Happy Holidays!

BookTalk Team 1

BookTalk: Team 2

BookTalk: Team 5

BookTalk: Team 4

Madi, Maria, Daniel, and Karlton share about what they are reading.

Coolest Math Trick Since Sliced Bread

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BookTalk: Team 3

Here's Team 3, with Sam, Dalton, Michala, Frances, and Chase. I apologize for the shakiness of the camera, I was being a little inattentive with it, more attentive the rest of the room.

BookTalk: Team One

This something new we are trying, book talks. Each day I will set down with a few kids and we'll just talk about what we are reading and why. This is team one; Iveliza, Shawn, Chaylen, Monique, and Cayden. Each student will also be asked to read a short passage from their book. Afterwards, I asked the kids what they thought of it, because they seemed pretty intimidated by the whole process at first, but in retrospect they all seemed to enjoy it. Please let me know what you think...

10-Second Movie: Opponent

10-Second Movie: Opponent

10-Second Movie: Trophy

Maria, Deja, and Frances go speed-skating!

10-Second Movie: Opponent

Paige, Michala, and Chaylen enjoy a game of chess.

10-Second Movie: Swollen

Mariia, Iveliza, and Frances are on the run!

Vocab Project 10-Second Movie

Cayden and Samuel rock out a 10-second movie, one of the required vocab projects this week.




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Vocabulary Words for Week of 12/1

Vocab - The Marble Champ

From: mrkimmi,
1 minute ago

Vocab - The Marble Champ

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: usd305 mrkimmi)

Vocabulary for The Marble Champ

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Need Help?

Here is a resource that is available for school and home! Don't understand how to solve that math problem, maybe MathTrain.tv can help....


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Thanksgiving Project

Parent Luncheon #1

Parent Luncheon #1
Originally uploaded by kimmiclass

Today was the first of many Parent Luncheon's to come. Only one family was able to make it this time around, but it was great to have some time to just visit, not necessarily about school (although we covered those things), but about our families and growing up, among other things.

This year I hope to develop a strong bond between families and school. To do that we just need time to visit with one another. I really appreciate any and all of you who are able to take time out of your day to come see us.

The next date on my calendar is September 5th, from 12:00-12:20. I hope to see you there!

The Cinderella Project

Aug 18th (2/180)
Originally uploaded by kimmiclass

Today we planted the seeds of the Cinderella Project, which students will embark on tomorrow in whole group reading. I am really excited about this project because it is going to be 5th grade wide, meaning some of my students will go and share with another fifth grade class. Likewise, we will share our findings with the enitre school during the morning program.

We also started a digital storytelling project in Math. We are revising our understanding of what it means to multiply, thus we are creating an ABC storybook to elaborate on this new view of multiplication. Look for it soon!

Thank you for all the book orders, we really appreciate it, as with your orders teachers earn points towards books for their classroom library. Your helping my classroom get better!

Here is the information about the Cinderella Project.

The Cinderella Project - Get more College Essays

Vocabualry Activities

Vocabualry Word Card
Originally uploaded by kimmiclass

We worked through a lot of information today. Namely, we started looking at activities students can do to prove their knowledge of our reading vocabulary. This year I am trying something new, in that students will have the ability to chose which activities they want to use to express their knowledge. I have outlined nine that I have come up with, but as the students work we may find more.

Here is the example of the word card. Using an index card students identify the word, a synonym, an antonym, the word's definition, and a small illustration exemplifying the word. As you can probably tell, this activity will work best with some words, but others might not be so easy to work with.

For homework this weekend students are to use ideas generated in class to develop a class mission statement. Good luck!

Looking Back So We Can Look Ahead

4th Grade Reading Review
Originally uploaded by kimmiclass

Today in both reading and math we took some time to look back at what we covered in 4th grade, so that we could start looking ahead at 5th. I was very impressed by the students' knowledge of the concepts they covered last year.

Today, we also took the pre-assessment in Math. Its purpose is to help us understand where students are in their learning of math. It will let us know which concepts we need to focus on throughout the year . They will take the same tests either right before or after Winter Recess as well. Then we will be able to what kind of progress we have made thus far in the year.

The Parent Challenege!

In Math we have been working on all types of graphs. Today we spoke about bar graphs specifically and created this poll to see a bar graph in action. As homework the students were challenged to see if they could get a parent to vote. Well, can they?

Building Blocks

To help us better understand a word (evidently) that we all missed yesterday during Read Naturally, we did a word building and sorting activity. Here is the audio of the discussion where students share the words that they built based on the letters of the targeted word.


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Why Are You Here?

Today we created a podcast where we discussed why we are all here. It proved to be very difficult, but it led us to a new way of looking at the classroom. Hopefull, if will lend itself to more gains.


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We continued to develop some fluecny with area and preimeter in math class. We played a new game with it's sights set on getting us to better understand how to read a ruler, something we struggle with as a class. Here are a couple problems we faced in calss today:

Area & Perimeter

Here is a graphic organizer we created in Math class today. We are about to start looking at perimeter and area. I like to take the time to think about who and where these two things are used in the real world.

Storm Stories

We spent a good portion of our time on Friday working on the preplanning and following through of this retelling activity. We have gathered some thoughts and stories from students in Salina, Penssylvania, and California. Hopefully there will be more to come.

Explaning Why is So Hard!

