Acts of Kindness

In our continued effort to show acts of kindness, first graders set out into the community this week to deliver food to the food shelf, and sing songs to residents at Heaton Woods Nursing Home. Our first graders even brought kindness notes and shared with all.  I am so proud of these first graders for extending their heart to those in our community.  And thank you to all the parents for your support!

Yoga

We love starting our day with a little yoga!

Day in the Dark

 Day in the Dark    

On Wednesday, December 21st all first grade classes will be having a “Day in the Dark” to reinforce learning about day and night, including solstice the shortest day and longest night of the year!  If you have anything at home that would light up in the dark we would appreciate it if you could send it to school.  Here are some suggestions:

• Flashlights
• Headlamps
• Lite Brites
• Black Lights
• Glow in the dark markers/paint
• Lava Lamps
• Glow Sticks
• Glow in the dark stickers/beads
• Disco Balls

We will return your items that day. Please label all items sent to school. If you have any questions, just let us know.

Top Secret Message

Last week, the Super Secret Detective Agency left us a number of word solving clues that led us to a special surprise in the hallway. Read the clues with your child and have them help you solve (click on picture to zoom in).  The clues led us into the hallway where we found congratulatory bookmarks for all our hard work during this word detective unit. We have had a lot of fun playing around with words these last few weeks. One of our favorite games is "I SPY" with our snap words.  Example, "I Spy a word that sounds like day, but has 4 letters and begins with a consonant blend."  Have fun at home playing word games like I Spy with your child.  

IPads

IPADS are used every day in our classroom. For our quiet time, students have been enjoying listening to One More Story with their peers. During math, we continue to work with a program called Zearn. Children alternate between a game with partners and this program during our math block. 

Snap Words

Part of each day is focused on developing a sight word vocabulary. Kinesthetic learning is tied together in auditory and visual as students are introduced to new "snap words." We are working on both reading and WRITING these words - the latter a bigger challenge in first grade.  If you are looking for sight words to practice with your child at home, be sure to let me know and I can share our newest lists with you.  We have fun practicing these words daily. INQUIRE with your child how to play the game, "Sparkle."

Word Detectives

Word Detectives have been voraciously tackling new and challenging words in their just right books.  Students have learned a variety of strategies, from looking at beginning and endings to learning about vowel teams in words. As they add new strategies to their toolbox, students are able to tackle more challenging text and make improvements in their accuracy and fluency.  I am so proud of our first graders and the progress they are making.  Thank you so much for continuing to support your child at home.  Take a closer look at these strategies your child has used (click on pictures) and watch them use them as they read to you at home. Hope you are having as much fun as I am watching them progress into readers! 

Biggest Best Snowman

Check out this perspective of the biggest, best snowman.  INQUIRE with your child about what happened in this story, "The Biggest, Best, Snowman." Which characters showed kindness, and how?

Kindness Elves

Here are just a few of our kindness elves who have been visiting our classroom each day.  As the kids enter each morning, they look for the Kindness Elves, who mysteriously move hiding spots each day.  They leave a message with a special task for all first graders to do for the day.  Examples include: help a friend get ready for recess, share a smile, make a gift, walk with quiet bodies in the hall, etc.  We have been fun earning a letter, which seems to be giving us a secret message about kindness. Students have also been exhibiting and helping all friends learn how to show acts of kindness throughout their day. Stay tuned....

Fire safety at harrison

Before the snow fell, students enjoyed learning about tending a fire during our ECO outing with Mrs. Dostie's class.  It was a chilly day, and no better way to spend it then making hot tea. INQUIRE with your child what they learned about fire safety at Harrison.  We were bummed to miss ECO last week, as this was our all day celebration with all first grade classes. We hope to reschedule soon, for a warmer day (negative temps didn't seem like fun with 80 kids...).  

Brrrr....extra layers needed!

ECO is Tomorrow!

(AND IT WILL BE COOOOOLD!)

Please make sure that your child is prepared with:

-warm socks and snow boots

-layered clothing

-snowpants and jacket

-mittens or gloves

-hat

**EXTRA WATERPROOF GLOVES/MITTENS ARE ESSENTIAL!! Kids will go out for recess before ECO, so having a dry pair to start the afternoon adventure is important.**

We will set out for ECO at 12:45 and will return for dismissal.  If you can join us, let me know!

