Safety

Police Liaison Officer Shaw visited Ms. Leom's classroom this afternoon and Patrol Officer Boser visited Mr. Greninger's classroom this afternoon for the annual safety talk.

Officer Shaw

Officers talked about Costume Safety:
- costumes that are a "good fit" (so you don't trip)
- being dressed for the weather
- being visible (flashlight, reflective tape, reflective bags, light up necklaces & wristbands)
- masks with larger eye holes

Their talk included:
- use sidewalks when possible
- use a crosswalk (white paint on roads)
- look left-right-left
- make SURE drivers can see you
- pay attention and walk quickly as you cross the road

If your family goes Trick-or-Treating:
- go with an adult
- only visit houses that have lights on
- avoid entering houses

Which in Ms. Leom's classroom included a list of reasons why we only go to houses with lights:
- could be dark and you could trip or get hurt
- some homes do not celebrate Halloween
- a home could be out of candy
- the family may not be home
- the family could be asleep

Before eating candy:
- have an adult check for any unusual items that might be sticking out or open packaging
- only eat a few pieces at a time

* ;) if you have any extra Snickers, Officer Shaw and Officer Boser welcome donations! ;)

Students will be bringing home reflective bags and books - donated by many local businesses.

This program is an incredible benefit to our school and community! We value the time for the officers to visit our classrooms and invest the time to take a proactive approach to keeping our children and community safe!! If you see a Milaca Police Officer, please thank him or her! Their efforts matter!!

Random

Ms. Leom's class was filling in their United States maps this morning to update our postcard race.

(yellow - today's new states)

When we finished, Ms. Leom removed the map, and the highlighted states remained. This was very interesting to the class, and they asked to have her take a picture and display it later in the day.

Just a random experience in our learning day.

Stack the States

Today, Mr. Greninger's students had the opportunity to "Stack the States". It is an ap students can use to learn more about the landmarks of the states and the capitals. EVERY student who had their Social Studies homework completed and turned in was invited to play. The enthusiasm and level of engagement was exciting to observe!

We will study ALL the regions of the United States. This will be an activity we will do again!

Puzzling States

Mr. Greninger's class is working to finish up their study of the Northeast region. Monitoring their learning, Ms. Leom realized they were not prepared for their States and Capitals test. So on Friday, students who were finished with their Northeast Notes, were invited to "play puzzles". Students worked in pairs or groups of three to put the pieces together. As each piece was laid into the puzzle, students were supposed to say the capital and the state.

On Monday, students were invited to make a "mind map". A general "picture" of where the Northeast states are located. After three minutes, Ms. Leom provided a list of the Northeast states and capitals names for students to use. At about six to seven minutes, Ms. Leom handed out the practice test. Sometimes a struggle, the inability to know where to start or pull the information from your mind, can help you focus on what you want to know. Students had another ten minutes to work on the practice test.

Students who successfully completed the practice test were invited to work on a State Research Project in class.

Students who continued to struggle, were invited to use a Social Studies text book, the maps on the walls, and fill in the capitals and states. Students could work with partners too, because the act of dialoguing about the states and capitals can develop connections and memories.

We WANT students to be successful! We are investing class time and monitoring student progress to make that happen.

Vision Screenings

In fourth grade, the nurses' office provides vision screenings for ALL fourth grade students. They rely on volunteers to provide this service. This year, Ms. Leom's own mom, a retired Level 3 NICU nurse at the St. Cloud Hospital, was one of the volunteers! Other grades also have hearing screenings.

The nurse's office will communicate any concerns with parents when all the testing is complete.

Emotion Words

One of the BEST parts of a job in education is the details that can not be measured in a test. It is the emotions, the connections to others, and the journey of each day.

Last Friday, we had Pioneer Day. One of our activities was to collect "emotion words". We had a quick lesson, definition, example, and students were sent off to read, identify emotion words, and define them.

Often, education is an on-going learning opportunity that never ends. What you think will be difficult, what you have planned a detailed lesson with practice, may not be necessary for the current group of students you are teaching. As a teacher, you constantly monitor, adjust, and move the lesson as needed to meet the needs of the current students. Other times, you believe it will be a basic review, a quick reminder, and practice to "make sure they got it", only to observe and realize you need to back up, and really develop the idea and practice opportunities.

