new beginning for the students and for myself. As a teacher, you end the year with a group of kids that know what your expectations are and you know what helps them function as a class. As a student, you have new people to adjust to in your class as well as a new teacher. You may have students in your class that you have known for years but it is a completely different mix than you have ever had before. It takes some getting used to but before long neither of us will think about the previous year. I look forward to getting to know my new class and gelling together as the year progresses. The beginning of the year is so exciting because it is essentially a clean slate. Hopefully, this blog will be used more frequently this school year as a way to keep the world up to date on the goings on of Room 301!! Welcome New Class!! :)

Open House

2009-03-10T21:16:00.002-06:00

Tonight was a great Open House. It is always fabulous to see so many supportive parents in attendance at a school function. I hope that you all enjoyed seeing some of your child's hard work. The kids have really worked hard this year and will continue to do so over the next few months. I tried to get around and talk to as many of you as I could, but I know I missed a few. I apologize for that and do know that I (and your child) greatly appreciate the fact that you were there for them tonight. It is the partnership between school and home that helps each child to be successful. When they are able to see that you support them as well as the teacher, it goes a long way. Kudos to each of you. Those of you that were unable to attend, we missed you and look forward to seeing you at other things throughout the year. I do realize that this is a busy time for many with various sports kicking off, girl scouts, boy scouts, religious activities, etc.

Book Clubs for Kids

2009-02-27T11:47:00.002-06:00

I have noticed this year that the kids in my class love to read the same books and talk about them. A couple of examples of this would be The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and The Twilight Saga. While doing some research, I came across this website: http://www.readwritethink.org/beyondtheclassroom/summer/grades3_5/BookClub/ that shows how kids can form book clubs much like us adults do. I think this is a fabuluous idea and encourage parents to try this with your kids and their friends. The website gives ideas for different activities that can be done through these book clubs. One of the things that we are working on in our classes is good discussion and allowing the kids to take ownership of their own learning. This is a great way to encourage those discussions and the learning to continue outside of the classroom. I think it can be anything from a good chapter book to a nonfiction book about a topic the kids are all interested in. The beauty of our location is that many of the kids live fairly close to one another so this is a great opportunity for them to develop a love of reading together. If anyone decides to start one of these groups, please let me know how it goes. If you need any resources to go with that group, just let us know and we will see what we can get you.

VIP Recognition

2009-02-14T12:02:00.002-06:00

I just wanted to post quickly to give a few thanks for my VIP award on Thursday. First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues. Las Colinas is a wonderful school filled with wonderful people to work with. In just 3 short years at LCE, I feel like I have gained some life long friendships. I love the community of learners that we have built together at LCE. It is exciting to see us growing together as educators.

Secondly, I'd like to thank my awesome room mothers and my class for the beautiful flowers and gift card. I am truly blessed to have such wonderful students and parents this year. I am enjoying working with each one of the students and will truly miss them at year's end. It is so exciting to watch them grow as learners as they progress through this phase.

Finally, I'd like to thank my parents who drove all the way from East Texas to Carrollton to be there at the school board meeting while I received my award. It was such a surprise but one I was most thankful for. I could not ask for better parents. They have made me who I am today and I am most thankful. Love you Mom and Dad!!

Yea, so this kind of sounded like an acceptance speech at an awards show but I felt led to give thanks. I am truly blessed and most appreciative of each and every person that daily affects my life. I know that because of you, I am a better teacher and more importantly, a better person.

Gaggle

2009-02-12T12:56:00.002-06:00

I am so excited about the great opportunity our students now have to use a program called Gaggle. This is a great thing for our kids and a big help in meeting the state standards for technology. We hear a lot about state standards in math, reading, writing, science and social studies but we often forget about the standards in technology. I was talking to a fellow teacher recently who remembers when computers first came about and how many people thought they were just a passing fad. Obviously those people were way wrong as technology is now becoming so ingrained in our lives most of us could not function without it. For our kids, this is going to be even more a fact of their lives. It is very important that they are comfortable with technology in every way.

Gaggle is a great opportunity for our students to become familiar with email, blogs, message boards and chat rooms in a safe enviornment. It is highly monitored and anything inappropriate is sent to adminstrators. We are then able to block that content from the kids. We will be using Gaggle to do the Geography Homework so that the kids can practice downloading and uploading attachments as well as word processing skills. There are still a few kinks to work out with the attaching process. If for some reason, Gaggle won't let the student attach and gives an error message, let us know what that is so we can work on it on our end. I have asked the students to also save the file to their digital lockers as a back up.

Several of the students have set up blogs but they are only viewable at this point by other members of our school. I have also set up a message board that the students are supposed to be responding to.