Rainbow Ice Sculptures

Rainbow Ice Sculptures

For the 2017 Lantern Parade at UES

Sunday, February 19th

We need the entire UES community to help create the building blocks, literally, for a day of colorful construction on Sunday, February 19. It’s easy! Please save your ½ gallon milk and juice cartons, rinse them out, fill with water to the top of the rectangle (not all the way if there is a plastic spout!) and a dash or two of food coloring, and leave outside to freeze. Save and freeze as many blocks as you can between now and February 19th. Ask your neighbors to help, get your grandmother to make colorful ice blocks too! On February 19th, we will be building colorful ice sculptures and functional outdoor furniture at Union Elementary School, where the parade and winter festival will culminate the following week. You will be able to drop your ice blocks off the day before and that morning, and we would love you to stay to help build if you can. Dan Clar and Seth Mitchell will be our construction and engineering leaders. Building will be an all day project so feel free to drop ice blocks and go, come back later if your Sunday schedule allows. The plan is to make tables and benches, to function at the celebration, and other fantastic colorful forms to celebrate UES. All community members are invited to participate. Our inspiration is the 2012 Edmonton Rainbow Igloo, and while we won’t be making covered structures that can be entered, we will be making hollow forms that we will light up from within! Our sculptures will glow colorfully as the lantern procession reaches the UES playground on February23rd. The sculptures will remain as long as nature allows.

In 2015 we did the same project and the results were magical. Many families helped with the construction and it made for wonderfully fast work that we all could share and take pride in. We will expand our sculptures this year if we can gather more blocks!

What you can do:

1.    Save and rinse as many ½ gallon milk and juice PAPER cartons as you can between now and Feb.19

2.    (plastic jugs are problematic, not square, etc. please avoid!)

3.    Open up tops, add water and some food coloring, place outside to freeze. Do not fill to the top if there is a plastic spout

4.    Bring UNWRAPPED/REMOVED frozen blocks to the UES playground starting Saturday February 18th through Sunday morning, February 19th(drop off location will be obvious)

5.    If you want to make colored ice spheres with balloons, any size will be welcome. Its easy, use the same method as above, but with a balloon instead of milk carton:-)

  

Please email with any questions and/or if you know you definitely want to help build: marni.leikin@gmail.com

Winter Information

COLD WEATHER PRACTICES/PROCEDURES It hasn't really happened yet, but the cold weather will get here eventually! The faculty and staff of UES strongly believe that our children need as much time as possible running and playing outside, even during the cold of our Vermont winters. For our students to enjoy this time on the playground, it's essential that they come to school with adequate snow gear to keep them warm and dry. There are certain mornings and days, however, where it really isn't safe to be outside no matter what they're wearing due to extreme conditions. The procedures we follow are straightforward and in general practice around the state: if the temperature (with wind chill) is at 0 degrees or above, we'll be going outside. On cold days, we monitor the local conditions very closely at this weather site:

Local AccuWeather Forecast

This is an excellent site, and it will take you directly to the conditions and forecast for Loomis St. here in Montpelier! You can't get much more local than that! Again, please make sure your child comes to school prepared for the conditions, and please let me know if you have any questions. If you need assistance getting appropriate gear for your child, let us know in the front office right away; we have quite a supply of gear on hand here at UES!

UES DELAYED OPENING PROCEDURES: Speaking of cold weather, winter will soon be in full gear, and with the unpredictable weather comes the possibility of cancellations or delayed openings for school. We certainly got our first look at the crazy Vermont weather on Tuesday!

Here is what you need to know in case Mother Nature throws a snow or iceball at us one of these mornings. You will receive a robocall from Dr. Ricca as soon as the decision is made to either delay or cancel school. For delays:

UES DELAYED OPENING PROCEDURES 

Buses will run exactly two hours later than normal.

9:30     Teachers arrive 

10:00   UES doors open; IAs arrive; buses begin to arrive; we're open for business!  Students should arrive no earlier than 10:00 to ensure we have enough supervision.

10:00-  Students will begin arriving to class; transition time; Morning Meeting.

10:25

10:25   UES schedule officially begins.  Students will proceed as normal where the schedule would be normally at 10:25.  Lunches will not be affected.  The Snack Program will not be running on delayed opening days.

Math Update for November

During number corner (calendar) time this past month, we learned about time and fractions.  Children are learning how to break something into parts - or a fraction of the whole.  They are identifying 1 whole, 1/2, and 1/4.  We are also learning about clocks- and how to tell time to the hour. We will move on to half hours later in the year. We are also trying to understand 24 hours a day, am/pm, and what time of day we do certain activities. This coming month (December) we we will be focusing on three dimensional shapes.  

