We'll Miss You Miss Splitberger...

It's a sad day in room 202! Today is Miss Splitberger's last day. She has been such a wonderful student teacher. Her positive attitude and teaching skills were a great asset to our classroom. The students in our class and the staff at Swanson loved having her around and she'll be greatly missed.

Second quarter was a smooth one for me, mainly because of Miss Splitberger's willingness to jump in and get involved in our classroom. She's going to be a remarkable teacher one day. Please keep in touch and let us know if you find yourself a teaching job. We'll be rooting for you and wishing you luck. Feel free to come back and say hello. We're here everyday!

Exponent Ball!

It's hard to believe we're half way through the school year. We started Unit 7 in math today. This unit is on exponents and negative numbers. Today's unit kick-off introduced the kids to the idea that whole-number exponents are presented as a shorthand for repeated multiplication.

We were introduced to a new game, Exponent Ball. It is a lot like the game of football, in that you have four downs to try to score 7 points. You can run and/or kick to try to get down the field. The students had to practice forming and comparing exponential values throughout the game. There was a lot of noise in the classroom and I could tell the kids were having a great time!

Scholar Ladies!

I thought you would enjoy this! What a fun idea!! These kids are from the Hope School in Milwukee. Enjoy the song! Feel free to write your own version and share it with our class!

Don't forget to hit MUTE on the playlist at the bottom before you hit play on video.

Sculpting to Teach the Writing Process...

In the next few days we'll be starting to write memoirs. To re-introduce the writing process to the class today we did a fun activity that required no pencil or paper, only your hands. The students each received a small container of Play-doh and while they listened to us describe the writing process they were asked to connect what I was saying and what they had to create with the Play-doh.

Although our material of choice today was fun Play-doh, tomorrow when we start writing we know our material will be words. We'll be playing with words like we sculpted our Play-doh. As creators and critics we will write drafts, revise, edit, and finally publish our pieces. Our writing process has many stages before we make final edits and admire our finished product!

Personal Measurements

Today's math lesson developed our measurement skills. We measured our fingers, hands, and arms to find personal measurements. We also started our week long investigation to determine whether the card game Finish First is a "fair" game.

Happy Holidays!

I hope you all have a safe and relaxing holiday break. Today was filled with fun and laughter. Thank you for being such an amazing group of kids. A HUGE thank you for the generous gifts. I was overwhelmed with emotions when I opened all of the cards and presents. The gifts were not necessary, but very much appreciated.

It's hard to believe our year together is almost half way over. Enjoy your long break and come back in January ready for another fun-filled semester. I'll miss you.


Enjoy pictures from our holiday gathering and the holiday sing-a-long.

Mrs. Fun!

Today was a day of music! We had our tradtional sing-along this afternoon where we sang songs celebrating Los Posados, Hannukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. Afterward we were able to spend some time with Mrs. Fun, an improvisational group. Mrs. Fun was brought to us through the ACE program. It was very enjoyable and got us revved up to try out our own improvs.

Happy Holidays from your 5th Grade Teachers!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

I couldn't resist one more...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Fun New Sites...

The holidays are right around the corner! It's hard to believe it's December already. Mrs. Bartels shared a lot of fun holiday websites for kids with the teachers at Swanson. I organized them and created links for you to explore underneath the homework section on the right side of the blog.

Make sure your homework is done BEFORE you start playing :)