Highlights of a Great Week

Room 5's amazing tightrope-walking-miniature-Halloween-parade!

This week was a whirlwind!  As a few of you probably witnessed, there were a few days when I felt like I was literally blown out of the classroom at the end of the day on the wind of the kids’ boundless energy. 

It must be the fact that Halloween is right around the corner… the mere anticipation of candy is enough to kick the kids into high gear.  Lordy, I can only imagine what it will be like next week. 

We had a few birthdays in our class this week.  Jeremy turned 8 on Wednesday and Brad turned 8 today.  One thing I love about kids is how they revel in their own birthdays and the birthdays of anyone around them.  Birthdays are definitely cause for celebration in room 5.

We did a lot of discovering and learning this week.  During reading workshop, we practiced our reading fluency by reading elbow to elbow, and knee to knee with partners.  We offered our “Praise and Polish” to classroom writers who bravely shared stories from their lives.  We practiced penmanship.  We wrote letters to National Park rangers asking for park resources for our studies.  We explored parks using official park maps.  We made a miniature, tightrope-walking Halloween parade (come see it!).  We tapped into our innate mathematical minds, coming up with all kinds of strategies to add and subtract numbers in our heads.  We had a joint Math Game Day with Ms. Erika's class.  We finished up our fabulous read aloud book, James and the Giant Peach.  We sang songs, practiced our class Halloween poem, shared at morning meeting, and took care of classroom jobs.
And of course, created, created, created, and played, played, played. 

Here are a few things the students of room 5 had to say about this week:
Diego—“My favorite part of the week was today because it was Brad’s birthday.”
Maya—“I liked working on my Yosemite report today.”
Alexander—“I liked playing basketball in P.E. because it is a new sport we are learning.”
Kaden—“The best part of the week is drawing this maze right now, because it’s fun.”
Nancy—“My favorite thing is making this house for Lily.”
Alexander—“I started reading Dear Mr. Henshaw.  To my surprise it is a bunch of letters telling a story.”
Diego—“The best thing I read this week was Geronimo Stilton because it has a lot of funny parts in it.”
Pema—“Partner reading was really good because it was really fun.”
Miles—“It was fun and it was challenging when me made the tightrope walking Halloween parade because it was hard putting the pennies on the wires.”
Tori—“I played Rat-a-Tat Cat, Mastermind, and Labyrinth.  Rat-A-Tat Cat was my favorite because it was difficult thinking which was kind of fun.”
Alexander—“Game day was crowded but every time I didn’t have a game to play, one was open.”
Jeremy—“My favorite part of the week was winning the basketball game today!”
Meleah—“Math today was fun because there was a game that I loved that I don’t normally get to play.  It was a mouse game.”
Anya—“I like playing games.  I liked Frog Juice because it’s about making potions and it’s fun.”
Ruby—“The best thing I read this week was The Odyssey because it’s real Greek mythology.  It’s not made up; it’s the real deal.”
Brad—“The best part was the birthday party!”
Sacha—“I like that I just started reading the Ramona book because it’s really good so far, even though I’ve only read one page.”
Skylar—“I’m really into my book, Loser.”
Connor—“I liked game day because I like games.”
Tori—“My favorite part about this week was when I started reading Guinea Dog because it’s so funny and really, really interesting.”
Sacha--“During game day, I played Rat-a-Tat Cat with Tori and Ella, and a little bit of Mastermind.”
Aidan—“The best part of the whole week was Brad’s birthday treat!”
Sophia—“That’s our rat museum and I liked making it.”