Perfect Attendance Party #2 10/9/15

I’m SO proud of my homeroom kiddos!! We earned our 2nd Perfect Attendance party on Wednesday, and we celebrated on Friday.

Each day that the ENTIRE class is present, we add a letter to the board. We are spelling the words Perfect Attendance. Out of 40 days of school, my kiddos have had perfect attendance 34 days! That is amazing!!

Why is perfect attendance celebrated? When students are absent, they lose so much content that is impossible to catch up on fully. I understand that sometimes things do come up or we are sick – but I also know that sometimes we just wake up and don’t want to come that day. I’m trying to encourage my kiddos to come — and so far it seems to be working well!!

For this party, I chose to do a fall theme. We had bottled water and graveyard pudding cups. It consisted of chocolate pudding, marshmallow with a gummy eye, a candy corn pumpkin, and a gummy worm. We also danced to a few gonoodle videos. And of course — I snapped pictures and had to record video!! I can’t wait to see what we do for our 3rd party!!

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Random Updates — Lunchroom and Perfect Attendance Achievement

It’s been a great week at HES!! We have lots of exciting things happening so I wanted to do a blog post. This will be pretty random.

First of all, next week is Homecoming Week for Haleyville City Schools. This is one of my favorite weeks of the school year. We have lots of fun with our themes. I am posting right below this the picture of our themes. HES is different than HMS and HHS due to our picture day — those with older siblings may get a little confused. Also, my homeroom kiddos are to wear 70’s clothing on Thursday for dress from another decade day. I will explain why later on in the post — it’s a good one!! I will be snapping pictures of the kiddos dressed throughout the week — and I will add them to the blog and our 4th grade Instagram page — which is @hes4thgrade.

  
Next up .. our lunchroom!! I have been SUPER impressed with our lunchroom this year. Our students are getting a choice for the first time EVER!! Students can choose to eat at the hot bar, pizza bar, or a grab-and-go lunch each day. The grab and go lunch is available as supplies last — it looks great! I had one parent stop me at Wal-Mart to say that the lunchroom choices this year has been the best thing to ever happen to them at school! Her child is such a picky eater (her words), but he has been super happy having a choice in our lunchroom this year. I found the cutest idea on a teacher facebook page I follow. I adapted it to fit into our classroom and voila! The kids LOVE putting their popsicle sticks in the correct bucket each day — brought lunch, hot bar, or pizza bar. This also brought about the start of classroom jobs. The kids would beg to let them put the popsicle sticks back in the name bucket — so I made a classroom jobs list so everyone could help out in the afternoon!

  

Not only do we love lunch choice this year — but we also love our fruit and veggie program. The kids are supplied a free fruit or veggie 3 days a week — and they are SO excited each time they see the containers! It is SO nice for our kids to try new healthy foods. This week we had green bell peppers, grapes, and bananas. The kids LOVED them all! I posted the cutest video on Instagram of a few volunteers trying out the bell peppers. Is this not the cutest thing ever?!

https://instagram.com/p/7bRNC1MZi4/?taken-by=kgoggans2
Continuing on with my random updates, I had to sign a 20 day attendance report one day last week at school. Every 20 days we have to check attendance and sign it to update in the computer. My sheet was surprisingly blank of check-ins, tardies, or absences. I know it is the beginning of the year, but when you have 18 kids in a homeroom – it happens! Why was my page so blank? I have a couple of reasons that I believe my students are being so present this year. The number one reason is my bestie Draco. Our new classroom critter is a great motivation to come to school to see his pretty face each day. The one day I didn’t bring him with me because I had a doctor appointment right after school was super sad EVEN FOR ME. I’m so used to looking over and seeing him in his terrarium … and it was empty. Not seeing his little eyes watching the kiddos and me was just sad. How did I teach for 12 years without him? I have no clue. I will be doing a post very soon on my thoughts about having a class pet. 

  
 The other reason I think my kiddos are coming to school so well this year is also because of a cool idea I saw on Pinterest during the summer. Each day that my homeroom are all present, we add a letter to our board. We are spelling the words perfect attendance. To increase the competition, we invited several classrooms to join in and compete against us to see who would win first. When we spell the words perfect attendance, we celebrate and also begin again. I thought we would probably do a popcorn party to begin with — but my homeroom had a different idea. A disco party was what these kids wanted to do. I’m not sure why they wanted this — but how cool are they to want something so out of the box?! I love their personalities!! So … on Thursday of this coming week we will celebrate with a disco party! Even though we made our goal on Wednesday, we are prolonging our celebration because of Homecoming. Thursday’s theme is to dress from another decade — which is perfect for us! We will dress like the 70’s, I have borrowed a disco ball, and I’m planning a disco party during snack time!! I’m sure it will be groovy!! And of course … I will snap pictures for us to have forever!! 🙂

I will be blogging very soon about my classes beginning Class Dojo (LOVE!!),  and my many feelings on having a class pet. I’m going to get some quotes from my kiddos to include!!

