Self Portraits!

In honor of conferences this week we focused a lot on self reflections and of course had to do our mid year self portraits. Students had the opportunity to reflect on which subjects they like best at school and how they feel they do at listening, following directions etc. It was quite interesting to see who I thought was being too hard on themselves as learners! I will of course share those documents with you at conferences this week!

Self Portraits 

To start our self portraits we talked about the fact that we are all learning how to be artists, which means that there will be no perfect way to draw yourself and that is ok. Some students said phrases like "I'm no good at art" and we talked about the fact that we will always be learning, growing and changing. Our class motto is "The more you practice the better you get!" First we started by drawing our head, eyes, mouth (that was the hard part!), ears etc. Then we colored our faces with color crayons and finally water colored the background. I have never seen the kids work so hard and their hardwork shows in the beauty of these self portraits. You can see them all displayed in our classroom when you come to conferences, but here are a few previews!

A student colors in her self portrait.

A student adds watercolor to his background.

 Here are a few of the finished ones! I love the details they added!

High Fives!

Along with our school's behavior tickets "Goldfish" our class has started using High Fives which are our class coupons that students get when I see them doing something exceptional, helping out a friend, cleaning up an area they weren't working at, doing a task without being reminded etc. Students have been collecting these High Fives and I finally opened our "Coupon Store" for students to buy reward coupons with their High Fives. Some of the coupons include No Shoes (getting to take your shoes off in the classroom for one day) Bring a Stuffed Animal to School (getting to bring their favorite stuffed toy to school for one day) and more! Students love looking at our chart to decide which coupon they are saving for and I have loved seeing students collaborating and sharing their tickets. I have heard "Hey if you save 5 and I save 5 we can buy something that is 10 tickets together!" When you get the chance ask your child what they are saving for or how many High Fives they have saved at school so far!

The green is the poster with the coupons displayed and the box below is where students can buy the physical coupons.

Well that is all for this week. I can't wait to see you all at conferences and to continue all of the fun I have with your children every day!

Smiles,

Miss Adams

Conferences are Coming Quick!

Hello parents and welcome back! It has been quite a while since my last blog and I do apologize for that. It was hard to start projects, let alone finish them when we had 2 days of school 3 days off 3 days of school 7 days off! I am hoping that we are in the clear now and can get back into the swing of things! With that being said there is only one week left until conferences and we are going full speed ahead! 

Rainbow Magic Assembly

On Friday we had the amazing privilege of watching the Rainbow Magic Dance Company perform a wide range of dances. They started with a hip hop dance on hover boards (it was as awesome as it sounds!) and ended with a traditional African dance. The kids loved it and even got to go up on stage to learn the electric slide! It was an amazing experience! 

Students dancing on stage!

Traditional African dance

Arctic Animal Study

All month long students have been engaging in an Arctic Animal study where they will learn about 9 different animals from the Arctic. Students have been gathering all the information they can about each animal and tracking it in the fact book. From labeling pictures of each animal to writing fun facts about them students have been so engaged and loving learning about these amazing animals. This week we will finish up with our last 2 animals and finish off our study by having students write an opinion piece about their favorite arctic animal! Stay tuned for their finished projects next week!

In STREAM students made snowy owl masks!

A student labels the arctic hare in her fact book.

Handwriting

A new focus for us this month has been handwriting. Many students still use all capital letters when writing or intermittent capital letters among lowercase. Through our writing and focused handwriting time (both on iPads as seen below and on paper) students have been working to make their handwriting more legible and in the correct case! We will continue this work into February as well.

A student uses a stylus to practice their handwriting on iPads

Well that is all for now! Excited for this last busy week with these amazing kiddos before I get to share all of their amazing work with you at conferences!

Smiles,

Miss Adams