This is a great opportunity for our students as well as something many of them find to be fun. Thank you as parents for your help as we embrace the future with these students.

Spelling

2008-11-11T14:46:00.000-06:00

The last few weeks, I have noticed that our spelling scores have been getting lower. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of time to spend on studying for spelling during the school day so that task is done most often at home. Mrs. Mango found a great site to aid in studying for spelling that I would like to share with you. The address is: http://www.spellingcity.com. Please use this site to help your child increase their spelling scores.

Razorback Pumpkin

2008-10-24T09:52:00.002-05:00

I wanted to thank Emi for the wonderful pumpkin she made for our class pumpkin at the school carnival!! The Arkansas Razorbacks are my favorite team so I was very excited to see a Razorback Pumpkin!!! Thank you so much Emi!!

Math Videos

2008-10-07T16:59:00.003-05:00

I am writing a quick post to make you aware of a great website with videos that show some of the different strategies that we are using in math. It is from the Shultz math center that is a school that also uses the math Investigations series. The web address is: http://www.schultzcenter.org/mathvideos.shtml.

The kids are doing a great job of breaking down or decomposing to solve their multiplication problems. I realize that many of them could very easily do the traditional algorithms to solve the problems that we are currently solving but we are working to build them up to more difficult problems. The strategies that we are teaching them now are much more efficient and accurate. I ask that you please help the students to stick to these new strategies and not to focus on the traditional algorithms. Thank you so much!!!

Higher Thinking

2008-09-25T14:02:00.002-05:00

A big part of our fourth grade year is working on higher thinking and digging deep for answers. We begin working on this by doing the Weekly Readers on a regular basis with extended questions. The past couple of weeks, I have been working with my class on not just giving the quick off the top of your head answer but actually digging deep for the answers and finding prove for the answer choices. This week's Friday Folder will include last week's Weekly Reader. Many of the grades are not what we would want to see from these students. There were many that did not meet that passing standard that should have. A great majority of these students were finished with the Weekly Reader very quickly and although, I stressed to them how afraid I was that they had done them too quickly, they would not go back and read through and prove the answers. I discussed this with them when I gave the graded papers back to them to file for the Friday Folders. I ask that parents encourage your child to find the proof for the answer and really dig into the story. They have the opportunity to correct the assignment for a higher grade. It is very important that we work on deeper thinking in preparation for the spring TAKS test.

Math Unit 1

2008-09-16T19:54:00.002-05:00

First of all, I want to say thank you to all those that came out for our first IB/Math night. I hope that you now have a much better understanding of where we are going with things and why we are doing things the way that we are in math. Mr. Rich would be a fabulous person to talk to if you still have questions or were unable to make it out tonight. He would be more than happy to sit down and talk with you and show you some examples of what we are doing.

I do want to say, the majority of the kids are really getting what we are doing. We finished up unit 1 today with the district End of Unit Assessment and then the programs End of Unit performance assessment. Most of the kids did really well. By looking at their work, I was really able to see their thinking and how they are understanding all of this. The performance assessment really showed their thinking. Let me give an example, let's say the kids were asked to solve 9 x 9. One of the ways that the students solved it was by finding 9x10 and then taking 9 away from that to get 81. They are learning how to use the math combinations (we don't call them facts any longer) they KNOW to solve the combinations that they do not know. Throughout this unit we have talked a lot about arrays, products, factors, square numbers, and multiples. Ask your child about these words and have them show you what they are. It isn't enough to just know a definition, the kids need to be able to know what that means and how it looks.

We will be starting Unit 2 tomorrow and moving away from multiplication in the classroom for a couple of weeks. We do encourage you to continue to work on those unknown combinations at home because we will be coming back to that in Unit 3. Unit 2 involves graphing and surveying so many different math concepts come out during this unit. We will continue the Friday quizzes to make sure the kids are staying up to date on what we have done so far and not letting things go just because we may not be focusing on it in class.

We will continue to work with those that are not quite getting it to help them to catch up. I have spend some one on one time with several students as well as has Mr. Jerome when he is in our room. We will be starting tutoring up in a few weeks so several of our students will have the opportunity to participate in that. I will be contacting you via email or letters home to let you know if we would like to have your child involved. Thank you so much for all you do!!

IB/Math night

2008-09-15T10:09:00.002-05:00

Just a quick post to remind everyone of the IB/Math night tomorrow night. Ms. Langston will spend thirty minutes going over our IB program and how it works in our school. Mr. Rich will spend thirty minutes going over our new math program. This is a great opportunity to gain a better understanding of both the IB program at Las Colinas as well as the new math program. The presentation will start tomorrow night at 6:30 and go until 7:30. We are planning to have these nights periodically throughout the year. I encourage you to all come out for these nights. It will help you to gain a better understanding as to how your children are being educated this year. We do ask that you not bring your children to these nights as it is a time for you to learn about what they are learning. We thank you so much for this and look forward to seeing you tomorrow night!

