We had two chicks hatch! They are super cute and can cheep really loudly!

In math we are thinking about repeated addition. We are thinking about rows and columns. We played a game where we rolled two dice to find out how many tiles would be in a row, and one die to find out how many rows we would have. 
Lily and Teagan made a plan to wear their Jump Rope For Heartf shirts!

Griffin Clark was recognized for his role in eliminating plastic straws from Burr District Elementary School.
Griffin wrote a letter to the lunch ladies asking the to stop using planstic straws. Mrs. Hanson brought the letter to attention of her boss, and a change has been made. Great Job Griffin!

Dear Lunch Ladies,
Dont use plastic straws. Sea turtles are dying because of plastic straws. Did you know that some beaches are covered in plastic straws. Once they found thousands of straws in one dead whale. If you love fishing, stop using plastic straws because tuna and yello fin tuna are dying.

You don't need plastic straws. You can just drink out of the carton. It (the straw) is unecessary. YOu can just drink milk regular. You can drink it with no straw. You can use a stainless steel straw. At lunch you can just bring a stainless straw. You know you should help by using a stainless straw.

Did you know that straws are not recyclable? Did youo know it takes 200 years for one straw to distintigrate. If every kid has a stainless straw it will save the school millions. Every kids uses one straw every day, but if every kid had one stainless straw they just wash it every day.

Sincerely,
​Griffin

We have been working very hard on our non-fiction books. This is involving lots of research from multiple sources. The children take pride in their finished pieces! The listeners are really respectful and ask fabulous questions.

Kaylin found sprouted apple seeds in her apple! She placed them in a bag with a damp paper towel and we will see if they grow. Next thing we knoew Fox had sporuting seeds in his apple as well! Avery found sprouting seeds in Ms. Atwood's apple. We have been studying seeds as part of Project Lead The Way.

As part of our Project Lead the Way Unit on States of Matter, we learned thatt there are three states of matter-gas, liquid, solid. This was before we got information from Quinn that plasma is the fourth state of matter. 

​We were testing out water temperatures for our project on conductors and insulators. The chidlren tested how warm the container felt, checked the temperature of the water when it first cam out of the faucet and then after 20 minutes.

We then went out side and each scientist got two containers of snow-one in a solo cup and one in a styrofoam cup. The two cups sat on the desks of the scientists and we observed the changes. The discussion about if snow to water is a reversible change was wonderful. At the end of the day, the children concluded that the styrofoam cup provided more insulation than the solo cup.

One major part of FUNdations is building the words and seeing the spelling patterns in action! The vowels and vowel teams are salmon colored. This was really helpful for us to differentiate y as a consonant and y as a vowel!

We have been exploring character traits in our chapter books! We think about how the character is as a person (not their mood) and the character traits help us visualize how the character behaves. Toad is a grumpy character! When a character behaves out of character, it means something is going to happen!

We had a wonderful Sosltice Party, Sing a Long and special visit from Ted Atwood and Roddy Atwood. Good bye and safe travels to Olivia and her family! I will see the children in January 2019!

We love poetry! We are really working on finding the strong language in a narrative and taking out the little words to make a poem:
​
This was our  morning message:
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Good Morning, Team 8. Today we will gather in the inner-circle for our greeting and then put our desks into assessment formation. Remember “Sound check.” “Sound check” “Shh.” “Shh”; silence and eyes on me.
 
It turned into this poem:

Team 8
            GATHER
                   DESKS!
Assessment FORMATION!
Inner circle
            Morning Greeting
                                    Sound check
                                                            Shh.