Walk to School Wednesday

Every day, kids are encouraged to walk to school if the opportunity is there. Each Wednesday, you can help your child walk to school with peers and teachers.  There is a walking school bus that meets at many locations around town - Shaws, The State House, and the college.  Let me know if you have any questions! 

Our First Guest Reader

Kudos to our first guest reader of the year! Thanks Christine for sharing us one of your favorite stories.   Students were engaged while listening to "One Monster After Another" Students love having their families in and we love seeing the enjoyment that others have for the love of reading! As students are working on their own strategies for decoding, building stamina, and learning about various features of fiction and nonfiction, this opportunity for others to share their stories through books is wonderful. 

If you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend, coworker, administrator, or school volunteer, we'd love to have you come share your love of reading in our classroom as well. Please let me know what date works best for your schedule. Thanks!

Fall Student-Led Conferences

I would like to schedule a time to meet with you and your child to discuss social and academic progress in First Grade. These conferences will follow the UES model of student-led. For this first conference that will be led by your child, we will provide a lot of support. Your child will prepare for the conference in several ways during the next two weeks. At school, we will be reflecting together about individual strengths and weaknesses. The conference will be a time to celebrate successes, and make collaborative plans for self-improvement. 

You can schedule your conference online for either the afternoon of November 2nd or 3rd or during the day on November 4th. I've sent each of you an email with a link to the sign-up form.  I am doing these conferences on google spreadsheets, and therefore can't give you direct assess via the blog.  If you did not receive this link via your email, please let me know immediately, and I'll be sure to get you access to the sign-up. If you cannot access the spreadsheet, let me know and I can find a time that works best for you.

I will send you a confirmation, and a “Hints for Parents to Use at Student-Led Conferences” article. At this time, we will not be scheduling separate teacher-parent conferences. If you’d like specific information that is not answered at the student-led conferences, please call me after this conference and we can discuss your areas of concern over the phone. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!  

ECO - Tomorrow!

We will have ECO on Thursday, October 6th. 

Please make sure that your child is prepared with:

       -walking/hiking shoes or boots
       -sweatshirt or fleece layer
       -coat or hooded jacket (if needed, weather dependent)
       -water bottle (if your child doesn’t have one at school)

       -back pack

       -raincoat & rainpants ( the forest is very damp- even in afternoons)
       -hat/sunglasses (personal preference)
       -extra socks

Please check the weather and use your discretion on what best to outfit your child with! 

If you plan to join us for this ECO day, please email me at your earliest convenience!

Volunteer Opportunities

If you missed the optional volunteer options at open house, please feel free to get in touch with me.
We'd love to have you join us to be a guest reader, join us for birthday breakfast, 4 Winds, and or join us on an ECO outing.  If you have another skill you would like to incorporate into our classroom, please let me know.

Click Beetles

In response to Eric Carle's book, The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, we made our own click beetles last Friday. I hope you had fun learning about this interesting insect - can your child tell you about the "fake eye" they drew on their beetle. Is it real? What does the beetle use this mysterious marking for?

Throughout the week, we also learned about the dung beetle.  INQUIRE with your child about this interesting insect!
 

Habits...good or bad?

Dropping bad reading habits ("the freeze", "the tell me", "the mumble", and "the blooper") and picking up good habits has been the focus of our reading lessons this week. Students developed both a variety of good and bad habits while reading in Kindergarten, and it takes hard work to start solving hard words in a variety of ways. We are practicing these skills with a variety of texts, at a variety of levels. INQUIRE with your child what bad habits they are working to drop!

Class Rules

After reading our hopes and dreams to one another, we talked about what it will need to look, sound, and feel like in our classroom if we want to do all the things we dream of doing in first grade. As a class, we brainstormed a GIGANTIC list of rules we thought we needed. As a class, however, the students agreed that this list was TOO BIG and realized that most of the rules can fall under bigger categories - see picture on the right.  I hope your child was able to share and talk about these rules on open house night.  

Our class then reviewed what it looks like if we choose not to follow these rules. Many of us have practiced what it looks like to take a break to regain self control and be ready to learn. Today, we also reviewed what happens when students are unable to regain self-control in the break chair and are continuing to be disrespectful and not follow directions. Responsive Classroom refers to this procedure as "buddy teacher." In our classroom, if a student is not able to re-gain self control while taking a break within the classroom, the child will go with our "buddy teacher" (who comes to get the student) and take a break in their classroom. 

Let me know if you have any specific questions regarding our school procedures.  

Open House

It was so great to see so many of you and your families at the open house.  Next month, we'll have conferences where you'll get to learn more about your child's days at school. Be on the lookout for an online conference sign-up coming soon. 

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Birthday Breakfast

We will be hosting our first birthday breakfast, tomorrow, (Friday) September 30th. We will be celebrating students who had a birthday in September. We will meet for morning meeting, sing happy birthday, and enjoy a light birthday snack. It will all happen before 9:00 so we can continue on with our learning plans for the day. Arrival will be at the same time your child comes to the classroom. Please email me if you plan to attend - all immediate family members are invited - whether you have a birthday child or not! You are welcome to bring younger siblings to these monthly birthday breakfasts (during other parts of our day, we ask that you leave younger siblings at home). If you've signed up for September to help with food donations, I've sent you an email - please respond with what you plan to bring. Drop me an email if you think that you'll make it for all or part of the breakfast/morning meeting! Each month we will have one, so don't feel obligated to attend all - do what works for your family. These breakfasts/morning meeting are informal and a chance to stop by!

