Students completed a draw-along lesson of President Lincoln, President Washington and the White House for Presidents Day. They did such an amazing job!
The students received their Living Museum Biography posters on Monday, February 9th. The posters are due Monday, February 23rd. Students should have all areas completed and the poster should be fully colored and outlined. Here are some great examples from previous years. Students may choose to use their neatest handwriting to complete the poster, or as seen below, students may choose to type their responses and neatly cut and paste their responses. They may also print pictures rather than draw if they'd like.
As part of the Living Museum project, the students will complete biography posters. Each poster is expected to be fully colored and fully outlined. Students may choose to hand draw, or print, pictures for the poster. They may also choose to hand write, or type, the information sections. Posters will be due on February 23rd. Below are samples from previous years.
Meet Ms. Chae! Ms. Chae is our student teacher from the Cal State Fullerton Teaching Credential program. She will be with us every Tuesday for the next several months, and then will later transition to five days a week. She will be learning classroom routines and procedures, and learning how to lesson plan and teach alongside Mrs. Dyer. On her first day, she led the class in a fun “Get to Know Ms. Chae” Bingo game!
Each year, Woodbury hosts a handful of student teachers from various universities to help train and mentor future educators. It is a wonderful opportunity to give back to the field and help ensure that future classrooms will have well-trained and well-prepared education leaders.
Some fun facts about Ms. Chae:
She was previously a teacher at the Woodbury Catalyst Kids after-school program!
She has a pet bearded dragon.
Ms. Chae loves using colored pens when planning and taking notes in class.
Ms. Chae loves boba and building Legos.
She also enjoys going to theme parks like Disneyland!
Students began working on their Living Museum prep guides in class today. Completed Prep Guides are due Friday, February 6th. The document is saved onto their Google Drives (a blank template can be copied from Mrs. Dyer's Google Drive). A sample of a completed prep guide with sentence starters that can be used to help the students get started can also be found online. There are 10 interview questions and each question should have a 3–4 sentence response with full details. Truly, the more details, the better. Here is an example:
Sample Question: "When and where were you born? When did you die?
Sample response with full details: "I was born on a chilly Feb. 6 morning in 1872 in the town of Birmingham, Alabama. I've been told I was quite the small infant. Sadly, my mother passed away soon after my birth, and I lived with my father and two older siblings, Michael and Sarah. We lived in Birmingham until I was about nine years old. After a long and happy life, I died of a heart attack on Oct. 14, 1958. I was 86 years old at the time of my death."
Sample response with not enough details (too brief and leaves questions): "I was born on Feb. 6, 1872. I died on Oct. 14, 1958.
February is Dental Hygiene month! Dr. Shung of Simply Orthodontics and the Tooth Fairy would like to share a video to teach us about proper oral hygiene! Be sure to brush AND floss at least twice a day!
To celebrate the last bit of winter, the kids created these adorable aerial view snowmen using chalk pastels. Most people visualize snowman figures head on from the ground so that you can see the top, middle, and bottom layers of snow balls stacked on top of one another. Most people don't visualize snowmen from up above using a "bird's eye view." These art projects turned out so great! A few of the students even chose to have their snowmen looking straight up at the sky!
Our class is currently studying fractions. To help with students understand, we used chocolate chip cookies and red vine licorice to visualize equal parts and comparing fractions as a whole. Additionally, our class had a special opportunity to work in cooperative groups to mix ingredients and bake pans of brownies. After baking, we practiced cutting the brownie pans into equal parts and sharing the fractions with each classmate!
It has been such a fun (and tasty) week of math lessons!
February 3rd is Crossing Guard Appreciation Day! If your family typically crosses the street in the mornings or afternoons before/after school, please be sure to say an extra special thank you to Ms. Rosie, Ms. Judy, and Ms. Thelma— our three crossing guards.
Each of them are dutifully at their stations every day rain or shine, heat or wind, to help make sure our students and families can cross the streets safely.
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers
The Global Day of Play is coming on Wednesday, February 4th (though every day should have some time specifically dedicated to play!).
This is a specific day that educators all around dedicate to allowing the children to just do what children are supposed to be doing— PLAYING! All too often, kids are expected to work, work, work, but it is very important, developmentally, that your child has time to PLAY!
In the classroom, we will be playing. All. Day. Long. Yep. You read that right. Your child will get to play all day at school. While to some, it may seem like a waste of time at school— playing is actually incredibly important for children’s development! It teaches the children turn taking, fairness, friendly competition, cooperation, self-control, language skills, patience, sharing, communication, creativity, strategy, organization, and so many other skills that most adults don’t even realize!
To get this day going, we will need various games sent in to school for the children to share- age-appropriate board games, blocks, Legos, dolls, dress up items, etc. The only exception is no electronics, no screens, no toys with batteries. The goal is to spark imagination, cooperation and creative play. Some examples are below.
