Monday News for Oct. 26th

It was great having an opportunity to sit down and share your child's progress with you.  Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to do so.  We consider you to be an important partner in your child's education!  If you feel a need to meet again, please feel free to contact us at any point throughout the school year.

Our field trip to Shelburne Museum on Tuesday will mark the beginning of a unit on "Life Long Ago".  The children will compare and contrast how life is lived today with life in the past.  Part of this unit will also include learning about Hinesburg long ago.  If you know of any elders who grew up in Hinesburg and would like to share their stories with our class, we would love to have them visit.  Please let us know and we will be happy to work around their schedules.  Please make sure your child has warm clothes for the field trip.  The buildings at Shelburne Museum are not heated and we will be spending the entire day in unheated buildings that often feel colder than outdoors!

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

We are participating in the Journey North Tulip Project .  Feel free to click on the link and read more about it.  This is another citizen science project that monitors the arrival of spring throughout the northern hemisphere.  The children will be planting their Journey North garden on Monday.  In addition the children have planted an experimental garden to see whether or not bulbs will grow if planted in unusual ways.  Some of their experiments include planting a tulip upside down, wrapping a tulip in paper to see if it will grow, planting the tulip 18" deep instead of  the recommended 6", and placing the tulip in paint to see if it will change the color of the flower!  Springtime will be exciting this year!  We can't wait to see what happens!  

In literacy, the children have just about completed their non-fiction text feature books.  Next steps will be to use these features to write their own non-fiction books on research they have just about completed on either insects, spiders, owls or bats.  It has been exciting to see the enthusiasm of all the children towards their different topics.  In this unit,  the children have learned how to take notes on the most important information and have used a variety of sources to collect their note facts.  Organization of note facts will then help the children to begin writing their books.  These books will eventually be sent home for you to enjoy!  

On Friday the children will participate in Fun-O-Ween which has been a tradition in the primary wing for many years.  Your child is welcome to bring a costume to school in a bag to change into for the afternoon.  Please do not send any accessories as your child will need their hands free to participate in the activities.  Also please no masks or face paint, just costumes only.  We thank you for your cooperation!  

Have a great week ahead!

Monday News for Oct. 19th

After the taste of cold weather this past weekend, it seems like a good time for a reminder to send your child with clothing appropriate for the weather (hats, mittens, jackets). We go outside almost every day, and it can still be pretty chilly at recess time at 11:20, even when it is warming up in the afternoon.

Today, word study homework will be coming home for the first time. Your child has a weekly word sort and list of common "trick" words to do three activities with during the week. Our first word study assessment will be on Friday. Please let us know if you have any questions about the homework or word study program.

In reading and writing, we are beginning a non-fiction unit. Your child is learning about features of a non-fiction text (headings, photos/captions, table of contents, glossary, maps, and more) and how they help us read a non-fiction text with purpose. Eventually, we will each become experts on a topic and write a research report using the non-fiction features we are learning about.

This week, we will also be planting tulips as part of the Journey North Tulip Project. We need to get the bulbs in the ground before it freezes! From the Journey North Website: "In this international science experiment, students in schoolyards across the northern hemisphere plant tulip bulbs in their Journey North Test Gardens each fall. When the plants emerge and bloom, children announce springtime in their part of the world." To learn more, you can visit:  http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tulip/index.html

Next Tuesday, we have our field trip to Shelburne Museum. If you haven't done so already, please make sure you send the permission slip back this week. We also could use some additional parent chaperons if you are able!

And congratulations to Amelia and family! They were the winners of the Open House Pumpkin.

  

Weekly News for Oct. 13th

We will begin holding Parent-Teacher Conferences this week.  Please feel free to check-in with us if you do not remember your conference time.  We look forward to sharing your child's progress with you!  It was great seeing many of you at Open House!  Also thank you to all of you who participated in the school wide fund raising effort!  The money raised will help to offset the cost of several field trips we will be taking this year.

Speaking of field trips, we will be taking the class to Shelburne Museum on Oct. 27th.  This field trip will be an introduction to our upcoming unit on Life Long Ago.  The children will be comparing their lives to the life children lived long ago.  This will be an opportunity for your children to visit the one room school house and experience school back in time.  The children will have opportunities to play with toys from this time period as well as make candles and ice cream.  We will have lunch at the museum and then be free to tour the old general store and some of the houses and maybe have time for the Ticonderoga!  We are need of chaperons for this field trip.  If you are interested, please indicate on the permission slip that will be sent home later in the week.  We look forward to this wonderful opportunity!

We are also looking for volunteers who can volunteer some time to dig up a garden bed next to the tool shed in the garden.  We are participating in the Journey North Tulip Project and need to plant tulips.  We would greatly appreciate your help! Please contact us if you could help us out!  We can provide shovels if needed!  This project is collective effort to mark the arrival of spring across the world.  You can read more about this wonderful project by clicking on the Journey North link.

Reminders:  Please remember to send your child with sneakers on PE days!

Also now that cold weather will soon be arriving, please make sure your child's name is on all their winter clothing.  This helps a great deal when items turn up missing.

As always, please feel free to call or e-mail us with any questions you might have.  Have a great week ahead!

Mondays News for October 5th

On Friday, we had so much fun collecting school yard rocks as part of our science unit. We had already explored properties of volcanic and river rocks. Now, we get to explore the properties of rocks we have found right outside our classroom window. There are some really cool ones!