We continue to count each day in school. We are so excited there are less than 50 days until day 100!  Today marked the 58th day.  Students are learning about groups of ten and ones in double digit numbers, and learning to add these together as we approach the 100th day!  INQUIRE with your child how they figure out how many days until the 100th day!

During our fluency activities each day, students have been practicing counting - forward and backward by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's.  

Seeing the relationship between addition and subtraction is an important and challenging concept for first graders.  As we continue to explore the idea of subtraction, students are working on finding a variety of ways to solve these complex problems.  Students are learning to count up on a number line to solve a subtraction problem, in addition to counting backwards.  They are encouraged to think about the way that makes the most sense.  Some of these problems are more complex - and don't necessary have students solve a quick 9-3 (had 9 of something, 3 were taken away).  An example of a problem from this week had kids thinking - should I add or subtract?  Understanding math story problems and solving them in a variety of ways can be challenging, and kids are working hard each day to understand them. (There were 9 laces and velcro sneakers. 3 of them were velcro. How many were laced? 9-3=6 or 3+_=9)  We will continue learning about the addition/subtraction relationship as the year progresses.  We continue to have time during our  math block for math games, that give kids more practice in the skill and help them to become more fluent with number sense and math facts.  

These next few weeks we will begin looking at finding more efficient ways to solve problems by looking for the friendly ten when adding more than 2 numbers, and also when adding on to 8 and 9.  

In addition to all these components of our math block, students were introduced to a new program on the ipads today, which we will explore further in the next few weeks.  Here is some information from "Zearn."

"Zearn is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help every child learn and love math. In our classroom, Zearn helps personalize learning for every student. It does this in a couple ways. Your child will learn and practice math with engaging digital lessons that challenge and support them precisely when they need it. Zearn Math also helps me spend more time teaching in small groups, focusing on exact areas your child needs support. If you would like to learn more about Zearn, visit their website at www.zearn.org, scroll down and view their orientation video."  

Visitors

There are some families who were interested in coming into the classroom to be guest reader.  Many parents/grandparents have enjoyed sharing their love of reading with their child's class in years past and I'd love for you to come visit too, if you'd like.  Mornings would be best, directly after morning meeting, but we'd also have you join us for morning meeting/arrival with your child at 8:15.  We would go no later than 9:00. Is there a day that works best for you? Maybe a different time works better for your schedule?? Just let me know, and we can accommodate your schedule to get you into our classroom for guest reader.

Do you have another interest/talent/special project you'd like to integrate into our day? I'd love to have you join us to share.  Let me know what works best in your schedule!

Story of the Pilgrims

Last week, we learned about the story of the first thanksgiving with the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. We have looked closely at the life of the Pilgrims and the hardships they faced and made connections to our community unit. Students noticed that the Native Americans showed empathy toward the Pilgrims when life was not going well for them and together they created a community that lived, worked, played, and celebrated life together.  As first graders completed a response to the text, they increased their knowledge of complete sentences, and proper punctuation while thinking deeply about the events of the past and how they relate to today. INQUIRE with your child about the book, "The Story of the Pilgrims."

How-To

We have been immersed in reading and writing procedural (often called how-to) pieces of writing over the last few weeks. This unit of study introduces students to informational text writing and is preparing them for a unit on writing nonfiction all about texts. We have been reading a variety of informational texts on how to complete a certain task. Last week, we completed a shared writing as a class on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We've read about how to feed fish, how to brush our teeth, how to get ready for the day, how to ride a bike, etc. We've explored a variety of topics that would be good to write about - those that we know a lot about and can actually teach a friend to do by reading them specific instructions. Through this writing, students are learning how to use transition words (First, Second, Next, After, Finally, etc) to help make our writing more smooth, how to elaborate using visualization, how to make comparisons, and how to include labels and captions in our drawings.  INQUIRE with your child what some of their how-to books have been about.

In connection with our learning about how to write how-to books, students created imaginary turkeys before thanksgiving, then as a class worked together to write out the steps in the process.  

Turkey Boogie

We are forever grateful to have such a great community of first grade learners.  We love getting together to share our friendship with other classes.  Last week, Mrs. Wrigley's class taught us how to do the turkey boogie!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Earlier this week we had an impromptu lesson on responsibility.  While walking into the school, we spent a little time learning from Mrs. Pierce's fourth grade class about how well (or not?) our school community is doing showing responsibility to recycle and reuse and compost. The 4th graders are conducting a waste stream audit, and will share the data with us soon.  Thanks to our buddy class for always reminding us of how important it is to take care of our earth!

