Welcome Back!

How quickly the summer flew by!
Here we are again at the beginning of a new year and I am so excited for everything in store!

With a brand new building, the staff at CMS is ready to jump into the 2013-14 school year!


I can't wait to meet all of you at Parent Night on Thursday. Please join us from 5-7 at the Middle School to meet the teachers and tour the school!



-Miss Brown

Summer Salutations!

As our year comes to a close and we say our farewells, wishing happy and enjoyable summers to all -- some things are still on our minds for what we'll be doing all summer!

As Middle Schoolers -- we expect a lot from our 5th graders. This extends into the summer -- as we hate the dreaded "learning loss" that can occur from too much of doing nothing!
Letters have been sent home to our families, outlining the requirements for each student this summer.

Here's the gist:

• Students should be working on IXL. They should log-in and work on it throughout the summer. We are expecting that they gain a medal in every skill in their current grade level (5th). This is showing 70% proficiency in each area that they should've learned this year. 
• Students should also be reading. Push them to read every day -- 10, 15, 20 minutes -- any reading is good reading, if they're doing it all the time! At a minimum, we are requiring 1 AR leveled book that each child self selects be completed this summer. They are encouraged to take their time and take notes on this book -- in the fall they will be given an AR test on that book and that score will be entered into the grade book.
• Student should definitely be writing! Push them to write as much as possible! We request that students write 1-3 "journal" entries each week of the summer. These entries can be prompted (from websites in this post) or free-writes. They can talk about their days, their vacations, tell stories, etc. 

The importance of these tasks cannot be stressed enough. If your son/daughter keeps their math skills sharp, reads regularly and keeps writing -- they will enter next year so much more prepared! The transition will be smoother for them and their teachers next year and their successes will be greater!

REWARD! 

•  Our gracious and lovely PTO, as well as the 5th grade team have decided to purchase iPod shuffles for the students who complete their summer tasks. Every student, who has been promoted (not placed or retained) who completes their Math and ELA assignments will be entered into a grade level drawing to win an iPod shuffle! 
• We'd like to reward the kids for keeping their brains sharp and working hard over the summer with incentive and drive to keep plugging along.

 I know it's a lot to take in -- but if we band together, everyone will win!

-Miss Brown

Here are some websites that may help out this summer!

• IXL
• A link directly to the student's math website!
• AR Book Finder
• This site will tell students the level of the book as well as if it has an AR test or not.
• Students should be reading at or above their reading level. We encourage them to choose books that interest them, but to stay AT or go BEYOND their reading level!
• Book Lists
• This list offers books at various reading levels. This will help students to choose AR books at their levels!
• Scholastic Book Finder
• This allows you to search for books within a reading level!
•  Journal Prompts
• Possible Prompts for students to respond to! 
• More Prompts
• Reading Log
• A sample reading log for the kids to keep track of their reading.
• Scholastic's Summer Reading Challenge
• Scholastic allows students to log-in and track their minutes over the summer.
• Time For Kids
• A great resource for informational text options for the kids to work on! This will boost their test taking abilities, their science and social studies understanding and keep them sharp and ready for the high demands of the Common Core!
• Scholastic News
•  A great resource for informational text options for the kids to work on! This will boost their test taking abilities, their science and social studies understanding and keep them sharp and ready for the high demands of the Common Core!
• 
  

Keep checking back and there may be some additional helpful links -- if I come across any.

Springing into Break!

We've finally made it! Spring has sprung (sort of) and the weather is starting to reflect how we've all been feelings in Room 702.
As we prepared ourselves for a week's vacation -- we enjoyed ourselves a little week of spirited activities.
Our countdown had begun -- we wrapped up units, pushed through our Math topics and even had a celebratory Spring assembly to kick off vacation.

 We began our week with a Social Studies -- Gallery Walk!  I divvied up the kids and gave each group a different poster, as well as a different colored marker. They were each given 2 minutes to write anything they could remember on the topic we'd been discussing for the past month. All of our colonial knowledge, slavery, economics, and government came together through this summarizing activity. The groups then rotated through, so every group had a chance to work at every station. The results were really cool -- this is a great way for them to demonstrate what they know and review with the ENTIRE class! :)

The end of the week proved to be a bit crazy, but not any less exciting. Our amazing 6th grade Math teacher took on the task of doing the St. Jude's Math-a-thon. 23 of her students rose to the challenge of raising money for this amazing cause. The challenge: Raise $1,000 and their science teacher would shave his head. As the money poured in and these kids worked hard to complete their math activity books -- it became clear they were going to meet and surpass that goal. When they passed $1,000 -- they wanted another victim - they asked one of the Title Aides if he'd join in as well (at $1,500 would he shave his head?). He agreed and the donations continued. As a final tally -- the kids raised $1,800 for St. Jude and at our Spring Assembly -- two male staff members (the only two who weren't already bald) had their heads shaved in front of everyone.

The science teacher prepped himself for this endeavor by dying his hair school colors on Thursday morning. 

With all of that excitement the kids were sent on their way -- with hopes of happy and relaxing weeks off. As we teachers take a few minutes to relax ourselves!
Although I have lots of ideas circulating and some things to look forward to when we return!

