Kindness Everywhere

 

Our Kindness Assembly was a great hit.  The children read their poems, displayed their posters and showed a wonderful slideshow all about kindness.  The 4th graders did a fantastic job. 

 

The children worked hard and put a lot of effort into this assembly.  We hope that kindness will spread like confetti throughout the school.

 
Lots of collaboration is taking place while students help each other with completing assignments. The children are working on IXL and trying to master many of the skills.  You will also see lots of reading going on in our classroom.  The children grab a book, a comfy spot and read for a given amount of time.

 


Our classroom book a day is coming along nicely.  The children look forward to the part of the day where we come together at the rug and I will read to them.  Many like to choose the book I read, while others are content with the ones I choose to read on that day.  We have lots of wonderful discussions that relate to the book.

 

Our fourth graders watched a video of a little 6 year old boy who is waiting for a heart transplant.  One of his wishes is to get Christmas cards from people so that he can fill his hospital room with the cards.  As one of our first acts of kindness, we made Carlos cards and will be sending them out to him on Monday.  The children were so attentive and sympathetic as they watched the video and were eager to begin making him cards.

The academy classes are all going to participate in the 100 Acts of Kindness that is displayed in our learning commons area.  Every time a student performs an act of kindness and is caught, they will receive a sticker to add to their class chart.  We are hoping to get all the charts filled before we begin our Holiday Break.

Fifth Graders

 

We have begun our Informational writing lessons for this trimester.  We discussed what informational writing involves and they will be creating a booklet with one of the topics they chose.  Lots of research is taking place to find out more about their topic.

 
Once again, a lot of collaboration and helping out is taking place.  The children enjoy helping one another to complete their tasks.  It's great to see such amazing students helping out a classmate or providing support to them. 

This is another display that we have up in the learning commons.  We are planning to fill it with "sprinkles" of kindness acts.  Stay tuned as our board gets filled with all the kind acts that the children are doing.  

The Most Wonderful Time of Year!

It was another phenomenal week at SOS.  There were presentations, Writing assignments, and some Holiday shopping.

Fourth Grade:
We started our week with presenting our book in a box projects.  It was amazing to see the creativity that the students displayed.  Each presenter talked about the book they read by providing objects related to the book.

 

 

The children got up in front of their class and talked about the significance of each of the items in their box.  This was their first one for the year, stay tuned for the next one that will be assigned this week.  The children will have the trimester to work on it.  This involves time management and creativity again to develop their final product.


It was amazing to see all the effort and hard work that went into these projects.  The children were very confident in their presentations and felt comfortable in front of their classmates.

A job well done by many!

 

Our audience enjoyed listening to their classmates and some were very intrigued by the presentations and want to read the books that were presented.

 

 Our 4th graders will also be leading our PBIS assembly all about kindness.  They have been working hard making posters, creating poems and putting together a slide show to show the entire school on Tuesday.

 



Fifth Graders:
Our fifth graders have also been busy with google classroom and writing.  We have started using the RACE strategy when answering short responses or comprehension questions.  They work together, or on their own and come up with a thorough answer to the question.

We also had a visit from some of the third graders.  They came in to read the personal narratives that they wrote.

 

 

The third graders did such a wonderful job and the fifth graders enjoyed the visit.  Our students all get along so well with one another.  They take pride in their work, they compliment one another and they help each other out.

We also worked on spreading kindness in the school.  Children made Christmas cards for our Veterans and want to light up the world with various acts of kindness. 

 
Our days are full of collaborating, working on projects, listening to one another and showing acts of kindness throughout the day.  The children are very exciting about the Holidays, but we are still very much on task and engaged in the learning process.  It is a wonderful time of year!!!

Poems, Posters and Research, Oh My!!!

 

 
This past week, even though it was a short one, was another productive one.  We have so much going on and the children have been actively involved.  The fourth graders are working in their enrichment groups in preparation for the RICAS later on in the year.
Each group of students, is practicing the RACE strategy, completing released items from RICAS and having conversations about

summarizing and recalling information from the text. 

The children have also chosen a children's author and are researching all about him or her.  They are using the internet to look up information about where the author was born, books written by that author and other interesting facts.  They will be handing then in on Wednesday.

Our fourth graders are preparing for our next PBIS assembly, which is revolved around Kindness.  The children are creating poems, a slide show and posters to be displayed around the school.  They are really doing a great job.

 
Our classroom is busy on any given day.  Walking in you will see children on bean bags, at their desks, at our work table, or even on the rug, engaged in a particular activity.

The energy is buzzing all around as the children complete assignments, work on projects or even sit somewhere to do some reading or writing in their writer's notebook.  

We also spent the week reading various books about Thanksgiving and shared some of our own traditions.

 

Fifth graders finished up their first English Summit project and presented it to the class.  They did a fantastic job on them and I am very pleased with the final products that they created.  We won't be starting another project until after the holidays, but we will be doing various activities revolving around writing and google classroom assignments.  We will also be starting up with Words their Way again. 

 

I am so excited about the many activities we will be doing around kindness.  In these upcoming months we will read, write and discuss kindness and what it looks like, feels like and sounds like.  I have many ideas floating around and cannot wait to share them with the children and teachers. 
I am very excited about the newest addition to my #bookaday collection, A Little Spot of Kindness. 
I hope the children enjoy it as much as I do.

Here is a quick peak at our Kindness Elf that will be part of
our classroom for the season.  He is going to be on the lookout for children showing random acts of kindness.