Holiday Break

We had a great trip to the Capitol and Historical Museum. Here are a few pictures from our day:

 

 

 

 

 

 
- Students were sent home with a reading log to earn a FREE ticket for Six Flags. See form for specific details and the mid February due date. Students should continue to write their reading in their school reading log if they are choosing to participate in this program.

 Homework over break:

Reading over break should include a minimum of three days for 25 minutes. All students left school on Friday with a goal for their historical fiction book club and jotting assignments.

Math fact logs will still be collected on Friday, January 3rd. I will be looking for 30 minutes of fact practice.

 

Thank you very much for the thoughtful baby shower gifts. I was so surprised by all of the wonderful books with sweet messages from the students. I had so much fun organizing the books in our little girls room.

Week of December 16th

 

Watch for math tests to come home early next week. Please be sure to sign the sticker in your child's assignment notebook stating that you saw and discussed your test with your child. Unit math tests do not need to be returned back to school.

Field trip on Wednesday!

We will be heading to Madison around 8:50 and returning back to school around 2:30. Please be sure your child brings a lunch in which everything can be thrown away. Since it is a longer drive, students are allowed to bring electronics on the bus. Please use your discretion if you would like your child to bring a device or not. Please know that ALL devices will be left on the bus while we are touring the Capitol and Historical Museum.



Maternity Leave

Mrs. Nancy Loth will be joining our class during my maternity leave. She has worked in our building last year and this year as our math interventionist. She started this school year as a long term sub at Nature Hill. I am excited and confident  to have Mrs. Loth her working in our classroom while I am gone. She is a wonderful colleague and educator. Mrs. Loth will join our class on Monday and Tuesday of this week to get to know the students and our classroom procedures. My plan is to continue to be with the class until my due date of  January 14th and return the beginning of April. Kevin and I are excited to for this next chapter in our lives and are looking forward to meeting our little bundle of joy soon! It is going to be so hard for me to take a step away from "my kids" however, know that Mrs. Loth and I will do everything possible to make this a seamless transition.

Week of December 9th

 

Monday we will start our new reading unit, historical fiction. I am very excited about this unit as we will be reading aloud one of my favorite books, Number the Stars.

During this unit, everyone in class will be reading books from this genre and participating in book clubs. Students will start out reading independently and then will quickly transition into book clubs.  As they read these books, they will be discussing them with their partners or small group. For this reason, it is important that they read the amount their partnership/group decides each day. They should also write down thoughts in their reader’s notebook or on post-it notes to make their conversations more meaningful. We are discouraging students from reading other books unless they are finished with their historical fiction book assignment. Please take the time, especially as we begin to launch these book clubs, to ask your child if they are caught up with their  book and have flagged their thinking, a minimum of 3 to 4 jottings each night. 


In order to make have enough books for successful book clubs, we have to borrow many copies from other libraries.  Students will "checkout" these books with their classroom teacher and are responsible for them.  If the book fails to come back or is damaged, it will be the students responsibility to replace the book or pay the fine.  This way, we can continue borrowing titles from other schools for many years to come.

Language and actions in our books often directly and accurately mimics true historical time periods.  We will be having a conversation about being mature readers and asking questions for clarification if necessary.  If these questions arise at home, please view this as a teaching moment.  History is not always appropriate but valuable and should be apart of our students' lives!  Let me know if you have further questions or would like to preview some of the titles.

 On Thursday your child brought home a book order. It is due on Wednesday, December 11th. I am hopeful that the books will be here before the long holiday break. If you would like to order the books as a gift for your child, please let me know and I can keep them for a time that would work for you to pick them up.

 
 

On Thursday, December 12th, students will take their unit 4 math test. This test will cover solving open number sentences, reading and writing decimals to the hundredths place, locating decimals on a number line, and ordering decimals. We will begin our review for the test on Monday. Thank you for your support at home to help your child prepare for this test.

