Today we learned how to play WORDLE!  It was great fun and several of the students were able to use their logic and reasoning, along with what they knew about words and spelling to determine today's word.  I highly recommend this as a fun summer activity.  It's  a great way to keep deductive reasoning skills at the forefront and to practice some word building as well.

After Wordle, we worked on our large group choose your own adventure story and our small group choose your own adventure story.  These will be great to share next week! 
We will also play a VERY MUCH LOVED GAME next week that we haven't played in a while, but that I promised we would play again before summer break! 

Today, we worked more on our CYOA group stories and they are really coming along!  Everyone is really having fun with this assignment.  We are also working on a class CYOA digital room escape style story. 

Today we began writing a choose your own adventure (CYOA) story about our class.  We did this together and then we broke into groups and started writing group CYOA stories.  Most groups were able to create a narrative and make the first choice path.  We will continue to work on CYOA stories in the coming weeks.  

Today we finished up our Room Escape for Shelby Holmes.  We'll start reading Case Closed as our final book.  This is a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book, so it's impossible for me to give a schedule to follow!  Hopefully, you will all enjoy following your own paths.  The book is about 400 pages and we have about five weeks left of class.  I would suggest aiming to read 100 pages a week/20 pages a day (give or take).  

Today we started our Shelby Holmes Room Escape!  We still need one more week to complete it before moving on to Case Closed!  

Today we solved TWO new puzzles and got to put our new invisible ink pens to the test.  We also learned about a Caesar Box.   Once we return from spring break, we'll begin our final book of the year!  We'll be reading Case Closed by Lauren Magaziner.  It's a fun choose your own adventure mystery!  

Today we had a new puzzle and it was a challenge!  But we all worked together and eventually figured it out!  Everyone has now received a special prize that will come in handy for our room escape!  It's an invisible ink pen and it is so much fun to play with!  

Today we had a brand new type of puzzle--A jumble! Students had to read pages from Watson's journal and determine that some letters looked a bit different.  Then they had to unscramble those letters to spell four separate words.  Those words then created a secret phrase!  The trick was that Dr. Rowe gave NO CLUES at all!  She just gave out the journal pages and said everyone had everything they needed!  We had two teams complete the puzzles and two teams who were very close!  There was a prize for the two teams who completed the puzzle, but no need to fear---Everyone will have a chance to win the prize (it's a cool one)!

Today we read the first few chapters of The Great Shelby Holmes.  WE also completed a logic puzzle based on page 11 of the book.  Here is the reading schedule for the book:
2/9-2/16 pg. 1-57
2/16-2/23 pg. 58-125
2/23-3/2 pg. 126-193
3/2-3/9 pg. 193-end
We will complete a room escape when we return from Spring Break! 

This week we finished up our Eliminators game board and then we actually played the game Eliminators.  This is a very fun game and we will continue to play it as we read our next book, The Great Shelby Holmes.  We will start it Thursday, so if you have your copy, please bring it to class. 

Today we worked on solving logic puzzles!  Logic puzzles are a foundational puzzle for room escapes!  We will be utilizing logic puzzles in our next room escape.  Speaking of which, our next book will be The Great Shelby Holmes, which is a take on Sherlock Holmes, of course!   We will start that book on 2/9, so hopefully, that will give you enough time to find it!  I do know it's in the Knox Co. Library system.  It's also a series, which if you have been around me at all, you know I love getting kiddos hooked on great books! 

Welcome back!  Today we learn how to make our own scratch off cards.  We did a little math with measuring our special mixture, and then we thought about different ways a scratch off card could be used in a room escape.  The kids had many great ideas!  

Whew!  We did it!  It was tricky, but we managed to get (almost) everyone finished with their room escape.  Students may spend a few days coloring, so they may not show them to you just yet.  Here is the scenario for your room escape:

"Santa needs to deliver the presents, but he is stuck at your house and can't remember the code to get the reindeer to fly.  Solve the puzzles throughout the room and figure out the secret phrase."

If your cutie can't remember how to solve the puzzle, just email me and I"m happy to help you out! 

Today was a whirlwind day!  Whew!  It looked like a tornado had gone through our classroom today! We worked on making our own room escapes hidden in our paper living rooms! We will work like mad to get these completed next week! 

Today we read the first bit of Encyclopedia Brown and began working on creating our own paper room escape.  We are making the town of Idaville, which is where Encyclopedia Brown lives and each house will have its own mysteries inside! 

