Mrs. Drzayich's Class: Week 19: Half Way There

This is incredible, but this week marked half way through the school year. Can you believe it?! It's going by so quickly!

This is what are week looked like:

Nutcracker. On Monday we had our Patriot Reader Assembly. The whole class was able to go watch parts of the Nutcracker. They really seemed to enjoy it!

Superhero Social Skills: Following Directions. We spent a looooooot of time practicing this skill! On Monday and Wednesday we did the Superhero Social Skills lessons. They also took the comic pages home on Monday for homework--I saw some great completed comics turned in this week. Here are videos of some of the role plays we did to practice this skill:

Then on Tuesday we played some games that required following directions and students were required to do each step in order to win. On Thursdays we made origami cups, but students had to make sure to follow each direction because (with a few exceptions) I only showed them each step once. This was also practice for listening to the whole direction before beginning, rather than starting before the one giving directions is finished--this is a tough one when we think we know what someone is going to say. On Friday during art I projected a picture and each person started copying the projected picture. When I said stop, however, they had to stop immediately and then I had them pass it to the person on their left and begin finishing the new picture in front of them. I knew this would be a trickier one because it's not as easy to follow directions when it means you have to give up something you want to keep or do. It was very good practice for them--we may have to play it again. Here are some of my favorite pictures:

projected picture

students' pictures

projected picture

students' picture

Next week will be week 4: Anxiety Reduction [Stay Cool]. This is a BIG one--make sure to watch the videos with your child at home!

DRA Testing. I have begun giving each student the Developmental Reading Assessment over again (they also took it at the beginning of the year and may do it again in the spring). I am so pleased to see that many students are making a lot of progress! We will talk about these scores at the next round of SEPs, which are coming up in the first week of February. More information to come on that later.

Money money money. This week we've been focusing on the difference between goods and services. They had some fun with charades in which they had to act a thing out and everyone had to guess what it was and state if it was a good or a service. This topic is a little more difficult than wants vs. needs, but they're starting to understand that a good is a thing while a service is something you do, but you can buy both of them.
Today I sent home a parent permission slip for a photo release. Back in October we had some great science supplies donated via DonorsChoose.org and I am hoping to send them a thank you package, including a picture or two of our students using the supplies. These photos will be for the administrators at Donors Choose only and will not be posted or shared outside the company. If you feel comfortable with your child's photo being shared, please fill out the form and return it as soon as possible. Thank you!

Informational. We've continued learning about informational texts, learning and identifying all sorts of text features and finding ways to make connections with the text. Many students learned about chess this week.

Some older students have gone further to learn about biographies--they even read a biography Dr. King himself. Two of our fourth graders (they know who they are) received a book report assignment to read a biography and fill out a form about it. I'm hoping to get some students to read a wider variety of genres by doing this. This is due by Jan. 31st. Expect more book report assignments in the future!

Homework Heroes: