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:
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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.
 

The children used their experience with designing a system to prevent a landslide to create a system that was realistic. The models were very successful! Congratulations to the scientists of Room 8!

We went on a hike with our fourth grade buddies (see Mr. Talbot's Page for the Picture) . We had hiked half of the trail last week, so we were able to make some comparisons:
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"I noticed the sand we saw last tiime wasn't there. I hear birds chirping. The ground started to get squishy and it was cold! We were with our fourth grade buddies. We also had to  move our feet fast! I fell over and my fourth grade buddy helped me up. His name is Brody." by Wyatt

I noticed there was so many differrent color leaves. I noticed that the stream was not there. I noticed that there were so many bridges. It was super cold!" by Avery

This is a Komod Dragon. Griffin read in his book that a Komodo Dragon can grow up to 10 feet! During snack the children got out the yard sticks and measured how long the desks were and found that they are 24 inches or 2 feet. They figured out that they could line up 5 desks to see how long a Komodo Dragon is. That is a BIG animal! (The photo is from Free Photos--no Komodo Dragons visited the classroom!)

In honor of Colombus Day we have been studying maps and globes. The children love the big wall map that our awesome custodian Mr. Dave put up for us!

We have had a wonderful September. Each morning the children gather in the inner circle which is the area inside of our desks. Children share their newws with each other in a cheerful manner. The Team Helper starts off our good morning handshake and each child is greeted by name. When the greeting is complete, the Team Helper begins the passing of the bean bag--no hands are allowed during this process! After the bean bag goes around, it gets tossed to me and we get ready for our daily affirmation. I toss the bean bag to each child and they state "I feel_________" and fill in a positive feeling such as adored, appreciated, calm, carefree, cheerful, comfortable, confident, content, energetic, glorious, joyful, loved, overjoyed, patient, resepcted, peaceful or proud) or the send a feeling to the class "I send my classmates the feeling of ______".  After they make their statement, they return to their seat and we begin our next academic subject. Respected and calm and joyful are the top three feeling for September!

We played a game where we sorted shapes by attributes. Each team had a set. The teams hid their eyes, and the shape takers took some shapes. Because our shapes were organized, we could see in an instant what was missing!

Today we practiced partner reading. We had one book that we took turns reading from, read in a just right pace using character voices.