Monday, October 3, 2016

QUEST Reading 4/5
Unfortunately I will only be able to see my reading students one time this week due to a conference, a meeting at the district office, and our Institute Day on Friday. During my time with the students I will be assigning a project that will be completed both in class and at home. Students will be given a job on our "Assignment Day" and they will then create a diary written from the perspective of an employee of the city of Ember. Diaries will be due on Tuesday, Oct. 18th for Hollywood students and on Wednesday, October 19th for Blythe Park students.

QUEST Reading 3
Due to the fact that almost all of my 3rd graders have already read the novel Frindle, we will be reading No Talking by Andrew Clements instead. I have spent the past few weeks using picture books to pre-teach some of the skills the students will utilize through the reading of this text; summarizing, making inferences and identifying character traits. The titles we used are Going Places by Reynolds & Reynolds, Boy by James Mayhew and Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell. I love using picture books to teach literary concepts, and the students have definitely enjoyed hearing these stories as well.


QUEST Math 3
The students have enjoyed spending the past few weeks determining which school supplies would be most beneficial in a classroom and then creating bar graphs to illustrate their choices. They all did a great job including all of the necessary components and the graphs look great!


QUEST Math 4
The students have been exploring the relationship among powers of 10 and how it affects the place value of a digit of a given number. There will be no QUEST Math this week because I will be attending a conference on Wednesday.

Local Weekend Programs for Gifted Learners

The Center for Gifted/Midwest Torrance Center for Creativity (a Northern Illinois University partner) is now accepting registration for its fall offerings. These are one day programs held at 5 different Chicagoland locations. Click here for more info and to register! Workshop titles are:

Engineering Egg-Stravaganza!

Harry Potter Festival

Harry Potter Free Movie Night

Makers Mania!

Science Wonders!

STEM with STEAM: What Would Rube Do?

The Center for Talent Development through Northwestern Illinois University is also accepting registration for 8-week Saturday OR Sunday programs that will run from October 1st through November 20th at 5 different Chicagoland locations. Click here for more info and to register!

September 20, 2016

QUEST Reading 4/5
Last week we added some information about identifying the setting and character traits to our interactive Reading Notebooks. These notebooks will be developed by the students and used throughout the year as a reference to the skills on which we will focus. Getting these notebooks up and running at the beginning of the year take a bit of time and patience, but they will be a valuable tool moving forward. We practiced applying these skills to our City of Ember text, and will continue to work on that through chapter 5.


QUEST Reading 3
3rd graders have also begun creating interactive Reading Notebooks. These notebooks will be developed by the students and used throughout the year as a reference to the skills on which we will focus. Getting these notebooks up and running at the beginning of the year take a bit of time and patience, but they will be a valuable tool moving forward. Last week we practiced answering questions completely by restating the main idea from the question in our response. The students also completed a readiness activity to help guide my instruction for the upcoming weeks. This week we will be practicing summarizing using the texts Going Places by Reynolds & Reynolds and Boy by Mayhew.


Math 4
In 4th grade math we have established and practiced group norms for holding math talks. We have also spent a bit of time reviewing estimation techniques to ensure our solutions are reasonable.


Math 3
Third graders are in the middle of a project that asks students to consider which school supplies would be the most useful to purchase if their teacher was awarded a grant to purchase additional materials. The project will culminate with the students creating their own bar graphs to display their thinking.

September 8, 2016

In QUEST Reading 4/5 this week we finished up sharing our Summer Stories in the format of a book cover, and did some pre-reading activities for our novel The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. We also finalized our behavior expectations for our time together. Next week will dive into the story and focus on using text evidence to make inferences and answer questions.

3rd grade reading groups also finished up their Summer Stories and started the book Frindle by Andrew Clements. We also finalized our behavior expectations for our time together. Next week we will use picture books to begin exploring the concept of theme. We will also practice using text evidence to answer questions and to identify character traits for the main characters of Frindle.

This week math groups established guidelines for holding Math Talks and reviewed some place value concepts. After reviewing these guidelines we held our first successful Math Talk followed by a game to review place value. 

August 31, 2016

I am so excited to begin working with my groups this week! QUEST Reading students will be exploring the Growth Mindset concept and working on a team building activity. We read the story The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires and watched the video clip "Growing Your Mind". They will also be sharing the highlights of their summer with our group in the format of a book cover.

The concepts explored will be our guiding principles for the year:

• Growth Mindset
• The Power of Yet
• Teamwork

In the beginning of the year I will be pushing into the grade level classrooms during their math time for QUEST Math. This will be helpful as we all work to get to know the students and our exciting new math program, Math in Focus. I look forward to working closely with students as the year progresses!