The Week of May 15, 2023

 

**Please help your student pack a water bottle and snack for school each day**

Upcoming Events

Field Trip to the Waterville Town Library - May 23, 2023

Readers' Theater Performance / Early Release Day/Teacher In-Service

 May 24th, 2023

Please join us from 9:30-10:30 in our gym for a amazing performance by the 1-3 students!  

End of Year K-3 Field Trip to Mill River Park- June 8th 

K-3 students are excited for a day of hiking, games and creemees! Students will leave WES around 9:30. Students will need to bring a lunch from home, or sign up for a bagged lunch from the cafeteria.  Please complete the google form linked below.  Let me know if you are having any trouble viewing the google form and I will send home a paper copy! 

Mill River End of Year Field Trip Google Form

End of Year Benchmark Assessments

This week, I was busy working on the many end of year assessments with your students. I really enjoy this time of year, where I get to check in with each child and notice the incredible growth they have achieved since the beginning of the school year. Please reach out if you have any questions.

Science Unit: Properties of Matter

Students were busy making predictions, observing and recording their findings this week. As a class we learned that some types of matter can be changed by temperature and can return to their original form, while others cannot! Together we froze cucumbers, bread, soda, mustard,bananas, and maple syrup. We made observations, and then, left all of them out at room temperature for the night. It was pretty cool to see what was matter was reversible and what was not! 

Readers' Workshop

This week, Ms. Marie practiced with each readers' theater group in preparation for our upcoming performance! Students are learning to:

Change their voice to match the punctuation in the text.

Read with phrasing ( scoop words together).

Add expression and feeling.

Read at an appropriate rate ( not too fast, not too slow).

First Grade Math 

This week in math, the first graders continued to work in Unit 7. In this unit, students will work to add and subtract double digit numbers with various models and review counting by 2s 5s and 10s. Check out the links below for more info and to check out some of the cool games we  played together. 

Unit 7 Overview

Games:

Two Turns to Build

 Race to Zero

3D Shape Hunt 

On Thursday and Friday, the first graders had fun hunting around the classroom for 3D shapes. We created some fun "watchful eyes" headbands to help us find and name some cool shapes. We found spheres, rectangular prisms, cylinders, cubes and cones!

The Week of May 1, 2023

 

After School Plans

First and second grade families, please be sure to inform the school of your students' after school plans with a written note or phone call to the office. The end of the day is very busy and we like to make sure all students know what their plans are for the day.  Thank you!

Special thank you to Ms. Nikky for helping with our new classroom bulletin board :)

Upcoming Events 

WES Spring Concert - May 9th @ 6:00

Students should arrive by 5:45 and come to the classroom. We will walk down to the gym together. 

Early Release Day-  May 24th @ 11:30

Readers' Theater Performance - May 24th 

Grades 1-3 will perform our readers' theater plays for you! Our last unit of study in Readers' Workshop will focus on reading fluency. We will have time to showcase our amazing reading progress to our WES community. 

No School- May 29th 

Heads Up 7 Up- New Morning Meeting Game

Heads Up Game Link 

This crew is getting ready to tap some thumbs during our game! 

Readers' Workshop

This week, we wrapped up our unit of study on fiction stories and characters. In this unit we learned to describe how our characters look and act. We used this information to identify character traits. Students followed their characters through multiple books in a series and noticed common themes. We reviewed a high quality fiction story retell, and created some really cool posters too! The kids had NO FUN AT ALL!!! Just kidding we really enjoyed this project and it shows :)

                        Spelling/Fundations 

Ms. M's Group: This week, we wrapped up our study of open and closed syllable words and played a fun new 4 corners game with our Power Words. Students worked on sentence writing: upper case letters, spacing and punctuation. We learned the rule for using hard and soft c.

Ms Russin's Group: This week, students worked on words with short and long a sounds i.e. chain, train and dare, care + play, day, may etc. Students are reading and writing words with this pattern. Student's read a book called A Rainy Day to Sail. Students also enjoyed playing bingo with their new Power Words. 

States of Matter 

This week, we learned about the 3 States of Matter. We sorted items into groups of common materials. Students named commonalities and differences. Students explored with making models of molecules and how they fit together in each of the 3 States of Matter.  Up next, we will explore how some types of matter can be changed and return to original form, while others cannot. 

Everything is made of tiny pieces of matter

Check out our beautiful flowers!