Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!! I'm so sad that I missed the party yesterday but I am sure you had fun anyway. I stopped by school quickly yesterday. Thanks for all the wonderful valentines! I will see you all on Tuesday!

Buddies Reading

We partnered up for a little while to practice reading. Our assignment was to focus on what our buddy does when he or she gets stuck on a word. What strategies did we notice? What strategies did we offer to help? Ms. Spilker told us we will do something with this but she hasn't told us what yet....hmmm....:)

I have to say...this class loves to read!! If given a choice, they always choose reading! It's a teacher's dream. Today, I let them choose any story they wanted from the book...that was a student's dream!

You might be wondering why they are sitting like they are. At my last science training, I learned that they can hear each other read better when their ears are next to their partner's mouths. You wouldn't believe the change in the noise level in the room. They can actually hear each other so they aren't shouting! Teachers learn something new all the time, too.

Pictographs Are Finally Finished!

After a lot of data gathering, analyzing, and discussing....the pictographs are finished. There was a lot of great math conversation happening. There is a lot of planning that goes into making a pictograph. What symbol do we use? What is the value of that symbol? What are the names of the categories? The most challenging part of all turned out to be how to word the question that our pictographs answer. It was hard! After all the graphs were completed, we had quite a discussion. I think we decided that "How much time does does a class of fourth graders spend doing these activities in a 24 hour period?" I think William gets a "quick clap" for that one! One, two..clap, clap! :)