The week of November 6th

Upcoming Events

Tuesday is our Library day with Ms. Bryce! Please remember to pack your child's library book!!

Waterville and Belvidere Long Ago and Today Workshop Days

November 15-16 9:00-10:00

November 17 10:00-11:00

November 20 9:00-11:00 Final Finish up Day and Village set up

November 21 Old Fashioned Village Tours 9:00-11:00

Thanksgiving Luncheon 

November 16th 11:00-12:00

Please contact Debbie in the office to reserve your seat! 

Thanksgiving Break/No School

November 22-24

Classroom News

What a great week! The cold weather has finally arrived, and I love the cold mornings! The sun shines brightly into our classroom and we all enjoy the view! Please make sure your child is prepared for outdoor recess. You are welcome to pack snow pants, warm jackets, hats, mittens and snow boots. Please try and label your child's clothing- things often get dropped in the hallway or outside, and I know how expensive these things are!  We are really enjoying our special share days this month. It is great getting to know each other and each other's special interests!  I know children love to bring toys to school, but it is now becoming a distraction during our school day. Please only allow your child to bring items to school on their special share days. 

Morning Meeting Share Time!!  

We welcomed Ms. Marie into our classroom. She will be our classroom para-educator. She will work with small groups of students as well as with students one on one. Ms. Kylee is now working in a few other rooms. We miss her greatly, but know how helpful and kind she is... it makes us happy to know that she will be able to help others in our school. 

Reading and Spelling Homework 

Thank you to all of the families who made our first week of spelling and reading homework a huge SUCCESS! Most of the feedback I got from students was positive and they really liked it. This week we will continue with reading and spelling homework. I will be working with students on selecting some more "just right books" to take home in their reading bags. All spelling homework should be returned on Friday this week. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. 

Waterville and Belvidere Long Ago and Today
This was another exciting week for students! Ms. Caswell's class came to our room for a gallery walk of village choices. Students walked around the room looking at a variety of photographs and village ideas. Children selected their top three choices and wrote them down. After school on Wednesday, Ms. Caswell and I grouped students based on their interests. This week we will begin working in our small groups to research our part of the village and construction will begin! We are still looking for parent volunteers, if you are available, please let me know! 

Students looked closely at their choices and couldn't wait to sign up! 

Readers' and Writers' Workshop

Students are doing a great job with our character study unit. Students developed their partnership skills as they worked on retelling their series books. We used our character traits anchor chart to recognize external and internal character traits. Students worked in their small reading groups to practice decoding strategies, sight word recognition and application of our comprehension work ( connections and fiction story elements). Students have also begun writing in their reader response journals. Last week, we finished up our chapter book Mouse and Mole and noticed how the characters changed over time. This week, we will begin a new read aloud Little House in the Big Woods by Lauren Ingalls Wilder.  When students aren't working with me in small groups, they are working at different literacy stations and LOVE their BINGO boards! I introduced some new word work stations for kids to practice their spelling skills. Students continue to love Raz-Kids here at school.  We learned how to spend our reading stars on Raz rockets. 

In writing we learned about picture prompts! We have some really fun pictures to look at, and students love to  create stories to go along with them! This is a fun and creative part of our writers' workshop as we continue the hard work of editing and revising our small moments stories! 

Students trying out Raz Rockets on Raz-Kids! 

Fundations/Spelling

Last week we began a new part of word study and spelling. Each week we have a mentor sentence which we examine, work with, and make better. Our focus has been on recognizing nouns and proper nouns, as well as adjectives. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday we spend time working with our spelling words and our mentor sentence. 

Math/Number Corner 

In math, we have begun working on an addition and subtraction strategies unit. Students are working on developing efficient  solving strategies. We are playing a lot of domino games and have worked hard at identifying the parts and whole amount. Students have continued to work with the greater than, less than and equal symbol to compare sums. We have worked with special flip books that have helped us to write fact families for different amounts. This week we will write math stories to go along with our fact families.  In Number Corner we are working with the fractions half and fourth. We are also working with analog and digital clocks this month. We are working on counting forwards and backwards from 0-50 by ones and forwards and backwards by tens. We love playing Hot Potato for fun counting practice! 

Here's the Potato Gallery! 

Veteran's Day Project

On Thursday we spent time learning about Veteran's Day and making thank you cards for our local veterans! Students spent so much time, added great detail and really had heart felt feelings for our veterans! Our poem and cards will be sent to the National Guard in Jericho VT.