4 winds

Each month a parent/grandparent volunteers will be coming into our classroom to lead an interactive science lesson. 4 Winds is a state wide hands on nature program. This year's theme is Cycles:Changes Through the Seasons.   Last week, we had Grandma Jan and Aaron join us to help stregthen our understanding of the life cycle of insects. We enjoyed an informative puppet show about a butterfly and grasshopper and then explored insects close up.  Students also learned new vocabulary words, which they were encouraged to use in their writing about what they learned.  

Our volunteers are looking for help throughout the year.  The months in bold are dates where it will be only Grandma Jan, who is interested in working with YOU! If you'd like to join her, or see a topic that interests you specifically and have a plethora of knowledge about it, please let me know and I will put you in contact with her.  Thanks for considering joining this hands on interactive lesson taught by parents and family!

Oct 18:       Traveling Seeds

Nov 15:      Bird on the Wing

Jan 24:       Winter Ways

Feb 21:       Trees in Winter

March 28:   Galls Galore

April 25:     Songbird Songs

May 16:      Flowers to Fruit

Home Connection

Buggy About Insects

Optional Independent Project

In science, we are studying insects. Our learning focus on how the structure and function of insects help it to survive, i.e. the beetle’s “hard shell” is actually a set of wings called elytra that protect its soft flying wings hidden underneath.  Students are so excited about this topic and are enjoying studying different insects each week at school.  Now is their opportunity to explore an insect that interests them the most.  

This project is optional and can be done as a family or individual at home and brought into school to share.  

Here is what we would like to have included in the final project.  Your child can present it any way they would like, but we would like to see students demonstrate these components:

1.) Choose an insect.

2.) Make a model of the insect (clay, playdough, legos, construction paper, etc.).

3.) Label the model (bug name and body parts).

4.) Have at least one real photograph of the insect (magazine, internet, own photograph).

5.) Where does it live?

6.) What does it eat?

7.) How does it protect itself from predators?

8.) Include some interesting facts about your insect.  

9.) Use your imagination and have fun!

If you have any questions about this project, please send us an email!  

Have Fun!

The First Grade Team

**Please note that projects are due by October 11th, but if they finish it sooner, please send it in.

Open House - THIS WEDNESDAY

Please join us on Wednesday at 6:00 to visit your child's classroom.

Fall ECO Schedule

Our outdoor learning dates are listed below. We will be joining other classes along with a naturalist from the North Branch Nature Center on the AFTERNOONS listed below.  Please let me know if you can attend any of the dates.  The last date listed is an ALL classes day, where all first graders will be out together as a group. For this fall, first graders will travel to Harrison Field.

Thursday, October 6th
Thursday, October 27th
Thursday, November 10th
Thursday, December 1st
Thursday, December 15th

Sing-a-long

Each month, students from all first grade classrooms join together for a sing-a-long. In each of the five classrooms, children study and learn similar content and are exposed to shared songs, poems, and chants. This past week, friends got together to share their learning of insects thus far while singing "Big Bugs, Small Bugs," "Head, Thorax, Abdomen." "Flea Fly," and a favorite of all our teachers, "The More We Get Together." INQUIRE with your child about any one of these songs.  Each day, children READ and sing these titles as a class and independently from their poem folders stored in their book boxes.  

Friendships

New and old friends continue to join together at our end of the day choice time.  The positive energy, warm smiles, and thoughtful encounters I witness each day make me certain that our class will continue to learn and grow from one another throughout the school year.  

Building "Habits" in Reading Workshop

First graders have dived into reading workshop already this year. Readers start the year by building "habits" and practicing them each day. We stress the importance of building independence and learning some tricks to help with management of this time. Confidence, attitude, and a love of reading is highlighted during these first few weeks. Already, readers are using a variety of tools to build stamina, manage their independent reading time, and increase motivation. As students build management habits (getting started right away, not wasting time, keeping track of reading, making a plan for their reading, using quiet voices, staying in their spots) they are also beginning to learn a variety of strategies that will eventually become habits as well. Using new book boxes and exploring new titles, first grade readers have been practicing taking a "sneak peak" of new titles, "checking their sneak peak" and always doing something at the end of reading ( retell, find favorite part, think across pages, or reread.) All these beginning of the year strategies your child is working on will help them have a successful year as a first grade reader!

Handwriting

In addition to learning how to hold a pencil and practice handwriting on paper, children have opportunities for more kinesthetic way. Students will be working on proper letter formation through sky writing, floor writing, white boards, and gel boards. Most students have developed a habit of starting their letters from the bottom. During our handwriting time, we are trying to break this habit and learn the proper way of writing each letter - top to bottom. This fluid motion helps children in 2nd and 3rd grade to develop writing fluency. We spent some time working on our handwriting using the sky, plane, grass, and worm lines as guides to letter placement on the lines.

If you'd like materials on how to form each letter and to help your child at home, please inquire with me and I can send these home.

Movement

We love to get up and moving! Between learning times in our classroom, students move, sing, and dance to a variety of beats.  INQUIRE with your child what their favorite movement break has been!

Blanchard Park

This past Thursday, our class went on our first outdoor excursion.  While some of these adventures will be focused on learning at Harrison Field, there will be some days we venture out for a short outing. This past week, our class joined Mrs. Koch's first graders to explore Blanchard Park.  INQUIRE with your child what they discovered at this space.