This week, we will be starting a more formal version of word study. To best meet each student where they are in their development of spelling, vocabulary and word recognition, we will be using a program called "Words Their Way" as the basis for our word study program. Each week, your child will be studying words that follow a certain spelling pattern, as well as some common words students need to know that do not follow regular spelling patterns. A homework menu will be coming home next week that will give your child a variety of choices of how to study (and we hope have fun) with their words each week.

A reminder that the K-2 Open House is this Thursday, October 8 from 5-6. The Spaghetti Dinner sponsored by P.I.E. will follow (from 5:45-7). We hope to see you all there! Enjoy this picture of our classroom quilt that will be hanging at the Open House along with lots of other wonderful student work.

Monday News for Sept. 28th

We are about to finish our first month of school!  Routines have been established at this point but do require frequent reminders.  The children are working very hard each day at school so plenty of rest will help your child immensely!  If you are interested in volunteering in our classroom, we would love to have you!  Please e-mail us with dates and times that work for you.  We would love to have your help!

Parent-Teacher Conferences are coming up quickly.  We have created a sign-up genius where you can look over dates and times and hopefully find a time that can work for you.  If none of the dates and times work for you, please contact us and we will find another time that will work.  

We are continuing with our unit on Pebbles, Sand and Soil.  The children are enjoying their work as scientists.  Don't be surprised to see your children looking more closely at rocks to see if they can find some evidence for questions they are trying to answer in class.  One on-going science theme is our garden.  On Friday, the children explored parts of plants that are edible (roots, stems, leaves, fruit).  They also had an opportunity to do some sampling.  We will be planting tulips in our garden as part of a Journey North project coming up soon.  

Enjoy the photos!  If you have any questions, please give us a call or send us an e-mail with your concerns.  Have a great week!

Monday News for September 21st

Last Friday, we had an assembly where we learned about fire safety and got to explore a fire engine and ambulance. We also completed our individual butterflies for the Journey North Symbolic Migration Project. Please enjoy the pictures below!

In other news, we will be beginning a science unit on Monday called Pebbles, Sand and Silt. This is a unit that is in line with the newly adopted Next Generation Science Standards. Our district science coordinator, Stephanie Konowitz, will be joining us for some of the lessons. We are very excited about this hands on unit. Here is some more information about it:

“The Pebbles, Sand, and Silt Module provides experiences that heighten primary students’ awareness, curiosity, and understanding of Earth’s natural resources—rocks, soil, and water—and provides opportunities for students to engage in scientific and engineering practices. Students explore the natural world by using simple tools to observe and describe properties of earth materials. In this module, students will • Observe and compare physical properties of rocks and soils, using various tools. • Rub rocks together and observe that they break into smaller pieces. • Use screens to separate and group river rocks by particle size, and investigate properties of pebbles, gravel, sand, silt, and clay particles. • Explore places where earth materials are naturally found and ways that earth materials are used. • Use sand to make sculptures and clay to make beads, jewelry, and bricks. • Find, collect, record, and compare samples of soil outside the classroom.” (from www.fossweb.com)

As part of our balanced literacy program, last week, we began meeting with guided reading groups. Groups are reading books at their instructional levels, as well as working on reading strategies to promote greater understanding as readers.  In writer’s workshop, students are beginning to write about “small moments” from their lives--single events that are important to them. We have been talking about the many different tools a writer can use to help them (i.e. pencil, paper, partner, word wall and other charts).

A reminder that there is no school this Wednesday, September 23. Also, be on the lookout for a SignUpGenius email from us for fall conferences, which will be happening in mid-October. As always, if you have any questions or concerns before then (or after then), never hesitate to contact us.

Monday News for Sept. 14th

Your child has been assigned a reading partner and math partner.  These partnerships will change from time to time based on specific learning goals at the time.  Please enjoy the photos!

We are taking part in the Journey North Symbolic Migration project.  Your children will be acting as ambassadors by participating in this project.  We have worked to protect the Monarch Butterfly by raising several butterflies and then releasing them. The children are decorating paper butterflies during this time  that will be sent through the Journey North program to Mexico where they will be received by Mexican children living near the Monarch sanctuary.  The children in Mexico who live near the sanctuaries will keep the butterflies and will then send them north when the real Monarchs leave their wintering grounds for the north.  It is always exciting when our packet arrives in the springtime with butterflies from all over the US and Canada.  Please check out the link to Journey North and the Symbolic Migration website for further information and some fun kid activities!  Once we send our packet out we will be posting to the map.  We'll let you know when we post!

This week we are beginning Writers Workshop.  The children were asked to write about something important to them.  We used this as a baseline to see where individual students are as developing writers.  This gives us an idea of what we need to address in writing with each child.  Each student will keep this piece of writing and will be able to measure their own progress as writers as the year moves forward.  

Reminders:
Please remember to send your child with sneakers on Tuesdays and Thursdays for PE!

Library Day - Please make sure your child has their library books on Wednesdays so they can take out new books.

Homework Folders- Please remember to send the Homework Folder to school each day.  Besides using these for homework we also use these folders to send home any parent information we receive from the office.

Have a wonderful week ahead and feel free to contact us with any of your questions.