Love,

Mrs. Goggans

What’s Happening in Science — 8/24 – 8/28

We are still working on our Introduction to Science Unit. We will be wrapping it up next week with our first Science Quiz and notebook check.

Monday — We are gluing in NB 5 today. We are learning about different ways to measure in Science. After we learned about measuring, every group used the measuring tape to measure Draco (our class pet.) We were all surprised to learn that he was 1 foot 5 inches. We will remeasure at Christmas and the end of the year to see how much he has grown.

Tuesday – Today we are learning about using Science Models. I have pulled several examples for students to see. We are completing NB 6. We are also beginning our Scientific Method lesson. Today we will be completing Part 1 on NB 7.

 Wednesday – We are finishing Scientific Method on NB 8. We will watch a study jam and listen to a cute song. At the end of class, we will be gluing a copy of our Big Money words into our notebook.

Thursday – We are learning about communicating in Science groups. We will compete a graphic organizer on page 9, and we will glue in an accountable talk page. We will practice using these strategies in our Notebook.

Friday – Today we are completing Science Stations. I will post pics.

Next week we will have an open notebook test on our Introduction to Science Unit. We will have a catch-up day to complete any unfinished notebook pages before our first notebook check. I will post their rubric toward the end of the week.

I am using materials purchased from The Science Penguins teachers pay teachers store. It is located here.

Important Reminders — 10/6/14

We have lots of things happening at HES this month!! 🙂

America Day — 9/30/14

Camo Day — 9/26/14

Today was Camo Day for Homecoming Week. Homecoming Week is always so much fun!!

Tall Cup Challenge — 8/22/14

Today in Science, I passed out our Science test from yesterday. We looked at our Bananas from our experiment, and then we split up into groups for our Tall Cup Challenge. My homeroom had already done this — and it was so much fun! Each group got 48 small plastic cups. They were given the instructions that the tallest tower would win at the end of the specified time. It was very interesting to see these kiddos work together!!

2nd Period winners!! Look at those proud faces!!

5th Period 2nd place winners 🙂 .. Only 2nd place group ALL day! They worked so very hard!!

4th Period winners — Loved this group!! They built their structure and it tumbled at about three minutes before the timer went. They built it back — and won!!

5th Period 1st Place winners!!

6th Period — LOVE these girls!

My 8th Period bunch!! 🙂

The Tallest Cup Challenge — 8/8/14

Today we practiced our schedule and finding our classes. All the kids seemed to enjoy it — and I loved meeting all my new 4th graders. Next week we will start an introduction to our Science class, and I am excited to get to know them all better.

I had promised the kids yesterday that we would do the tallest cup challenge, but we ran out of time. So it was a great way to kick off our morning. Each group got a set of 48 plastic cups. I found the smallest plastic cups that Dollar Tree had to offer for us to use. The instructions were that they had 25 minutes to create a structure with all their cups. The tallest structure at the end of the time would be declared the winner. All the kids worked SO well together!! This assignment sounds very easy — but each group would build their structure only to watch it tumble as more cups were stacked. Below are the pictures of my homeroom winners.   This was a fun challenge — I promised my AO class that I would let them try it next week.

 

This group won first place. I hate that this picture is so blurry — I didn’t realize it until the structure had been demolished. 🙂

This picture is of our second place winners. This structure is taller than the first group — but a few cups had not been placed on the structure. They worked SO very hard — they did a fabulous job!!

Have a great weekend!! Let’s rest up and do this again next week!!

First Day of School — 8/7/14

It’s hard to believe that it is already the start of a new school year!! The first day of school in 4th is very busy — we give out our books, workbooks, and put our binders together. This class is so sweet — I can’t wait until we get into a routine and start learning our Science!!

After the chaos of putting our binders together, I divided the class up and we had a puzzle race. I got this idea off of Pinterest over the summer!! I found the perfect animal 100 piece puzzles from Dollar Tree and knew they would love it!! The kids were very competitive, and I loved watching them all work together!! Below are the pictures of our winners.  Good job to all involved!! Tomorrow we will begin switching classes and learning our new routine!!

4th Grade Important Reminders 5/20/14