First IB Unit

2008-09-08T13:07:00.002-05:00

I am very excited to say that we started our first IB unit of inquiry today. Our Central Idea for the unit is: The process of discovery can lead to inventions that impact our society. We will spend the next few weeks researching this and doing different activities to give us a better understanding to this BIG idea. We want the kids to start being curious about the things around them. They may start wondering why certain things were invented, what has been done to make them better, how are they useful, etc.

Through this unit, we will be working on both Thinking Skills and Communication Skills. I think the one that might require the most thought would be non-verbal communication. Many times, we think about how we communicate by listening, speaking, reading and writing but we don't think about the way we communicate non verbally. As a class, we will think about how our body language, facial expressions, etc. communicate with others.

End of the 2nd Week

2008-09-05T16:25:00.003-05:00

Happy Friday to all!! We have now completed our second week of school. So far everything seems to be going well. We have been busy getting procedural things done but are quickly getting into the day to day that will continue throughout the year. After the first two weeks, there are a few things that enter my mind.

1. Homework: Every year I hear from many parents how much homework their fourth grade student seems to be getting. I look every year to see what can be done to trim this down so that they are not spending so much time at home doing homework. A certain amount is good, but I agree that kids need time to play and do extracurricular activities. I am working to try to make this a bit easier. There are certain things that are assigned weekly that must stay: Spelling Activities, Geography and starting next week, 15 minutes of reading. Those three are all assigned on Monday but not due until either Thursday (Geography) or Friday (Spelling and Reading). This helps with pacing. Math homework will be given most nights but it seems to be a lot quicker this year. Other than studying, most everything else is work not completed in class. I feel like, as the year progresses and we get more into routine, more work will be completed during classtime. One of our Classroom Essential Agreements is: I will use my time wisely. We will work during the school day to follow this agreement and learn how we can best use manage our time to get the things done that need to be done. I highly recommend doing this at home as well. Timers are good to be set and work within those timelines but please be cautious because we don't want to decrease the quality of work by rushing faster than we need to get something finished. I am noticing that my detention students are typically the same ones from day to day. I have given them this week to get into routine and hopefully fix this before next week. After that, I will be talking with them and contacting the parents to let them know that a habit is being formed. I appreciate all the help that parents do in getting this habit under control. I hope that we can work together to help make homework more managable for our students.

2. Math We have now completed a week of our new math program. It has been really exciting in class to see the students learn new ways of understanding math. We have had several "ah ha" moments together and had some interesting ways of solving problems shared with the class. I look forward to many more of these opportunities throughout the year. I thank the parents so much for their patience with helping the students with ways of solving math problems that they themselves may not be comfortable with. The Student Math Handbook is now available online to help with more difficult ideas. The website is: http://www.pearsonsuccessnet.com. To log on, my classroom is set up with their Cafeteria Numbers as their User Names and abc123 as the password. It is case sensitive so be careful with that. Mr. Rich's blog located on the LCE website is also another great resource for help with the math program at home.

3. Parents This being my 3rd year at LCE, I am realizing more and more how wonderful our parents are. I spent three years at a school that did not have the parental involvement that we are so fortunate to have here at LCE. I just want to thank all the parents for all they do to help their child's school years to be the best years possible. Many of you have spent hours these last few weeks cutting different things. After spending a few hours cutting myself, this means even more to me that parents are willing to help take on that task and get it accomplished. Thank you for all you do.

I realize this is a bit of a lengthy post but I felt the need to write about a few things that have been on my mind today. There are a few more but I will leave you with these for now. Have a great weekend with your children, and I look forward to seeing them on Monday morning!

Parent Night

2008-09-02T20:41:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to say thank you to all the parents that came out tonight for our parent orientation. I hope that you were able to get some useful information about your child's 4th grade year. It is an exciting year but a very busy year. I look forward to getting to know each of you at the same time as your children.
For those that were not able to make it, I hope to see you later on in the year. I will be sending home a packet of info that was covered tonight.
If you have any questions, feel free to email or call. I will do my best to answer all questions or direct you to the person that can best answer the question.

Welcome to Fourth Grade

2008-08-26T16:22:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the blog for room 301. This will be a place for our class to post different things. I will be posting periodically about things that are going on in the classroom. I am also hoping to give the students the opportunity to blog as well. It may be part of this blog or it may be a separate blog that will be linked to this one. Please check back periodically. The goal will be to update the blog regularly.

Thank you!

Ms. Moore