Book clubs:

and beginning our fun and exciting unit of poetry!

Have great Spring Breaks and hopefully you all return refreshed and ready for the end of the year!

Appropriate Appreciation

This past weekend I took quite a risk and agreed to go fishing. Relying heavily on friends to supply me with necessary things (waders, fishing poles, bait, a boat...ya know common items), I rode 2.5 hours up to Baldwin late Friday night to a friend's cabin. Slept a few hours into the morning and then began to pile on layer...upon layer... upon layer of clothing. Pants, long-johns, waders, underarmour, patagonia layers, sweatshirts.... hats, gloves. The list could extend the length of this post.
I was sure to document -- since I knew nobody would believe me that I actually wore waders...and actually went fishing.

We arrived on the PM (Pere Marquette -- for those of you who don't fish .... me) and began the adventure.

I managed to land myself a wee little rainbow trout -- which I proudly boasted to anyone who would listen. 

After 8 long hours of floating the river -- I'd lost feeling in my finger and we'd all gone a little bit Castaway -- If there'd been a volleyball around -- we may have befriended it.

Overall, it's a new experience that offers up many new stories to share and laugh over -- which is worthwhile for me!








To wrap up this post -- and stick to the title theme -- I wanted to showcase and highlight that today was Joe/Willie Appreciation Day! We showed our gratitude for CMS's favorite custodians by making banners, cards and treats for our favorite guys!
Rm. 702 made a whole stack of cards that were scattered throughout Joe's day and I made a class card to post on his door.  Just a little thanks for keeping our school looking snazzy!

-T

Words of Wisdom

I'm intrigued and interested to have come across this today. I love public education.

A little Tuesday pick-me-up.

Q: "What is a nebula?"
A: "Nebula is a women's name."













Taught the kids about writing vignettes and was eagerly approached by one of my girls:
"Miss Brown, I finished my vinaigrette... will you look it over?"



These are a few of the many reasons I love and will always love my job.

Skiing across the country.

Since West Michigan (and now the rest of the state) has been blanketed in a bouncy layer of snow, 5th grade decided to take advantage and introduce the kids to Cross Country Skiing at the local nature center. On Wednesday, 3 of the 5th grade classes piled onto big yellow buses and made our way to Sarett. Bundled in snow clothes and wearing big warm boots -- the kids filed in for their crash course on the history of skiing. After learning the basics about the "babbish" on a snowshoe and how we don't want to be "high sticker-nose pickers..." but rather "low sticker - thigh flickers" with our ski poles -- we got our boots and separated into groups of 10. 

 We met our naturalist in the parking lot, skis in hand as we all fumbled putting on the (very) slippery skis. Once our boots were locked in, she taught us how to get up if we fell. The entire time I was thinking, "It's fine...I just need to avoid falling so I don't have to do that much scooting and rolling in the snow." (I wasn't that lucky).  The groups wobbled on their skis toward the "practice circles" so we could test out our skills gliding, walking, and pushing ourselves through the snow.

 Each group, like ducklings to their mother, disappeared into the woods. My skis were awesome! A nice pair of Crown skis and pretty blue poles. I know nothing about skiing and had never been on a pair of skis -- but I enjoyed my pair and really liked gliding around.






 We ended up with a perfect day, quite warm and sunny with beautiful, snow-covered trails to glide through. Eventually we made our way to one of the "baby hills" as our instructor assured us. By this time I'd fallen twice -- once landing my head right into the side of a tree. I was a little apprehensive of this hill -- so I played "photographer" at the bottom.                 

 We had some wipeouts on this hill -- as I watched it be quite difficult for some kids to stay in the track. Those that did fall, 
became experts at popping back up after wiping out! I had a dad from my class attend the field trip! Mr. Tavolacci was our seasoned expert on the skis -- and he raced his son down the hill a few times, which was fun to watch!

 After a tiring day of skiing -- the kids were quiet on the bus ride back to school. Most were chilled and had bright rosy cheeks, but had nothing but great things to say. One of mine came up to me while turning in his skis and said, "Miss Brown -- I can snowboard and not fall...but I fell 8 times on these things!" I asked, "Did you have fun?" "Well, yeah..." "Then it was worth the falling.." I replied. :)
I felt the same -- the kids were overly interested in how many times I fell on my skis -- I kept my number at 3 .. but one of them was because I crashed into one of my students.

It was a phenomenal day and a great field trip. I love getting out of my comfort zone -- and watching kids get to try something they might not have tried on their own -- or have never done before. I thank Sarett and the parent volunteer for giving us a great day in the snow!


To end this post -- I'd like to share a picture from yesterday. Yesterday was "Team Day" at school. Students were told to wear a shirt/jersey representing their favorite team. Our principal pushed for increased MSU gear...heavily biased in his favoritism :). I wore an old school hockey jersey -- representing the San Jose Sharks. Now, I'm a Wings fan all the way -- but I couldn't pass up wearing one of the old jersey to school -- plus it's TEAL! The kids had no idea it was one of the old jerseys..but they liked it anyways. A handful of staff members had a similar idea representing, MSU, Boston Bruins, and Chicago Blackhawks for hockey!

A FANtastic Friday!