The Week of May 21

Upcoming Events

Preview Day- May 31, 2018
Students will meet their teacher and classmates for the next year


LAST LIBRARY BOOK RETURN
June 1, 2018 
Please make sure all of your child's books have been returned to Mrs. Bryce before summer vacation! 

Last Week of Spelling and Reading Homework
June 4, 2018 

Waterville Elementary School 6th Grade Graduation
June 14, 2018 @ 6:00

Carnival Day/End of Year Picnic Celebration - June 15
Waterville students will experience an amazing carnival set up right here at our school! WESPO will sponsor a day of games, fun and food! Ms. Debbie will be sending home food donation forms in the coming weeks.

Last Day of School/ Half Day
June 18, 2018 


Technology Trouble
Over the weekend I was having some technical trouble with my school laptop. I usually prepare homework for the week beforehand, but this weekend I wasn't able to do so! I will work on getting homework copied and sent home on Wednesday. 

Jared Campbell
On May 14th, we welcomed singer and song writer Jared Campbell! Mr. Campbell sang songs which totally excited our students while touching on some really important topics- respect, friendship and bullying. We loved his whit and humor all while teaching kids some critical skills. Please check out his website @ jaredcampbell.com. I will be ordering one of his CDs for our class! He was amazing!

Readers' and Writers' Workshop


This week we worked more on researching our topics in our book clubs. Students learned to use Info Bits, an online encyclopedia which is a resource available through our WES library resources. Students reviewed our internet safety rules, and learned to log on using our new touch screen laptops! We gained lots of information about our topics by reading and listening to interesting texts. We also learned a lot by looking at photographs about our topics. Students learned how to organize the facts that we learned into categories. Now that we are experts on our topics, we began writing our own nonfiction books. Students used the information they learned to write different sections about their topics. We will work on finishing up these books and begin publishing them next week. 

Science
In science, we continued our important work discovering how living and nonliving things live together. Students investigated animal coverings and how they help animals survive. We did a cool outdoor camouflage experiment. Students had to find as many pipe cleaner worms as they could in 30 seconds... the worms were many different colors. Students noticed that the green worms were the hardest to find because they blended in! We returned to our original models and practiced revising and making our models public. Students drew and wrote about how they thought living and nonliving things lived together. After watching a short informational video, we revised our models to insure they included our new schema.



Math 
This week in math we worked more on our addition and subtraction strategies with numbers up to 20. We played some fun new games at stations that helped us add 9 and 10 to different numbers. We also loved a figuring out our mystery pictures! Students had to color different boxes on our 120s chart by solving different equations i.e. 10+45=55  35-10= 25. During skills time, we continued our work with solving missing number equations and explaining the meaning of the equal sign. We worked on explaining if equations were true or not. 













Fundations/Spelling
Students worked hard on learning their spelling patterns which included a comparison of long and short vowel patterns. We also worked on reviewing trick words so that we can write and read them with accuracy. Students worked on  a variety of activities which included word building, sorting, and writing. 

Baby Pictures

Baby Pictures Needed

We are studying life cycles in science. Students are observing and noting similarities and differences in young animals/plants and adult animals/plants. Please send a baby picture in to school of your child this week. Thank you! 

~Mrs. Marcelino 

The Week of May 7

Upcoming Events

No School- May 28, 2018 in observance of Memorial Day 

Preview Day- May 31, 2018
Students will meet their teacher and classmates for the next year

Waterville Elementary School 6th Grade Graduation
June 14, 2018 @ 6:00

Carnival Day/End of Year Picnic Celebration - June 15
Waterville students will experience an amazing carnival set up right here at our school! WESPO will sponsor a day of games, fun and food! Ms. Debbie will be sending home food donation forms in the coming weeks.

Last Day of School/ Half Day
June 18, 2018 


Readers' and Writers' Workshop
What a fun and busy week we had! The first and second graders are learning to research topics of their choice. They are learning to work in small groups, share resources and organize the information they learn. We used many different nonfiction books to read and gather information from the pictures.  In writing, we are using our writer's checklist to assess our writing. Students are setting goals to improve their writing and are noticing what skills they are doing well! 

Math 
The first graders are working on developing strategies to add and subtract numbers up to 20. We made a class book of the subtraction strategies that can help us while we are solving different number stories. We met Mollie and Ollie twin penguins who love to fish, and applied our strategies to different problems the twins had.  We are also working on explaining what the equal symbol means. We began playing a game called "Equalizer", where students used their knowledge about parts and wholes, and how to use the equal symbol to compare two quantities. 



Science 
In science, we worked on drawing and labeling external animal and plant parts. Students observed mealworms, crickets, birds and squirrels. We also worked on observing native plants and their parts. Students noticed how some plants have defenses to help them survive.  Students also observed how plants of the same kind can look different. We observed different coniferous trees, daffodils, geraniums, and pansies.  Students continue to work on explaining our driving questions- "How do plants and animals all live together?"















                              











                   

The Week April 30

Daffodils are growing on our playground! 

Dandelions are coming up too! 

Classroom News

This week sure was busy! I didn't get a chance to take as many photos as usual, but I have include what I did take. At the end of May I will begin our end of year literacy and math assessments. Ms. Caswell, Ms. Abair and myself will meet to discuss student placement for next year.  In deciding a child's placement for next year we consider academic, social and behavioral strengths and weaknesses, along with class size and ratio of boys and girls. At the end of May, we will have a "Preview Day" where students will meet their teacher and classmates for the next year. Because of the numerous snow days accumulated this year, the date for "Preview Day" hasn't been determined yet. I will keep you updated as the date is finalized. 

We just finished up a technology project that helps to showcase our learning from our States of Matter project. Students ended the unit by writing a claim about heating and cooling and the effect it has on materials. We used our evidence gathered in the unit, and drew pictures to explain our thinking. Our class is working with Mr. Hance to create a movie where the students work is displayed.  I hope to have it up on the website soon! 

Math 

We continued working on our penguin project this week. We worked with story problems that challenged students to use several different strategies and stretch their thinking.  Students drew pictures, wrote words and equations to develop and show their thinking.

 We continued to work at our geometry stations and learned a new stations which challenged us to create 3D shapes using nets.  What 3D shape will this net make?

Readers' Workshop

This week we worked in our book clubs. Students gathered information about their topic through pictures and words.  Some of our topics include dogs, cats, Egypt and sea creatures! Students learned how to take notes and evaluate if books were good resources or not. We continued to practice our book club rules and enjoyed sharing our new information with others! 

Writers' Workshop

In writing, we brushed up on ways to begin and end our nonfiction books. We made lots of connections to our past units of study! We reviewed interesting ways to hook a reader and get them interested in our books. We also practiced ways to end our books by noticing how other authors do it. We read some digital mentor texts this week. We did a shared writing piece that helped us to try out what we call the WOW fact. We shared one last interesting fact at the end, and then practiced a concluding sentence.  

Science 

On Wednesday we began our last science unit for the year... boohoo! We began with our phenomenon which sparked students interest and got them thinking! Our driving question for this unit of study is- what's outside our door, and how do we all live together? Students took a long walk outdoors noticing plants, animals, rocks, playground equipment, seeds, holes and much, much more! We took lots of pictures  as we walked and used these photos to sort and classify the things we noticed. Students worked in partnerships, and in small groups to share ideas, give feedback and come to agreement on the groupings of their photos.