Friday Focus - Nov 4

Great Things I Noticed this Week:
*Students practicing expanding their vocabularies by jotting down words they didn't know the meaning of (along with page numbers) as they read their good fit books.
*A writing mini-lesson showing how to take revision marks of where to indent for new paragraphs, using a struggling writer's rough draft as an example. Getting to have his writing displayed was a confidence boost for him, yet at the same time, taking his piece to show a model of a final copy was a very sneaky way of giving him that added support right in the mini-lesson for all!
*Students completed a day long "Pumpkin of Regret" activity. They first pounded nails into a pumpkin that each represented something they've admitted to doing that may have hurt someone else. Throughout the day if they did something kind for someone else they could remove a nail. By the end of the day the class removed the nails, but the holes were still there. This produced a great class conversation about how we can apologize for things we've done, but we can't really take it back.
*When students were given a much more challenging task a student said, "I'm glad you believe in us!" and then they accomplished it! This is after continuously including a growth mindset into each of their lessons.
*After knowing the process of think-write-share students were given the same engaging task, but this time in writing their response in Schoology for the first time. After writing their response they were then given the task of reading through others' responses to find someone who had the same opinion as them. While this was their first time in Schoology, the "how to do the tech part" took very little time to learn how to do this and they can add on next time by learning how to respond to others in a discussion thread on Schoology.

Events Next Week:
Monday - Packer attire day
   Grades due by 7:30am
   I will be out of the building at CESA
Tuesday - Election Day - please see an email coming from me about a mock election for our students
Wednesday - Report Cards should be distributed
 - Fundraiser pick-up after school 3:00-5:30
Thankful Thursday will be "casual Friday" also because of      
     Friday's assembly
Friday - Veterans Day assembly starting at 9:30 Please dress professionally on Friday as we will have many community members in our building for this event.
-No AM recess

Our 1st Quarter Dodgeland Pride Assembly is Friday, November 18th at 2:30.


"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Please review behavior expectations with your students before taking them down to the gym for the Veterans Day Assembly. Please also make sure to be there prior to 9:30 so they are not waiting for us to get started.  
*Please take parent invitations for the Dodgeland Pride Assembly that will be getting recognized and then make sure to add student names for Honor Roll and On a Roll to the google docs. This sounds silly, but as you enter your names, please make sure to click "return." Most of the time when names get "lost" it is only because of typing, but not hitting return for the name to be entered into the cell of the spreadsheet.


Blogs, Tweets & Pins...Oh My!!!
*I Don't Know...Or Do I?  I can't wait to try out this questioning strategy on a student that says they don't know. Let me know if you get to try and have the same success as she writes about in this blog post!