USBORNE BOOKS - Reach for the Stars!!

Today we started a new PTO fundraiser.  Students were able to fill out a book wish list from an extensive selection of books that the USBORNE representatives have displayed here at school.  Students who participate in this fundraiser commit to reading at least 30 minutes each day at home for the next 10 days (something they should be doing anyway), and ask people to sponsor their reading.  

Sponsors participate by donating money (any amount is great) toward the student's reading goal.  

50% of all money donated goes to purchase books from the student's wish list.
40% of the money donated helps fund our field trips.

Refer to the sheet that your student brought home today for more information.

Thanks for supporting this great way to promote reading and help us afford our field trips!!

Reading and Writing Workshop

This week we started our reading and writing workshops with the students.  We focused on expectations for students and teachers, as well as building our reading and writing stamina.  It is apparent that we have very creative writers in The LAB - we have seen so many imaginative ideas for writing and are looking forward to more great stories and articles from our authors this school year!

Week One Wrap Up

Whew, we made it through our first week!  The students have been so awesome and are really working hard to create a great classroom community.  We will continue to work on this all year, but held it as a priority this first week of school.  We have had such positive students and couldn't be happier with the way our first week went.

Today we finished our movies, we will try to get them linked to the web page at some point.  We have to do some finishing touches with the editing but the students have completed their requirements.  We also discussed the use of a portfolio this school year and what it is for. Students had the opportunity to think about some goals they would be able to set for being a responsible and respectful student/classmate.  We saw some great goals being set and heard some good ideas on how to reach those goals.

We hope you all have a great weekend and please remember to feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.

Below is a little glimpse of one of our discussions about goal setting.

Moving Making and Job Applications

Thursday was another busy day!  We spent time working on producing short videos that model the Ranger Way expectations for playground behaviors.  The videos will be part of a school wide 'movie' featuring all of the elementary classes!  The groups had to work together to share ideas and find ways to include everyone.  It wasn't always easy, but the groups are working on their collaboration skills and improving each time they meet.

We also spent some time thinking about classroom jobs for the school year.  We have asked the students to put together an application for a job(s) they are interested in having for the quarter.  Not all students are required to have a job as it can be a hard enough time just being a student!  We are hoping the students who apply think about what job would be best suited to them based on their qualities and interests.  Jobs will be assigned for one quarter of the year and then students will have to reapply for a job.  This will give students who did not have a job the first quarter an opportunity to apply, if they choose to do so.  We want students to have the opportunity to show case their responsibility within our classroom!

Creating Classroom Rules

We had another great day at school!  The students did a great job with their reading stamina, so we have set a high starting place for the first week of school!

We continued to refine our expected behaviors and reviewed the students' expectations from yesterday.  Below you will find photos that summarize their expectations of themselves, their classmates, and their teachers.  In addition, students worked together in groups to create our class rules, which are found at this link:  The LAB Rules

First Day

Wow!  What a whirl wind of a day!  We had a great time getting to know everyone and learning names. We learned and practiced many expected behaviors within our room and around the school.  We discussed what kind of things we need in order to learn well this school year, from ourselves, from our classmates and from our teachers.  It was a great discussion and we found that we needed many of the same things, all of which are tied to being respectful and responsible! There are a few pictures below from this activity.

  The day flew by very quickly and we are looking forward to another great day, tomorrow!

The LAB Rules

Some of you may be wondering why we are using the name The LAB and some of you may already know.  We didn't want to always be saying 'The 4/5/6 Multiage Classroom' as it is kind of a mouthful and doesn't necessarily sound great or explain anything about our room.  So we were on a search for a simple 'name' for our classroom but wanted something meaningful.  We came up with some neat acronyms but realized they were too lengthy and 'technical' sounding.  We finally came up with The LAB because we will be learning through a lot of project based activities that take place in a lab and it fits perfectly with what we will be doing: Learning a wide variety of material, achieving many goals, and believing in ourselves and our classmates.  So this is what it stands for - Learning! Achieving! Believing!

   We found that The LAB was too common for many of the web based sites we were using, we needed to add something else in order to get a website and blog and such.  So we put together the first half of our last names and can you believe....it comes out as Rules!  We like to think that our LAB does rule, but that was not necessarily the real meaning behind that addition! :-)