Thanks Nikki!

Yesterday my class got a super surprise in the mail.  The super talented Nikki over at Melonheads ( http://melonheadzillustrating.blogspot.com/ ) adopted our class this fall. She sent this:

It sat on our table all day! My students were guessing all day!

My principal brought it to us and she was curious too! So we had her come back to help with the great reveal. She opened it s - l- o -w - l - y  as excitement mounted.

And here we all are with individual gift bags with all kinds of goodies AND specialty popcorn from the great state of Utah, Nikki's home.

Thank you Nikki!!!!!

I'm baaaaaaccccckkkk!

Wow, the first few weeks of school have been a whirlwind. I love my new group of students and this year is off to a fantastic start. We have started Daily 5 (actually daily2 at the moment) and our reading stamina is already up to 25 min.!

 So glad to have students who beg me to have Read to Self time. We started reading strategies in CAFE, wrote Bio Poems and are starting Friendly Letters this week. We've hit larger (huge) numbers with place value and are comparing and ordering. In Science we are studying Space this quarter. Here are some of our galaxies:

In Social Studies we are reviewing geography starting with continents and oceans. Here is an example of an assessment:

I also used an old map I had and added velcro dots to make a hands on activity. Wow, they loved this. Several students got a timer and started to time themselves on how fast they could place all the labels. Got it down to 15 seconds. Now, tell me they don't know locations now!

For back to school night, students displayed their work as well as writing about themselves and drawing a self portrait.