The Week of May 20

Upcoming Events

FRIDAY, MAY 31   

TRI-M MUSIC HONOR SOCIETY PERFORMANCE 12:00

Summer Reading Book Fair

June 14, 2019

This year, we will be putting on a small summer reading book fair in our gym for students! We are hoping to send each child home with at least 6 books they are excited about reading. We need your help!

We will be taking book donations beginning June 3rd.

We will take any books in good condition! Please place books in the bins in the front lobby. Thank you all for your help! Also, please check out this article link below, it has some great suggestions.

Ways to Prevent Summer Slide 

Summer Reading Challenge

I will continue with my summer reading challenge and pen-pal writing. Please let me know if your child would be interested in writing back and forth with me this summer!

Hazen's Notch Field Trip

We had a great time visiting Hazen's Notch on Thursday! We enjoyed hiking on the trails, observing the beaver lodge and the various dams on the property! Students also enjoyed finding salamanders, and native plants such as trillium and wild onions!

Readers' Workshop

In reading, we have spent time reviewing routines and habits. We continue to read books in a series and meet in our book clubs. Students are becoming much more familiar and comfortable meeting with their clubs. Next week, we will work on a final project on our favorite characters! 

Writers' Workshop 

Students are finishing up their letters! We worked on writing conclusions and restating our opinions. Next week we will begin to revise and edit our favorite letters! 

Happy Forest Celebration

The first and second graders have been working to follow our classroom routines and helpful habits. On Thursday we celebrated achieving our goals and making it back to the Happy Forest with Wise Bear! Students voted to have free choice technology time in the afternoon.

Math 

The first graders have worked hard on solving number stories with addition and subtraction. We learned to notice and wonder, brainstorm questions, and information needed to solve some tricky number stories.  We will begin Unit 7 which will take us to the end of the year. We will also begin our end of year assessments in the coming weeks. 

The Week of May 13

Upcoming Events


Here is a Trillium we found on our walk on Friday! A sure sign of spring!

Field Trip to Hazen's Notch 

May 23, 2019

On Thursday, we will meet up with our pen-pals from Eden Central School and visit Hazen's Notch. We will hike, visit the beaver pond and have lunch together.  We will be spending most of the day outdoors so please dress your child accordingly! Students will also need  a snack and cold lunch. 

Memorial Day/No School

May 27, 2019 

Readers' Workshop

In reading we are continuing our work with book clubs and character study! Students are  becoming experts on giving summaries, noticing commonalities between books in a series, and asking questions when they don't understand. In the coming weeks I will begin my spring reading assessments. I am so proud of all the growth these students have made!

Writers' Workshop

In writing we have continued our work with opinion writing. Students have written many letters to express their opinions! This week we worked on adding more details to our reasons and using appropriate transition words. 

Science 

This week we continued our inquiry into how wind and water can change our earth. Students modeled how sand is created. On Friday, we spent the afternoon outdoors looking for examples of how water had changed the earth around us. We found trees down in the river, sand, river rocks and examples of soil erosion on the river banks. 

Big Buddies

On Thursday we spent time with our Big Buddies from Ms. Vargo's 4-5 classroom! We all enjoyed a spring time art project! We drew and painted a rainy spring day together! Be sure to check them out!

Math 

The first graders are really becoming experts on solving tricky math word problems. This week we worked on reading, and solving number stories. Students worked to show their thinking with numbers words and equations. We added lots of details to make sure others could understand our thinking and how we solved the problem.

The week of April 29

Upcoming Events

W.E.S.  Green Up Day 

May 10 , 2019 from 11:00-11:30

Fine Print Writing Celebration

 May 9th @ 6 pm at GMTCC

P.A.W.S. Celebration!
On Wednesday we filled our PAWS jar! We celebrated by spending time outdoors and playing our favorite tag games! 

Readers' Workshop

This week the first and second graders revisited the habits of a good reader! We reviewed our workshop rules and expectations as well as strategies and skills students use when reading. We all book shopped and made some great choices! I was so EXCITED to see  students gathering together to check out our chapter books and books in a series...and forming their own new book clubs!! We continue to learn about how our book clubs should look and sound and how to come prepared to talk about our books! I was busy conferring with students about their new book choices and gathering information about students' strengths and needs. 

Writers' Workshop

 Students are writing letters to share their strong feelings. This week, we worked on brainstorming reasons to support our opinion, but also elaborating on those reasons. We continued our work on parts of speech. This week we worked on describing words. Together we read If You Were An Adjective on the Smart-board and practiced describing different interesting items! Then students were given a mystery bag and worked with a partner to come up with describing words to tell about their item. Together as a class we used the describing words to guess the items hiding in the bags!

Science

In science, we continue to explore how wind and water can change the earth. This week we focused on sand and its properties. Students looked at sand up close and tried to figure out how different colored sand is created! 

Purple sand on Pfieffer Beach! How did this happen? We researched how sand was made, and figured out that near by this beach there are purple rocks. When rocks fall and crash they are broken into smaller parts... making sand. Water carries the sand to the beach!!