Friendly Reminder: German Star money and shoeboxes are due on Monday! The $2.50 is used to help purchase paper, wax, and glitter. We will start to making our stars on Thursday!

 

 

Thanksgiving Week

On Thursday, student's came home with their district fact tests. These tests are reflected on their report cards. In order for a child to receive a "Yes", stating that they met their fact expectations, they needed to complete 20 problems in a minute. Students need to show 95% accuracy in addition, subtraction, and multiplication and 85% accuracy in division. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding the tests that were sent home.

On Monday, students will come home with a note asking for parent volunteers to continue our Summit School tradition of making German Stars. Volunteers must be available during a training session time and the time that we will be folding the stars. Please view the green note that will be coming home on Monday for more details.

Next week will be a short week due to Thanksgiving. Just a reminder, school will be closed on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

I hope your days off are spent together as a family and your stomach's are filled with yummy food! This holiday season I am thankful for 26 wonderful students and their supportive families.

November 18th

Few Reminders For the Week of November 18th

 

Things will start to get back to "normal" this week, after two weeks of WKCE testing. Thank you for helping your child prepare for these tests!

Word Study is back is session this week! Students will be receiving their weekly sorts on Monday followed by a spell check on Friday.  Please help in reminding them to complete their nightly homework, especially explaining their blind sorts on Wednesday.  Notebooks are due to school on Thursday.

 
Madison field trip forms are due to school on November 22nd.  As a reminder, the district has switched to an online payment system this year.  Please be sure to visit your family access account to pay for your child's trip. However, the yellow permission slip should be turned in to school. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Week of November 11th

- Reading Reminder: Students should continue to turn in their reader's notebooks when they finish their fiction chapter books. At school, we are focusing on nonfiction skills, but at home students should continue to practice their fiction skills by reading just right chapter books and jotting their thinking. Reminders of ways to jot are stapled to the front cover of their notebooks and their grading requirements are stapled to the back. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for your continued literacy support.

- Students will not receive a new spelling sort this week. Students have been working so hard to prepare for the WKCE we thought we would reward them with a little less homework this week. They deserve it!

- Math fact tests should be signed and returned before the next Wednesday's math fact test.

- Unit 3 math test will be on Friday the 8th. Students have been working hard to practice their multiplication skills as this was the main focus of you the unit. Other skills that will be tested are, in and out boxes, elapsed time, open number sentences, story problems, and naming multiples and factors of numbers. Look for review packets to come home on Wednesday.

WKCE Testing Schedule for this week:

Tuesday, November 12th
Math Session 3- 10:30-11

Wednesday, November 13th
Science- 10:30-11:10

Thursday, November 14th
Language 10:30-11:00
Break 11-11:10
Writing 11:10-11:40

Friday, November 15th
Social Studies 10:30 - 11:10

Family Fun Event:
Looking for a FREE family fun event? Time Warner Cable is sponsoring an event at Discovery World with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) inspired exhibits. Check out the link for more details. Sounds like fun to me, and the event has the perfect price... FREE!!!

https://www.discoveryworld.org/events/time-warner-cables-5th-annual-stemfest-at-discovery-world/

 

 

At the beginning of the school year I filled out a grant on the Donors Choose website that was fully funded by US Cellular. The project that I asked to have funded provided our classroom with two Google Chromebooks. The students and I are extremely excited to get to use these Google App laptops. So far we have enjoyed using them to practice our math facts during math workshop. I look forward to working with them in the future during writing and science. Technology can open up so many doors in education! I hope to promote more project ideas on this the Donors Choose website. If you have not heard of this website before, I think it is worth checking out! http://www.donorschoose.org/

Thank you  to US Cellular for funding this project!

 

 

 

 

Week of November 4th

Thank you for reminding your child to bring in a flashlight on Thursday. We had a blast writing spooky stories in the dark! It was a great opportunity to see their creative minds work, we may have some thriller writers in our future! We also enjoyed a little bit of flashlight reading during our independent reading time. This could be a fun family activity especially on dreary days like Thursday!