Today we had a room escape for Timmi Tobbson.  It was a challenge because we only had one class period to get it finished!  I had three groups that were neck and neck.  One ultimately prevailed, but the other two fought hard until the end! Over the break, please make sure you have your Encyclopedia Brown book.  You may start reading if you would like.  Here is the reading schedule:
12/1: pg. 1-28
12/8:  pg. 29-60
12/15: pg. 61-end

Today we played a visual clue game called STARE! It was a pretty challenging game.  After that, we continued to increase our visual skills by completing a word search about our next book, Encyclopedia Brown.  I challenged students to write a prediction about what they thought would happen in the book, but they had to use as many words from the word search as possible.  

Lots of people read their ABC stories aloud to us and they were great!  We have some work to do on this type of writing, but for a first effort, they were very good! 

Today we discussed the word cipher and what that means.  We also discussed what it means to "decipher" something.  We also learned three new types of code systems (number codes, symbol codes, and pigpen).  Then, we learned how to do one of my most creative writing exercises ever, which is an ABC story.  I started everyone off with the sentence, "All day, I had been thinking about trick-or-treating."  Then students had to finish the story, but with a twist!  Each sentence had to start with the next letter in the alphabetical sequence.  For example, the second sentence had to start with the letter B, the third with the letter C, and so on.  Only the first word of the sentence has to start with the letter, not every word of the sentence!  I asked students to complete their ABC stories this week and bring them back to class to share! 

Today we started working on our Timmi Tobbson book, but not before playing a few rounds of Among Us :)
When reading the Timmi Tobbson book, students should pay close attention to the pictures.  There is a brainteaser question at the end of each chapter.  These can be answered by careful examination of the picture.  Please read chapters 1-8 for this week.  Here is the reading schedule:

Week 1 (10/20-10/27)- Chapters 1-8
Week 2 (10/27-11/3)- Chapters 9-16
Week 3 (11/3-11/10)-Chapters 17-24
Week 4 (11/10-11/17) - Chapters 25-end
Week 5 (11/17)-Room Escape Day! 

Today we finished up our room escape!  We had two teams finish the room escape!  When we return from break, please have the next book on our list, which is Timmy Tobbson and the Legend of the Star Runner! 

We started our first room escape!  Groups are off to a great start!  Lots of groups have already solved the first two puzzles!  We'll finish this up next week. 

Today we worked on a map puzzle using page 49 of our Sloth Sleuth book.  It was a challenge!  We will begin our room escape next week and some of the puzzles will be similar to the map puzzle, so I'd like students to finish the map puzzle at home this week for HW.  We'll go over those before we begin the room escape next week.  Students should be nearing the end of reading Sloth Sleuth.  I'd like for us to be finished by fall break, so that's two more weeks of reading.  The more students have read before the room escape, the better! 

Today we played that old game, "Which one of these things is not like the other?" but with a bit of a twist.  Students are learning how to justify their answers with reasons and evidence, which is crucial for solving mysteries!  We'll continue to work on this skill.  We also learned a bit about sloths and tried our hand at drawing Paz in some comic panels.  

Today we played real life Among Us!  It was so much fun.  We had two imposters and the rest of the students were crewmates.  It was a race to see if the crewmates would finish the tasks before the imposters tagged them out or if someone could identify who the imposters were! We'll definitely be playing this fun game again! If you have not finished Sloth Sleuth, go ahead and see if you can finish it.  We'll be starting our room escape on 9/30 and finishing it up on 10/7 (right before fall break!).  Also work on procuring the second book Timmi Tobbson and the Legend of the Star Runner.  We'll start that the Thursday we come back from break.  

Today we finished up our Sherlock's office riddles and we started discussing the rules and tasks of our real life Among Us game!  We'll play that game next week.  

Today we played a very fun word puzzle game called "Missing Letters."  It was very fun  and a great way to practice some upper level phonics skills.  Then we were welcomed into the office of Sherlock Holmes, where we attempted to solve some mysteries that the great Sherlock Holmes needed to solve.  We'll continue with this next week! 

Today we had an amazing first day!  We played a word game and then we used our detective skills to determine who six suspects were in a line-up.  It was great fun and a sign of all the awesome things we'll get to do this year!  Work on getting our book, Sloth Slueth, and I'll see you next week!