ヨーロッパ旅行のルート

去年、妹からヨーロッパ旅行を誘ってくれた。

すぐ航空券を買って、

and started planning for our trip.

冬休みの時、
we spent 2 days at the library,
trying to map out our trip.

The planning was LONG~~~
but it was fun...
especially when you have a バカsister with you (^-^).

There are so many places that we wanted to visit, 
but we only have a month. 
So needed to cross out some of those places.

やっと１ヶ月ヨーロッパ旅行のルートを決めました~!

SF⇒London 
⇒Paris
⇒Amsterdam
⇒Berlin
⇒Prague
⇒Vienna ⇔ Salzburg
⇒Venice
⇒Florence
⇒Nice ⇔ Monaco
⇒Barcelona
⇒SF

So looking forward to it! Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ

にほんブログ村

にほんブログ村

Open House

Open house is over! \(^-^)/
I tried many new projects with my class this year, 
and I am very proud of all my students' hard work. 

I am also grateful to have such a supportive group of parents,
had a pretty good turnout tonight (^-^).
Tonight's open house was completely student led.
It was great to just sit back, relaxed,
and watched each family celebrated their child's success.

Students were sharing with their parents the government and laws of their newly formed community.

Students were reading a piece of their writing from their writing notebook to their parents.

A student was sharing with her mom how she created her robot when given a specific perimeter.

Students were sharing their Ohlone slideshow with their parents.

A student was sharing with her mom some of the functions of crayfish structures.

10 more days until summer vacation!!!

"Ms. Mak, regrouping is FUN!"

Subtraction with regrouping has always been
a challenging concept for me to teach
and for my students to understand.
This year, it is no difference.

Students were able to model regrouping
with tens rods and ones cubes.
However, once the manipulatives were taken away,
they had difficulty recording their work
using the standard algorithm.
So I decided to write out with numbers and words
to show what actually happens when we regroup.
We spent more time on each problem with all those writing,
but it was totally worth it!
This was a great SUCCESS!
Now most of my class are able to regroup successfully
AND explain why/how they regroup.
Many of my students wrote out the step
"10 ones + 3 ones = 13 ones" like my example
when they do their regrouping,
so they know what they are doing.
I am so glad that the students are making sense of the math,
and not just memorizing the regrouping steps.

A student, who couldn't regroup correctly yesterday,
told me in class today,
"Ms. Mak, this is fun! I like regrouping!"
He probably had no idea how thrilled I was
when I heard his comment.

These little moments are my motivation for
getting up early to go to work every day.

Literacy Stations

We began rotating for our literacy stations last week.
I was not that the teacher station yet,
was circulating around the room.
But it seemed like all students know their job at the stations.
Hopefully it won't get too crazy this week,
when I will actually be at the teacher station.

Writing Station


Buddy Readers Station


Word Work Station


Computer Station


Teacher Station

Starry Night Pumpkin Patch

As a student, art had never been my strength,
so I have not imagined myself teaching it.
However, in reality,
elementary teachers just need to know a bit of everything.
After reading/taking ideas from several teacher's blogs,
I taught a 2-day art lesson to my class.
It was a great success! (phew!)
All the students were engaged, and
their paintings turned out FANTASTIC!

We are learning about energy in Science;
therefore, we studied Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
to learn how he showed light and movement in his painting.
We also talked about how to show depth/distance
with the different sizes of pumpkins.

The students are so proud of their artwork, and
I am very proud of them!
Here are a couple of their paintings (^-^)