On Monday, students will come home with the latest book order. There are numerous great book choices! Some books that I highly recommend in this order: Mysteries According to Humphrey, Swindle series, the National Geographic nonfiction books, and the I Survived series.

Scholastic Book Clubs Code: J44M7

WKCE starts this week!

Students will begin their WKCE testing this week. Students will be tested on reading and math. It is important that students come to school well rested and have had a hearty breakfast. The testing schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, November 5th:
10:15-10:30 Test Introduction
10:30-11:10 Reading Session 1
11:10-11:25 Break
11:25-12:05 Reading Session 2

Wednesday, November 6th:
10:30-11:10 Reading Session 3

Thursday, November 7th:
10:30-10:55 Math Session 1
10:55-11:05 Break
11:05-11:35 Math Session 2

Please let me know if you have any questions. As you can imagine our schedule will be very different and nightly homework assignments may also be different too.

On Friday, students came home with a note regarding Artsonia. This allows you to share your child's artwork with family members. The quarter size sheet provides you with a log-in and password to view and share your child's artwork.

Packer (or Bears) Spirit Day on Monday! Students are encouraged to wear their team spirit colors on Monday to celebrate the great team rivalry that will be displayed during the Monday Night Football game.

 

Go Pack Go!

 

Week of October 28th

 

 

We had a blast at our Halloween party! We played bingo, created our spooktacular craft, and had many munchies and laughs! Check out all of the great costumes!

On Thursday, we are asking students to bring a flashlight to school to participate in a fun writing activity.


Students will come home with their math fact long on Monday. Just a reminder that students will need to bring their log back on Friday with 30 minutes of documented math fact practice for the week. I will be looking for 30 minutes of math fact practice and parent signatures next to each log-in time.

On Wednesday, students came home with their social studies quiz's. Please make sure they are signed and returned to school.

Word study will return this week! Since we had a week off, please remind students to check that they have completed all assignments correctly based on the homework guideline sheet in their notebooks.

This week we will begin to prepare for the WKCE. On the following website, http://oea.dpi.wi.gov/oea_wkce_home , you can find access to practice test materials. We will complete some of these at school to help us get ready.

Week of October 21st

Our Halloween Party will be on Thursday, October 24th. Please be sure your child has 2 empty toilet paper rolls so that they are able to participate in our spooktacular craft. Students should bring their costume to school in a bag, we will change into costumes prior to the 10:00 parade. We have early release on this day. Students will end their day at 12:40.

Reading News:

On Monday, we will start our new unit, nonfiction. This will be a great opportunity for students to build on the skills they have already developed as nonfiction readers and add a few more strategies to their reading toolbox. During independent time students will focus on reading nonfiction texts. However, we would still like them to read fiction at home and jot in their readers notebooks. Below is a picture of the expectations for their readers notebooks. As a class we developed and discussed the expectations for each graded level. Students should continue to turn in their reader's notebooks after each chapter book they finish.

 

 

 

 

Important information for this week:

 

 - Due to the short week, we will not have word study.

- Look for math tests to come home with your child on Monday. Please sign the sticker in their assignment notebooks stating that you have seen your child's test and discussed it with them.

- On Friday, students brought home their vocabulary words and answer key to help prepare for their quiz on Wednesday. The quiz will have an emphasis on matching the vocabulary terms with their definition.

Week of October 13th

On Friday, we were fortunate enough to be able to have some players from the Cooney Football team read to us. We joined Mrs. Ganser's class as they read a silly book, Fox in Love, and talked to us about their reading and personal lives. Go Oconomowoc!

The Book Fair is here! As a class, we will go to the Book Fair on Tuesday from 1:00-1:20. There are a lot of great selections this year!

Thursday we will have our Unit 2 math test. This test will cover place value, adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers, and analyzing data. Look for review packets to come home at the beginning of the week.


