Labor Day Weekend

For Labor Day Weekend, we flew into Fairbanks so that we could pick up the rest of our stuff in the storage unit. It was the weekend of the Alaska State Fair, (www.alaskastatefair.org/) so we drove 5 and a half miles down to Palmer to attend.

I have never seen Denali before, so it was a beautiful trip. It was 7:30 when we left Fairbanks so it was quite dark, but we got treated to the Northern Lights above the mountains! Didn't get any pics, but I sure look forward to seeing them this winter.

On Friday, I found this great news article about the State Fair which talked about the Alaska Record pumpking (1400 lbs!) The class asked me if I was going to see it. We didn't, which was a bummer. But I'll definitely get some seeds to inspire them to grow! But there were tons of food vendors, rides, shopping booths, and music. We also got to hang out with my husbands family who lives in the area. It was a great trip.

On the way back, we bought a cooler at Fred Meyers. I filled the bottom with frozen juice concentrate... bought some lobster (2 tails for $13) and King Crab (4 legs for $13) We got some cheese, butter, lunch meat, yogart, and Positano Frozen Pizzas (seriously the best!) We also got some jarred, dry, and produce so we wont have to do a bush order this month. Our fridge is seriously stocked now! :)

The Denali Park was beautiful on the drive up in the light. It was a good time of year to go because of all the beautiful fall colors. :)

Mystery Skype

We have had fun "Mystery Skyping" this week. We connected with a 5th Grade class in Alabama and  a 3rd grade class in Minnesota. The students had fun asking each other questions "Do you border Canada?" or "What time is it there?" "Do you have snowy winters?" "Does your state start with a vowel?" Such a great way to teach US geography! :) 

The class in Alabama showed us their classroom Caterpillar. They live in the fire hydrant capital. They also get snow days when it snows! One of my students had shot a Grouse the previous day, so she showed them the feathers. 

The class in Minnesota also gets cold (-40) They had several students who had the same names as our students. My class thought it was crazy that they had 20 students there. They asked the teacher if it was "hard to control" lol They also taught the students some Gwichin like how to say "My name is" and "Good bye" 

Debates and voting

There are 2 playgrounds. We have been playing at the one in the back. Today once girl wanted to play in the one in the front. I had the students both present arguments about why they wanted to play at the different ones. Then we voted.

Democratic process in action

Great Week

1) I love Kahoot. I did a spelling test & math vocabulary test with it this week, which worked out great. The students loved doing the challenges in the groups.

2) Front Row is a really cool app as well for tracking ELA & Math. I look forward to learning more about it in the coming weeks.

3) I love how they teach math curriculum now. They stress that there are multiple way to solve the same problem and looking at the kid's illustrations you can really see it!

LOVE IT! :) 

Connected Classrooms

I love connected classroooms. My 3rd Graders are going down to Kindergarten to read with the students. It is so sweet to see them reading & interacting with the little ones! I hope we can make books with them and do other activities together. 

I have some mystery Skype sessions set up for next week and the week after, I think we are pretty popular since we are in Alaska! :) Hopefully next week, I will have the kids write up some math problems so challenge kids on that Global Twitter Math Challenge... 

Goals

I had the kids draw out a dream of theirs and then write 3 goals for themselves in order to make that dream a reality. I was so impressed. A lot of great future student-athletes! 

Seriously! What a great group of students! :) They asked me yesterday if they could call me "Auntie" instead of teacher. So sweet. 

Center Time

I love my schedule this year. After our major "Reading" and "Math" blocks, I have some flex "Center Time" built in. Yesterday after our doing round-robin read-alouds about summer vacation, I had the students write a story about their summer vacations.

Many of their stories centered around going to the "Fair" or "Fairbanks" There was quite a bit of mis-spellings so I did a quick spelling lesson afterwards. We talked about how to spell the word "Fair" and how the word "Fairbanks" was the word "Fair" and "banks" smooshed together. Just like the word "Play" "Ground" I'll do a quick oral quiz again today randomly to make sure they remember.