Have you heard of Flat Stanley? 

Click on the link below to learn more about this worldly boy.

www.flatstanley.com/about

Have you heard the great news??!! 

Our class blog NOW has 258 hits from all around the USA!

(scroll all the way to the bottom to the map to see the states that visited!)

 RAZ Kids is officially up and running!

Students can select books to read or listen to at their reading level! They can take a quiz after reading and earn STARS! Each student's account will track the books they read, whether they listened to the story or read it themselves, and their quiz scores. Students can access this Reading AtoZ program during literacy center time or at home through our class PortaPortal. Just visit our school website and click on the PortaPortal link on the blue sidebar on the left under Mrs. Luft. :)

Joy

Joy is an elf.

 Joy is fast. 

Joy is a very fast elf.

 Joy is a good elf.

She is a great elf. 

I like to find her.

by Ronan

Joy is very fun to watch. She is very curious. We love to see Joy. Whenever we get a bee or a Terrific 12, she grabs it and makes it a game! It is fun when she hides. She is a fast elf! When we come back from lunch, she's already in a different spot! She makes fast trips to Santa too! We love having Joy as part of our classroom family!

Elf on a Shelf in W-43!

We named her Joy and wrote about her visit to our classroom in our writer's notebooks! 

More to come...

Happy Thanksgiving!

 We made turkey goggles!

Gobble, Gobble!

Meghan created her own turkey math game and brought it in for all to play! 

This is  my Lego apple.

I built it with 14 red pieces and 4 green pieces.

How many are in all?

Yes, 18 are in all!! Good job!!

 

Thank you for coming

 to our class Technology Fair!

 

Mrs. Cranmer shared a cost-saving reading tip with us at the tech fair! Check out The Book Center in the Tops Plaza for a great selection on used books. Sounds like it would be a cost effective way to build your personal library at home! Thank you for supporting small businesses in our community!

Mrs. Luft is modeling how to post a comment.

Bird

By Ronan

 Bird in my birdhouse.

Singing in my ear.

The bird sang, “ You are beautiful and smart.”

The bird went to see beautiful flowers.

I said, “Goodbye.”

I Will Find Her

By Meghan

I will find her.

I know I will.
Amelia Earhart,
Her story is sad but I will find her.
She should be in Howland Island.
I will, I know I will.
Amelia Earhart wrote a letter
To her husband
Before she left on her big flight.

It said…

            “I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

To the author and to, most of all, Amelia Earhart, let your faith fly in heaven.

Thank you.

We voted today!

After shared research using our Scholastic News magazine, the non-fiction book We Vote,  and the Scholastic News website, we made informed decisions on who we would select as the next President of the United States. 

and the winner of our class vote was.....

President Obama!  

He got 12 votes

and Govenor Mitt Romney got 9 votes.

Here is the link for Scholastic News on the election.
www.scholastic.com/election

         

We are having a TECHNOLOGY FAIR!

When: Wed., November 14th

Time: 8:00am-8:40am

Where: Room W43 (Your child's classroom)

Who: Parents//Grandparents/Students in Mrs. Luft's class

Take advantage of this opportunity to come into the classroom and sit with me, your child, and others to learn how to access our classroom blog, post comments, log onto our class portaportal, and XtraMath. You will have a Netbook to use with your child and I will provide a breakfast treat!
Some people have already signed up but there is still room for more! 
If you are interested in coming, please let me know as soon as possible. 

Hope to see you at the Technology Fair!

Reading buddies with

 Mrs. Blencowe's Kindergarten class!

We started reading buddies last week with Mrs. Blencowe's class! We each have a buddy we will be reading with throughout this school year!

Mrs. Blencowe & Mrs. Luft

1. 

Fun with XtraMath!
Students each take a turn at practicing their addition math fluency on the Netbooks with XtraMath. 

Bentley Before & After

Before...

After...

K-2 Open House/Curriculum Night!

K-2 Open House/Curriculum Night!

Thursday, October 18th  

6:00pm 

See you there!

Fall is here!

I found this tri-colored mum for just $5.99 at a roadside stand. 

I have seen others like it going for $16.99!

If you are a student reading this, post a comment to tell me how much money I saved?

I just might have to go back and get another one! :)

Have you ever thought about how you think? 

or why you are thinking what you are thinking?

As crazy as that sounds, we are learning that Metacognition (thinking about your thinking) is what makes us better learners and readers!

What is REAL reading?

This week we learned that real reading happens when you read the words of text in a story AND you think about what the words are telling you! It is important to understand what you are reading!

Text + Thinking = REAL reading 

What makes a good salad?

Lots of lettuce & tomatoes of course!

Students made a REAL reading salad full of lettuce (Thinking) and tomatoes (text)!

We have learned many new math classroom routines and games. While learning our combinations of 10, we played the Math Investigations card game called Make 10.

There are lots of ways to Make 10! We learned about the commutative property of addition and know that 3+7=10 therefore 7+3=10.



Setting the game up precisely is very important! 4 rows of cards with 5 cards in each row!

We also learned how to write out counting strips. I think the highest someone got was 147!

Another Math Investigations game is called Cover & Count. We used geometric blocks to cover a shape 5 different ways. We recorded the type of blocks used and the number of each block.

So many new friends to learn about! To build our classroom community, we each brought in a "Me" bag to present to the class. Inside the bags were items that told about the students' interests, hobbies, families, and experiences. After we each presented our bag to the class, we set up our desk area to showcase our artifacts. 

Then we toured the room and learned more about our friends. 

During Writer's Workshop, we made a list of the contents of our "Me" bags. We will keep these lists in our writing folder to help us with ideas to write about in our writer's notebooks.