Parent homework reminder: Parents your homework is due on Monday. :) Your child brought home a green form on Wednesday regarding topics to be discussed at conferences. Thank you for taking the time to fill this form out, I want to make sure that we cover all of the topics you would like to discuss in our short time together.

 

Our Halloween party will be on Thursday, October 24th. Mrs. Antonneau is putting together a fun craft for our class to create during the party. We need your help by sending in two empty toilet paper rolls with your child. You may start to send them in now, but please make sure your child has them by the 24th.

Week of October 7th

Summit School is very excited to welcome our Guest Author, David Shannon, to Summit Elementary School on Tuesday afternoon.  We discussed, read, and shared why we love so many of his books this past week. We practiced our reading strategy of forming theories about characters while we read his book, Alice the Fairy.   What an exciting opportunity for our students to meet one of their favorite authors!

 

Students were introduced to our district's new keyboarding program on Friday. We will be working on our keyboarding skills two times a week, however to truly solidify these skills and encourage transference, practicing at home is ideal. At school students will use the website, http://www.typingweb.com , which can be accessed at home too! Student logins are the same logins they use to get on the computers at school. Additional websites can be found under our "Online Learning Resources tab".

If you have not done so already, take a moment to look over students' science tests that came home last week.  Please sign and return these tests to me.

We had a great start to tracking our thinking in our Reader's Notebooks this week. So far we are off to a pretty good start working to extend our thinking. We will continue this practice for the entire school year adding different strategies to document our thinking as we continue to grow as readers. This work should be done throughout the whole book, not just a final reflection at the end of the book. When students finish their chapter book, they should hand in their notebooks to me. Ask your child to see their work they did in their notebooks this week.

 

Reminders: Word study notebooks are due to school on Thursdays.  These should be coming back and forth between home and school each night.  Notebooks may or may not be coming home on Thursdays, however their WORDS definitely should!  Spelling tests are always on Fridays.  For a detailed description of the nightly homework expectations, please see the green sheet stapled to the inside back cover of their notebooks. 

Please help remind your students that part of their Wednesday night homework is to write an explanation sentence at the end of each column of their blind sort, stating why the words belong there. As a class we are working towards remembering this important step.

The Book Fair is coming!  Our class will have the opportunity to shop the book fair on October 15th from 1:00-1:20. The book fair is also open late on certain nights if you'd like to join your child during their shopping time!  Please check with the office for specific dates and times. 

 

 

 

Week of September 30th

Students took their Unit 1 math tests on Wednesday. Your child should have come home with their test on Friday.  Tests can remain at home, however please look for the  sticker in your child's assignment notebooks that parents should sign once they've looked over the test with their child.  Please let me know if you have any questions about the test or  the verification process.

 

Science Test on Tuesday:  Students came home with their green vocabulary cards on Thursday night.  Please be sure students review these words over the weekend in preparation for their test on Tuesday; vocabulary is a large portion of their Magnetism and Electricity unit test. 

 

 

Reader's Notebooks will be coming home with students on Monday.  Below are the expectations:

- Bring between home and school each day (should be kept in reading bags to make this a simple transition)

- Title and author page for each book

- Organized (entries have dates to help monitor progress and time spent on one book.)

- Work should reflect student's own thinking and ideas, not repeating what the author has already shared

- Multiple pages of entries per book

- Thinking is about the whole book (student shows a variety of entries from the beginning, middle, and end of the book)

Inside the front cover of their notebook students will have a sheet that will help remind them of guidelines and display different ways of showing our thinking that we practice daily during our mini lessons. Students have been doing a fantastic job using these strategies with their post-its and are eager to push their thinking further in their notebooks.  

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday is an Early Release Day:  Students will be released at 1:40pm. Lunch will still be served for students.

 

We had perfect weather and learned an abundant amount of information regarding Wisconsin Agriculture. The Oconomowoc FFA students did a wonderful job teaching our students about machinery, different farm animals, and planting. They had a blast! Enjoy a few photos from our trip!