QR codes..

Keeping up with the newest technology....

In order to log onto SeeSaw, children need to scan a special QR code that will put them right into our class account.  As the children learn, so do I!  As these IPADS are new to the kids, they are also new to me so thanks for bearing with me as I learn new and innovative ways to share our learning with you.  Have you checked out your child's account? Take a look if you haven't (I know there's not yet a lot on there) -it is an exciting new opportunity that we can't wait to learn more about.  

Community Visit

Corporal Kniseley toured us around the Montpelier Police Station this afternoon (with the help of a few other city officers). Students learned about the holding cells, fingerprinting, locked entries, dispatch, the cruisers and so much more! We learned all about how police officers help our community and keep us safe. Police officers ensure that all people follow rules and help community members that have a hard time doing so. One police officer we visited with shared how he had just got back from a traffic accident and how sometimes they help with the traffic - especially in Montpelier these days! Students loved hearing and meeting Jake, a police dog who helps them locate people.  For some, this was surprising - that dogs can be more like people and be so helpful.  Students even met the dispatchers who would answer their call if they needed to call 911!  INQUIRE with your child what they enjoyed at the police station.

Seesaw

Our class just received 8 IPADS for classroom use that will be stored in our classroom.  We learned how to use a program called seesaw this afternoon. Each child has their own account where you can view material that has been created by them.  In the beginning children will be learning the basics of how to handle the ipads, work with various programs, so the work will be simplified (for example today's work of writing our name).  Enjoy connecting your child's learning in conversations together at home.  Here is some info to help you get started viewing their "account."

This year we're going to use a new tool to share what we're learning in class called Seesaw. Your child will have his or her own learning journal, and you can get notified when your child adds new items. It's completely private -- only you can see your child's journal outside of class.

Click on https://app.seesaw.me/s/292-770-577 to sign up -- it takes just 30 seconds.

Once you sign up, you can download the Seesaw Parent app for iPhone or Android, or access your child's journal on the web.

Thanks!

P.S. If you have more than one child using Seesaw, or want to add a new class/school year for your child, follow the link in this email, then click 'Sign in' tab at the top. You do not need to create a new account.

Optional Independent Project

Thank you for supporting your first grader’s interest learning through independent projects this school year. We will continue to explore the concept of place through our social studies unit about community. We have been to walking to different places in our community and students are making connections and learning about point of view. We are beginning to identify important landmarks, and key features of our school community and our downtown community. Students are mapping their local world!

Our new independent project will give your child an opportunity to think about maps, and the places they’ve visited, or wish to visit someday. This project is also optional and can be done as a family or individual.

Here’s what we would like to have included in the final project. Your child can present it any way they choose. We would like to see students demonstrate the following components:

1. Choose any place you have been, or wish to visit, that can be found on a map (Montpelier, Hubbard Park, Montreal, your house/backyard, office building or structure, waterway, vacation destination, etc.)

2. Get a map of the location or make a map of the location  (print from the internet, Chamber of Commerce, photos, etc.)

3. Label the place or places on the map, include landmarks.

4. Include why you visited, who you saw or what you did, and some interesting facts about the place (photos, drawings, labels, fact bullets or charts)

5. Recall, then retell the visit with your family so you can share your story with the classmates

6. Have fun!

If you have any questions about this project, please send us an e-mail! Enjoy learning with your child.

The First Grade Team

*Projects are due by Monday, November 21st , but if finished sooner, please send it in.

Mapping

On Thursday, students continued their learning about community. This week's focus was on mapping and learning how to navigate around town.  Students looked carefully at google maps to plan an alternate route to Harrison Field.  Before embarking on this adventure, first graders walked up to VEDA to get a birds eye view of our school from above.  INQUIRE with your child how we navigated our way to Harrison Forest. Once we arrived on the ridge line of the forest, we learned about erosion and the importance of descending the hillside in a zigzag fashion, as to not make the erosion worse.  We ended our afternoon with two stories told by Ken about a beaver, bear, and raccoon!

Veterans Day

On Friday, first graders set out to thank veterans.   That morning, we learned about how the day is observed to thank those who have served our country in the armed forces. Students held their flags with pride, wearing american flag headbands as they marched down main street.