Officer Sam

Officer Sam visited our classroom today for one last visit this year.  Today he spoke about being prepared for an emergency.  Students thought about how they might be prepared in case of a tornado, storm, blizzard or fire.  They thought about what items they might want to have on hand and where to go in each situation.  The students had a great discussion and Officer Sam helped them to all understand how being prepared can make emergencies a little less stressful!

We are so grateful for Officer Sam!  He takes time to talk with the students in the hallway and comes into our classrooms to help us learn about ways to be safe in all kinds of situations!  Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!

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Synergizing!

The BUGS have been working very hard in math.  They have learned several different ways to represent numbers.  We know:

• standard form (156)
• expanded form (100 + 50 + 6)
• unit form (1 hundred 5 tens and 6 ones)
• word form (one hundred fifty-six)

We are also learning how to compare numbers.  We just learned how to use the symbols, <, > and = to compare numbers that are larger, small or the same as another number.  Today we put it all together and worked on some really challenging problems!  We thought synergizing with a friend might make the process more fun! 

We worked on problems such as : (fill in less than, greater than or equal to)

7 hundreds and 15 ones is __________ 1 hundred 7 tens and 1 one.  

or

895 is _____________ 89 tens and 5 ones

You see how these require some careful reading and serious thinking!

Grant and Jayden were careful readers.  They realized one problem asked them to order numbers from least to greatest but the next problem asked them to order numbers from greatest to least!
Good reading BUGS!

Chan and Spencer worked together to solve the problems. 

Keagan and Jacob talked about the numbers to make sure they had the write amount to compare. 

Taylor and Katelyn worked together discussing the problems.  

Naomi and Judah discussed ideas on how to solve.

Madelynn and Cadasia worked together.

Ava explained to Vanessa L. how she thought the problem should be solved.

Caleb and Carter thought long and hard about the problems. 

Abby and Mariela talked about each problem and agreed to the solutions.

Drew and Nathan had a lot of fun solving math problems today!

Vanessa S. and Danielle worked together to be careful readers.

Blake and Devin had great math conversations!

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Everybuggy Blogs!

What are three things you can't wait to do over Christmas break?
Why are you so excited about these activities?

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AR Buttons

The BUGS were pretty excited about earning more AR buttons today!! 

Vanessa L, Jayden (with his first!), Carter and Caleb celebrate their accomplishments!

Madelynn (with her first), Spencer, Cadasia (her first!) and Ava were all excited, too!

Way to read, BUGS!

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Voices of the Future

Today we enjoyed the "Voices of the Future" choir from Paw Paw High School.  They came and sang several holiday songs for us.  They were amazing!!

(Maybe some day, some of the BUGS will be in this choir?!?)

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Learning Past Tense

This week we are learning about the patterns of "regular past tense" verbs.  We learned that these are "regular" because they follow a pattern.  We learned that past tense means it is something you do that already happened!  Students first challenged themselves to find as many regular past tense verbs as they could in 15 minutes.  Blake and Vanessa L. were our top detectives!  Blake found 30 and Vanessa found 29!!  Way to go!

I sent students home last night with a challenge to see if they could figure out what sounds the "ed" ending makes and if there is a pattern to the sound.  Can you tell by looking at the word what the "ed" will say?

I only had one student able to identify the sounds, the pattern and to tell me what a made up word would say - Judah!!!  Judah explained the pattern to the class and we spent time practicing the pattern.  Students are going to focus on finding more and more regular past tense verbs this week as they master this pattern!

For those who aren't sure, try this.  Say each of the following words out loud.  What do the letters, "ed" say in each of the words?  planned     hopped     handed     If you are listening very closely, you'll hear the /d/ sound at the end of "planned", the /t/ sound at the end of "hopped" and the /id/ sound at the end of "handed".  NONE of our regular past tense words actually say /ed/!!!

It takes knowledge of the rewiring (decoding methods) that we teach to understand just why, but basically, if the sound BEFORE the "ed" ending is a quiet sound (meaning you don't use your voice box) like /p/ or /b/ or /sh/, then we keep our voice box off and say /t/ for the "ed".  (You can tell if your voice box is on or off by putting your hand to your throat when you say the sound.  If you feel vibrating, it's ON!  If you feel nothing, it's OFF!)

It's so much easier to pronounce words if we just stay quiet after a quiet sound than always switching back and forth, which is why if the sound before the "ed" ending is a noisy sound (meaning you do use your voice box and you do feel a vibration) like /n/ or /l/ or any vowel sound, then we keep noisy by saying /d/!!

Isn't this fascinating?!?

Now, the only tricky part is what if the base word ends in a "t" or "d" already?!  What about words like "paint"?  It ends with a quiet sound /t/ but how are we going to say the /t/ sound again for the "ed" it would be hard to say /paint/ /t/!!  Our mouths (and brains) know this, so when the word already ends in "t" or "d" we have to say the vowel sound, and the "ed" comes out /id/!  Try it!!  Say "painted".  You hear the /id/ at the end, don't you!

Why does this matter?  Why should kids learn this?  Well, for one thing, have you ever looked at something your child wrote and wondered why they spelled "stopped" "stopt"?  Now you know!  It's exactly the sounds in the word!  Understanding the use of the "ed" is for writing (and reading) purposes, but not for speaking!  Learning this pattern will help your child to not only read past tense words better, but to WRITE them correctly!

Now, try your hand at it.  What does the "ed" say in each of the following words?
washed        judged           started

Can you explain why it makes each sound?  Can your second grader?  :)

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AR Buttons!

It's been awhile since we got our AR buttons (the machine was broken for a little while) so we got all caught up today!  Wow!  We had a LOT of buttons to give out!!  

Awesome reading, BUGS!!

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Everybuggy Blogs!

What is your favorite fairy tale?  Why is it your favorite?

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Lion King

Today we got to go to the Later Elementary and see the LE students' performance of "The Lion King".  It was AMAZING!!  Mrs. Goodenough and her crew did a fantastic job!  We really enjoyed all the songs, the costumes, the dancing and the funny lines!

What a great example of what we can do when we SYNERGIZE!!  This production took so much work by so many people.  We are so grateful as we really enjoyed the production!

(It was really cool to see a lot of former BUGS in the cast, too!!)

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