"Everything Would be Alright"

I am pleased to say that we had a very productive; yet fun, week! I am amazed that so much time has already flown by since the first day of school. Wow! Probably the highlight of the week for the students was listening to President Obama give a speech to students across the US about staying in school, setting goals, being respectful and responsible. We had a wonderful discussion about his speech afterwards and ended up setting goals for ourselves for the month of September. This is something we would have done anyway, actually each month, but fit right in with what he was sharing. Then today rolled around, September 11th. I can remember I was at school when I heard about what happened that day and ran down the hallway to call my mom because I have relatives who worked at the World Trade Center. Still gets me kind of emotional. I finally found a short video on the internet that talks about September 11th at a level that the kids can understand. They loved it! Our discussion afterwards was wonderful. We read different books, I showed pictures I had taken 1 week after it happened as I was there for a football game, they wanted to share what they knew. . . everything. I have some very curious little minds in 3B! Hopefully you will have time to discuss the events of September 11th with your child and connect it to some conversation about peace makers. Because the the book we read today said, "We knew everything would be alright."

Some other news is that we have increased our Read to Self to 30 minutes!!! Yeah! We have increased Read to Someone to 18 minutes and will be starting "Word Works" next week. I plan to have all facets of the Daily 5 in place in the next 1-2 weeks and then begin guided reading. I did finished assessing students on Dibels and will be doing one on one conferencing with the students this coming week, maybe doing some small group instruction also based on demonstrated needs. It is so great to see their faces when they finish reading a book they have enjoyed! They are so pleased with themselves. That's the great part of the Daily 5, you need to get better at reading by reading and that is what they are doing! Along with all of these "happenings", we have been busy with other mini lessons as well that have focused on reading the punctuation and coaching on what to do if stuck on a word. Our literacy time is all morning and that time goes by so quickly. I am very proud of them!

If you were not aware, Mrs. Hartberg did have her baby last week. She had a girl, Allison Elizabeth! She is adorable. Mrs. Hartberg will be out until sometime in November and her sub is Mrs. Becky Trautsch. The nice part is that a lot of the students know her as she has subbed a lot in our building. She will be coming in for 30 minutes every day to co-teach writing with me. So if your students talk about someone named Mrs. Trautsch, that is who they are talking about.

I couldn't end my blog for the week without encouraging everyone to cheer for the Cyclones tomorrow!!! Big game of Iowa vs. Iowa State! It's been fun to talk "sports" with some of the boys who are dedicated Hawkeye fans! :) Go Cyclones! Have a great week!