BUILD Centers and Donors Choose

Wow, another week flew by this week!  Friday, we ended with PALS testing where we assess each student's reading skills to determine whether they would benefit from Title I or Reading Lab assistance, as well as using it as a formal assessment to place students in appropriate reading groups. 

We had a lot of fun this week...so much, I forgot to pick up my camera and snap a few shots!  We are just about finished with our Magnet unit in Science.  Students will explore a bit further on Tuesday, then take a quick assessment on what they have learned (a "checkup").  In Writing, we are beginning to plan and write stories, watching out for those incomplete sentences!  Students have been singing our songs about periods and exclamation marks to help remind them!

Since I didn't have a chance to snap a shot of the kids this week, I thought I'd do the next best thing and show you our BUILD centers.  These are centers that students are able to do during math rotation, after they have finished their Number of the Day page.  These are fun games and activities students get to play that reinforce math skills they should have already mastered.  Each day, students rotation to a different letter. BUILD actually stands for B(uddy games), U(sing manipulatives), I(ndependent math/reading), L(earning about numbers), D(oing math).  This is a great way for students to have choice in their centers (there are several choices in each basket), but also be focused on practicing their skills!

I also wanted to include a picture of our latest donation from Donors Choose! This was a project funded at the very end of last year.  We also received scissors and glue sticks as part of this project as well!  You can check out Donors Choose and all they do for public classrooms by clicking on the link to the side.  It'll take you to our class homepage on the site.  Coming up soon is Sonic September. This is where you can vote on your favorite projects!  The projects with the most votes get funded!  Currently, I have two projects listed:  one for an iPad for our classroom (!) and the other for 3 handheld camcorders so students can record things such as math concepts and for use during our content time.  (I am planning a third one to ask for bar magnets and horseshoe magnets, which we found we needed during our magnet unit!).  Please help us out by signing up.  All you need is your email address, log in each day to vote on our class project, and hopefully we will see one of our projects funded!  Voting starts September 24th, I believe.  I will send home a  note with more details closer to the time.