Our "emotion words" lesson on Pioneer Day was a "retreat", plan and prepare for more learning! This is one of the benefits of a flex reading experience. You can pull aside the students who are struggling, reteach, and develop the information in the detail those students need. The students who were successful the first time, may work on skills they need to develop. You can provide examples, non-examples, and discussion opportunities that help students clarify the learning and be successful.

We wrote some notes in our notebooks. We are reading Judy Blume's Superfudge. We were able to find examples of emotion words and slight variations that do not fit.

We also had to have a mini-lesson about writing definitions. You need to use synonyms (words that mean the same) and other words when you are writing the definitions. Writing, "happy - means happy", does not show you KNOW the word meaning; nor does it help someone else who is reading your definition learn the word!

Together, we created a class poster to help us.

Emotion words are words of strong feeling, mood, or a state of mind. They are words of your heart, and unable to be felt physically

Examples include:
* happy - means feeling job, glad, pleased
* sad - means unhappy, sorrowful
* angry - means mad, frustrated, a strong negative feeling
* surprise - unplanned, to amaze or astonish, unexpected
* excited - means eager, interested

NOT emotion words:

Physical Actions - things you do
- laugh           - cry            - yell           - hug
They can be used to help you make an inference about emotion words, but in themselves, they are NOT emotion words.

Physical Feelings - describe your body and what it needs
- hungry or thirsty           - hot or cold           - good or sick
These are often something you can fix or change with action


ANOTHER highlight in education, when you are teaching something and your students are excited, engaged, and WANT to learn. After we finished our second day of reteaching and developing emotional words, students were rushing and asking for time to READ and continue their quest for emotion words. There are these fabulous discussions happening in the room about individual words ... for example, "uncomfortable" could be a physical feeling; as in, I was sitting on a cactus, and it felt uncomfortable poking into my backside or "uncomfortable" as in an emotion word, I was in the middle of a conflict between my friends, and I didn't know what to do. We have talked about multiple meanings of words. It is exciting when students make connections and apply previous learning!

Emotion Words. Just another day on the job!

(If your student struggled on the "emotion word" assignment and has a "lower grade" on School-View, please be patient. REAL learning takes time to develop. Those scores will be improved before the end of First Quarter as students finish up their emotion word learning).

New States

Mr. Greninger's latest postcards!

This afternoon, Mr. Greninger received:
Alabama
Colorado
Florida
Iowa
Virginia

Ms. Leom's latest postcards

This afternoon, Ms. Leom received:
California
Colorado
Maine
Minnesota
North Carolina
Ohio
Pennsylvania8
Texas
Wyoming

Mr. Greninger's Map (as of the morning of Monday October 27, 2014)

As of Monday Morning ...
Mr. Greninger had 10:
Arizona
Idaho
Illinois
Kentucky
Maine
Montana
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Ms. Leom had 24:
Alaska
Arizona
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Illinois
Iowa
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
New Mexico
New York
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Vermont
Washington
Washington DC
Wisconsin

Odyssey

Last year, Mrs. Juntunen in second grade, and Ms. Leom in fourth grade had the opportunity to pilot the Odyssey on-line computer program with our students. We were so pleased with the opportunity it offered, we advocated for our school to invest and adopt the Compass Odyssey learning program for all elementary students.

This week, Ms. Leom's class started their Compass-Odyssey learning odyssey. Mr. Greninger's class will be starting soon (we are working out the bugs in our system).

To start, we took our student MAP test data for Reading and Math. The Reading is broke into three areas: Literature, Nonfiction Text, and Vocabulary. The Math is divided into four areas: Operations, Algebra, Data and Measurement, and Geometry. We looked at students' scores, areas of strengths, and areas to improve. We are in the process of conferencing with each student to make individual goals for each student. For example, a student who had lower scores in Literature and Vocabulary, were able to choose the area they wanted to focus on for his/her individual goal. Even students who scored "high" or "high average" are working on individual goals to improve.

Students received a label, to be placed on the inside of his/her planner with their log in code, their Fall Map Reading and Math Test Scores, their goal scores, and we will be writing in the subject area as we conference with students.

Today, Ms. Leom's class were able to use the "purple laptops" (the color was a topic of excitement) to practice logging on and try out an area.

Now that students have their log-on stickers, they are able to log-on and access at home. To access:
* Visit Milaca Schools Website

* Choose "Resources" on the top, right menu
* Select "Kurth Media Center" on the left-side menu

* Click on "Odyssey" (toward the bottom of the left-side menu)

To Log-in:

User Name:     first name last name (no spaces and all lower case letters)
Password:        four digit number on label inside your student planner
School:            milaca es (a space between the "milaca" and "es" - for "elementary school")

This is an AMAZING learning opportunity for ALL of our students!! We know EVERY student is unique and smart in a variety of ways. The Compass-Odyssey program allows us to target individual needs for each student.

Although there are Social Studies, Science, and other learning areas, Mr. Greninger and Ms. Leom would like students to focus on the Reading and Math goals printed on their individual label. This program will be one of the tools used in After-School Tutoring and Summer School. We hope to use it at least once a week IN school during the year (exceptions are January and the end of the year when the computers need to be used for testing). Please consider this opportunity for your student at home! Ms. Leom hopes to share more of the Odyssey features in a future post.

Postcards Update

The Great Postcard Race is happening!! Our students are SO excited about the daily delivery of mail. It is fun to see the spark in their eyes and listen to their comments and sharing about the postcards they have coming! Thank you for being involved and sharing in this learning experience!!

Ms. Leom's class just received 17 more postcards (included in the list below, not added to student maps yet) in the mail at the end of the day! Mr. Greninger will check his mailbox sometime before the end of the school day. Some are repeats, so they may not all count toward our tally, but they are equally valued and share more important information about the different states!

Mr. Greninger has 4 (and he hasn't been able to check his mailbox yet this afternoon):
Maine
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Ms. Leom has 24:
Alaska
Arizona
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Illinois
Iowa
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
New Mexico
New York
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Vermont
Washington
Washington DC
Wisconsin

Frequently asked Questions:

* When does the Postcard Race end?
Answer: When one of the six Milaca fourth grade classes receives postcards from all fifty states mailed to the school and postmarked from the state.

* What will happen if you receive a duplicate state?
Answer: We LOVE them!! They often have more interesting facts and details, and we love the opportunity to learn something new!

* Will the student who receives the postcard be able to keep it?
Answer: Absolutely!! We will keep the postcards until the Spring (who doesn't like to daydream about warm, tropical locations during the blahs of winter?!), then send them home with the students who are named.

* How will we know what states you need?
Answer: EACH student is keeping a map and filling it in a couple times of week of the states as we collect them. We need the states that are blank on their map.

* Do you need a postcard from Minnesota?
Answer: YES! Please!!

* What happens if my family or friend lives in a state and can't find a postcard?
Answer: Have them mail an index card with information on one side, a note on half of the backside and addressed to their favorite fourth grader on the other half of the backside.

* What happens if my well-meaning family or friend mails a handful of postcards in an envelope?
Answer: We welcome the postcards and the pictures, but they don't count toward our race. We have to have the postmark on the back.

Reading Buddies

Ms. Leom's class met their Reading Buddies class today. We will be spending time with Mrs. Stuckmayer and her students in Kindergarten. There were some absences today, so our buddies may change.

Due to various scheduling needs and absences, restroom visits ... not all of our students are pictured. We have 27 students in our classroom. The kindergarteners have 17 students. We have several fourth graders who will buddy up to make this teaming successful.

We are excited for this opportunity to meet school community members and help welcome them into our school!!

Pioneer Day

Pioneer Day is a "learning extravaganza". It started with our previous StoryTown curriculum and reading a story from one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. It actually fits easily into our Benchmark Literacy learning, because we are studying the genre historical fiction.

 

 For Ms. Leom's students, we are reading Little House on the Prairie picture books. Students are working on several activities using these books:
* reading these books to learn more about the historical fiction genre
* reading these books to develop our oral reading fluency
* practicing our using evidence from the book and writing inferences
* developing our vocabulary identifying emotion words
* developing our vocabulary using context clues to define a word

Other learning activities related to Pioneer Day include:
* writing on "slates" (black construction paper with white colored pencils or crayons) our spelling assignment

* making butter from cream and eating it on fresh baked buns

After we made the butter, it only made sense that we should EAT our butter. The kitchen baked fresh buns for us, and we enjoyed our hard work!

And Ms. Leom's class will be meeting and reading their Little House books to their Kindergarten Reading Buddies after lunch today!

(We did ALL the lessons that were planned for the day. We just added some flavor and called it an extravaganza, and we enjoyed our magical day of learning!)