Ms. Gossett's Nest: December 2013

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Oooh Lah Lah! Cooking up Yule Logs

Friday, December 13, 2013

Little Engineers Take Building Gingerbread Houses Seriously

Life in the Forest Florida Connection

What animal has four tiny hooves, a curly tail and squeals? No, not Santa's reindeer, good try. How about a week and half old baby razor back pig. Students had an opportunity to meet this native Florida forest animal up close and personal. They also experienced listening to this baby squeal, oh my! Coincidentally this week in reading we read a story called, Life in the Forest. This story was all about animals in the forest. What a great opportunity to make a real world connection.

This student told me during reading this week, "Ms. Gossett I have a live forest animal I can share." Surprisingly enough he didn't say what the animal was. Later that day his mom emailed me some photos, not knowing he told me he was bringing this adopted cutie to school. I wrote back, "This must be the live forest animal he was telling me about" and we made arrangements for a surprise visit.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Volunteers from Wells Fargo Step into the Teaching Arena

Today, employees from Wells Fargo came into all of the first grade classrooms here at Cracker Trail Elementary. Volunteer Donna Lyons and co-workers set their "banking hats" aside today and tried "teaching on for size." Brave souls! They came equipped with Junior Achievement materials to educate students for two hours about entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial literacy through highly engaging experiential, hands-on activities.

During the first activity students discovered how families are alike and different and how they work together to make where they live a better place. Students worked on completing a Picture Book with colorful stickers of neighborhood scenes and filled in blanks to complete the story.

Next the students learned to differentiate between Needs and Wants through discussion and a game. Ms. Lyons held up a picture card and students responded by holding up a Need or Want card, once they determined if the item pictured was a Need or Want. Then the students wrote a letter to someone in their family asking for something they need or want and explained why they needed or wanted it.

For the third activity students had to solve riddles about jobs and make a poster of themselves doing a job at home. Sorry no pictures of this activity.

During the fourth activity students learned about businesses in neighborhoods. They learned how to read a map key and identified entrepreneurial businesses , along with the goods and services these businesses provide.

Our class ran out of time for the final activity about becoming entrepreneuars and the possibility of students starting their own businesses one day. However, Ms. Lyons left the activity materials so we can work on this later.

At the end of the program students learned about the importance of earning a diploma. Then Ms. Lyons presented each student with a Junior Achievement Certificate of participation and a gift of a Wells Fargo stuffed horse. You can only begin to imagine the expressions on students' faces when they received these beautiful huggable stuffed toys.

Thank-you Wells Fargo for the generous gifts of employee time, memorable activities and for putting smiles on students' faces with adorable BIG brown ponies.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Our Shining AR Stars

Broadcasted live today on WCTE morning announcements, two of my students moved to Level 2 and received their AR t-shirts. So Proud of them!

March 5th AR Star

Monday, December 2, 2013

Classroom Turned Upside down by a Pesky Little Elf

After lunch today, we returned to our classroom as usual, BUT what to our wondering eyes appeared, chairs flipped upside down as if creating a trail. The flipped chairs led us to a little Elf sitting in a tree looking as innocent as can be.

How could such a cute little Elf make such a big mess? The students named him Rudolph :( I was secretly wishing "Peppermint" or "Candy Cane" would have won the "what to name the Elf" vote. Oh well, Rudolph it is.

Santa left us gifts and a letter. This student was enticed to read the letter to her classmates. Santa said the students should write him letters on the special writing paper left under the tree. The students went right to work writing their letters once I read them, "The Elf of the Shelf" story Santa left us.

I love how this student commented on the Elf before telling Santa what she wants for Chistmas. It made a great writing example to share with my students.

This morning I was digging in my school Christmas bin when I came across this microphone. I bought it at an end of the season sale last year. It was still in its original package and "Yes, the batteries still work!" I completely had forgotten about it. When you speak into it the microphone changes your voice to sound like an elf. We laughed hysterically as students shared their Elf on the Shelf at home experiences using the microphone.