Putting the final steps together for our Throw A Party Project, my math class is having to provide some rationale for why they chose one thing over another. This is proving pretty hard to do for some of them. Here is an example,


Throw A Party Rationale - Free Document Templates

The Party is Almost Here

Rading class is starting to be very seemless, as the kids are starting to accept that they are here. Read Naturally even went pretty well. However, we are still having a hard time of pulling information from Hoot to answer the questions. We probably spent more time on that today than anything else.

In Math we started doing the heavy lifting with our Throw a Party project. Here is the information and the expectations I have of your childs work.


PartyProject - Get more College Essays

Making Calls

In reading class we continued to develop our powerpoints for the vocabulary word of our choice. Read Naturally also started back up. That is one things we are still focusing on getting on schedule with. It is taking the kids some time to get back in the routine, what with getting a week of school off, I think they were all in summer mode.

In Math we practiced our four operations and then made the calls to the different venues in Slaina where you could potentially have a birthday party. We recorded a podcast of our de-briefing conversations. However, a students said their last name so I wil not be posting it. Afterwards, I recorded a podcast to reflect on what I saw in the kids during the activity.


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Planning A Party

We finished up the week pretty strong. Today was also the first day we got through an enitre session of Read Naturally and I am happy to say that the student who made the most growth this week was Ryan. He improved his WPM (words per minute) by almost 60, congratulations!

In Math we began a project, Planning A Party. I thought this would be a fun way to begin the weekend. Each student will get to pick items that they will have at their party, but they only have a certain amount of money to spend. Therefore, they will need to make some choices as to what is the most important things for their party to be a success.

Top Fives

This morning we reached out to an eigth grader from Maryland via Youth Twitter. He is a musician who is actually putting out an album in a couple of weeks. After that we created short plays to demonstrate the meaning of our vocabulary words. This did not go very well, I don't think the kids are used to so much freedom when it comes to class and they are having trouble identifying boundaries. After some editing I will post the video we took. We also began our Read Naturally fluency today.

In math we attempted to make a math-based problem-solving video using Sketchcast.com, but it took too long to load, so we were unable to finish that activity. After finsihing the worksheet packet we practiced basic facts using Study Stack. Here, give it a try yourself:

More flashcards, word search, and hangman provided by StudyStack.com

Getting Better All The Time

Things are continuing to run pretty smoothly. Today in reading we got even closer to following our class schedule. This morning we worked on vocabulary by creating comic strips to illustrate the words we were defining.

In math class we worked more on identifying operation clue words and solving problems. We also tried out a new website, Twiddla. Although we all thought it was pretty cool, it was very clear that there was way too much freedom with it. But that doesn't mean you could use it, give it a try!

Moving Along

Reading class this morning went very smoothly considering we are only in our third day of ESY. We are still focusing on getting the routines down for coming in the room, learning vocabulary, reflecting on reading, and blogging. Some of the students are very focused on what they are doing and working hard. I hope to see that from all of my students. We talked today about how your attitude shapes your experience. Hopefully, those students who aren't too happy to be here can find some ray of sunshine in this whole process.

Math class also went very well. Today we practiced our basic facts with the Math Arcade at fun Brain. After that we the four operations and the clue words in problems that help us to identify how to solve problems. Once we know what words to look for, then I will have to do is worry about performing the operations. Using student-generated information we created the following diagram using Bubbl.us:



We finished class as a group going over multiplication facts.

It's Definitely Monday

I can definitely tell that it is Monday. To start with, we had a few people come in late. Once in the classroom things moved pretty slowly. There are a couple of reasons for this; one, a lot of new faces, two, a lot of new activites. Each day will bring some new challenges as we get oriented with the tools we will be using this summer. However, we did get into the first chapter of the book we'll be reading this summer, Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. Students have begun to answer questions over the first chapter and will finish them up tomorrow morning.

In Math we did a second pretest. I decided to go ahead and get these out of the way, so that when we start instruction we won't have to stop here and there to take more tests. Students did get to practice math skills by playing games on the Math Playgroud website, a link to which you can find under "Things We're Using."

What a First Day

First days are always interesting becuase you never no what is going to happen. Well, this was no exception. This morning's reading class went well, but we got so carried away with getting to know one another that we only got part of the testing done. Therefore we will have to go back and finish the rest up the last part of Monday. I am very happy to note that there are so many students carrying over from reading to math. This will allow me to get to know everyone a little bit better. Take a look at the super excited reading class: And here's a look at my math class, notice the large group of returning faces:

However, we did happen to miss quite a few kids today. To all of those that weren't able to come, I hope that you are ready to catch up quick.

I assume that no one came to the parent luncheon, as it was not advertised in any way. Regardless, I hope that you take the next opportunity on June 6th. Hope to
see you then.

Hello and Welcome

I am very excited to instruct your children this summer. We will be learning more than just reading and math. We are going to take a look at what education really is and what role it plays in your child's life.

Our classroom will be the computer lab. I am going to take a guess that this is something completely new for all of us, but we are going to give it a shot. We will be utlizing the interent every day to learn new things and express our learning.

You will be getting a couple of notes coming home on this first day. There will be some internet permission slips. I am also going to send home a schedule for parent luncheons. These will take place on Fridays during the lunch hour. I invite each and everyone of you into the computer lab to have lunch with me. During this time we can talk about anything you'd like. We can discuss your child, what we're working on, their progress, or I can orient you with the tools I am using to teach your children. I am sure that this is something new for the both of us. However, I really want you to be able to know anything that you want to know about your child and their education. Although my door is always open for you, I thought specifically setting aside some time would benefit all of us. So be on the lookout.