Half-way already?!

Sending home mid-terms yesterday means that we are half through the school year already. Yikes! Where did the time go?! We have accomplished so many things already, yet we still have SO much more to learn and experience together. Looking ahead to the coming months brings many exciting opportunities, too!

This past week was our mid-year benchmarking, which interrupted many of our normal activities and lessons. I am looking forward to studying the data more in depth this week with our collaboration team to celebrate successes of our students and evaluate different options for further improving instruction. Every year I teach I continue to learn more and more!!!

Quick note on the mid-terms --- Please disregard the "Spring" label on top. I must have been dreaming of warmer weather when I typed that heading, because it's clearly cold and blustery outside as I'm typing this post. Does anyone else have that problem? Also, after recording reading grades on everyone's mid-term I was very concerned about reading grades being unusually (and shockingly) low. After investigating further in the gradebook I realized that our Author's Purpose quiz had been entered as the default'; 10 point quiz instead of 4, AND it was included in the final grade (which I hadn't intended). Oops! If you were watching PowerSchool I apologize for the unnecessary anxiety! Needless to say, after correcting it I had to change everyone's reading grades and felt MUCH better! Moment of panic avoided!!! Phew!!!

On Friday we started working on two classroom goals: 1 - clean room, and 2 - be ready. Every week we will start with 10 points for everyday of the week (ie: next week is a 4 day week, so we'll start with 40 points). Anytime I clean up unnecessary items or we aren't ready when expected we lose a point, and anytime students are going above and beyond we gain a point. At the end of the week if we have remaining points we've earned class reward time. We started Friday morning and the class was all-in! Students were working together well, encouraging one another, and paying attention to time management as we transitioned throughout the day. It was great!

I encouraged everyone to find some creative ways to be active INdoors over the weekend due to the cold temperatures. I promised to post a link to a Zumba class that I found online. I haven't watched it all the way through, but the video is from Hull College and appears to be led by a college student. Josiah loves to watch and dance around in our living room at home. The man who leads it is quite the dancer, and it's a great workout! Here's the link to YouTube!

Last, but not least, here are a few pictures of the illustrations students created to go along with the story One Small Place in a Tree!