They still paint or color with the glue sticks...still not sure why! I know we do a lot of gluing because of interactive notes, but I brought up the fact that I do the SAME things they do (because I always model my note or projects)...and I have yet to use half of a glue stick. I'm not sure if they believe me or even listened to me.
As for the pencils, at this rate we will be out of my stash by Christmas. I use my handy sharpened/broken buckets...but somehow both always seem to be empty, as well as the pencils box I keep in our bucket (I keep a class set of pencils in a little box that travels with us in our class caddy, this way when we go to the computer lab or specials and need pencils...well there they are!)
So after the famous speech of using resources wisely and sparingly I have a few of my girls that are on a crusade to save the pencils! I get daily updates of how many pencils we started with for the day, how many we currently have, how many were used...and so on. They also took it upon themselves to post these signs! I guess I can be happy they are using their math skills in real world situations!
As most of you know my class make up this year is a little different. I have a fourth/fifth grade combo, in a way. I have the students that failed the fourth grade state tests, yep they move them on to fifth grade and call them transition students. They have to be retaught the areas they still failed as well as learn the fifth grade content. Well I have about 10 of these students. Of course this is something that must be done with TONS of documentation. I had to meet with the parents prior to school or the first week of school to discuss what all of this meant and get them to sign the "okay" for the student to be in such a class...and now I am on round two of meetings to discuss the student's ILPs (individual learning plans), yep each of them have their own learning plans, much like a mod. plan or IEP (individual education plan), they are a working document. I also had to SST (student support team) each of them, to document what I am doing in the room to make them successful. I am swamped in paperwork! It's not an easy class to have. I guess I am thankful that most of them are great kids. Just need a lot of support.
I say all of this to express my JOY (sarcasm) of school related acronyms. I was sitting in said SST (student support team) meeting with our AP (assistant principal), school psychologist, speech/language teacher, a county interpreter, and a mom. I was telling mom of all the things we had in place for her student and what our plan was for her...at one point I had to stop, look at my AP and make sure I was using the correct acronym. This student is a different case, not all my students have all this support, but pretty close. She is currently considered 4/5 transition therefore she has an ILP (individualized learning plan), she is also EL (use to be called ESOL, English Speaker of Other Languages)...but she is considered consult, she still has a MOD plan (modification plan), she is also SPED (special education) because she is in speech, she therefore has an IEP (individualized learning plan) for speech, she also qualifies for EIP (early intervention program) because of her low test scores, we are wanting to make sure she there is nothing else interfering with her learning so we will begin RTI (response to intervention) to do some progress monitoring, the psychologist will also be completing a full panel of tests to rule out any other learning weaknesses and strengths. Not to mention all the data we did review in this meeting from the CRCT, CoGAT, ITBS, and BASC tests already administered. WHEW!!!! And that is one of my students. What are some of the acronyms you enJOY at your school?
FINALLY I am so excited to start working on our comparing and contrasting theme unit for reading. I built the unit off three books we have already read in our classroom and then found other books that have similar themes, so we can compare/contrast them. Here are the ones we will be using. LOVE these books!
Compare/Contrast with
Compare/Contrast with
Compare/Contrast with
Hope you enjoy these as much as I do!
