What's in a Name?

OK! Room 214 now has an amazing interactive touch screen thanks to the brilliant minds of Johnny Chung Lee and Uwe Schmidt. Now we have to decide what to call it. Write to me and let me know what you think.

The Peaceful Positive Meditation Lunch Bunch

Did you know that we have a meditation group happening in room 214 on Mondays and Wednesdays? I'm really excited about it. I've been getting some very positive feedback from the students who are participating. The meditation has been helping the students find wonderful strategies for keeping themselves together when they're angry. WOW!

So, my Peaceful Positive Meditation Lunch Bunch... share your thoughts with us. Tell us how you feel about our group and meditation.

Holiday Fun

Well, here we are... getting close to our Winter Break. How many days are left until then? Are you counting down? I love the smells of this holiday... Fir tree, gingerbread, cinnamon, what else? We have a real Christmas Tree in our dining room. Yum! Right now, it has these really pretty little white lights and just red apples on it.  I know you're not surprised about the apples- you all know how much I love love love apples ; )

My daughter, Lara, will be coming home this weekend from college. It will be so very nice to have her home. While we're off, I want to relax and read.

Are you going away or do you have any family coming in? Do you have any decorations up? Tell me what you like about this time of year.

Oh, and if you'd like to practice your multiplication facts, here's a cute game where you can make a Gingerbread House as you solve the problems.

The Rewards Star Readers

Hi! We're learning about reading using the Rewards Reading Program. To tackle words, we break them down into syllables.  One strategy we use is to look for prefixes and suffixes. So far, we've studied 18 prefixes and 35 suffixes. We also look for vowels and vowel combinations. An example would be when there's an "e" at the end of a syllable, the "e" might be silent and the vowel before it might be long. We would mark the long vowel with a macron. We also learned we can try two ways to sound out a vowel. First we try the sound, then we try the name.

Here are a few more interesting things we learned:

• A "g" can sound like  /j/ when it's followed by e, i, or y-- like gymnasium
• A "c" can sound like  /s/ and  /k/- like cycle or cat
• Words can have more than one prefix or suffix-- unintentional has the prefixes un and in, the suffixes tion and al

Check us out later! 

Dawud, Jakwana, Jamal, Marquise, Najmah, Nayir, Siani, Tyreese, Vickie, Zaire

Wilson Rocks!

Wilson is a special reading program and it helps us to read better. We tap out the sounds in the words. That's called decoding and encoding. Our group has been working on this for over a year. When we first started using Wilson, we didn't know how to sound the words out, but now we can sound out multi-syllabic words. Did you know that every syllable in the English language has to have a vowel? That's why we look for the vowels first. Then we look to see if there are consonants or digraphs or blends in between the vowels. That helps us to find the syllables. Here are some of the rules we learned:

• If the word only has one consonant between the vowels, close in the first syllable.
• Divide between two consonants.
• Keep digraphs together.
• Watch for digraphs, blends, and welded sounds; divide between them.

If you don't understand, ask us! We are: Neique, Tavon, Leslie, Taz, and Terry.

WELCOME BACK!

Hey there! Welcome back! I know I'm a little late in posting- it's October already. WOW! Where has the time gone!

We're already well into our instructional program. There are Rewards Readers and Rewards Writers, Wilson Tappers, and Everyday Math thinkers. Did I forget anyone? So let me hear what you're thinking about the school year so far. Are you enjoying what we're doing?

YOW WOW! It's HOT!

Boy oh boy is it hot! Today is going to feel like 115 degrees. Anyone out there reading these posts? I know Brianna is-- she just sent me new comments on older posts. She's the reason I'm putting up a new post today. I've been kind of busy with summer things- that means fixing things at home like painting and plastering and caulking all around my house. Did you know I was handy like that? What?

Other than that, my sister Zoe came in from San Francisco for a week. It was really good to see her! I don't get to see her that often but I do talk to her a lot. My daughter, Lara, also came home for a visit. She lives in Pittsburgh (if you didn't know that) and is finishing college.

So tell me, what have you been doing?

Here's Zoe and I.
My mom and Lara in the back.

We went to Hershey Park one day!
Boy are those roller coasters wild!