Learning Our Sign Names

This week Diane came into our classroom to give everyone a sign name so we can all communicate better with our friend Zoe.  Some friends, who were in Zoe's class last year, already had a sign name and were able to remember it from last year.  Diane, who is deaf herself, also talked to us about what it is like to be hearing impaired and how deaf people communicate in both the deaf world and the hearing world. This was a great learning experience for all of us.

This week we have been spending a lot of time making quilts in math.  We have been talking about different things we have noticed about our quilts and I have been amazed by the observations everyone has made.  We have found all kinds of patterns-including growing patterns and have been using our understanding of growing patterns to figure out how many squares and triangles we need to complete each quilt square.  Our latest quilt will be hanging in the hallway outside our Adventurers space.  Please stop by and see it the next time you are in school.

We have continued readers and writers workshop this week in literacy.  In readers workshop we have continued to talk about ideas for partner reading and have been meeting in our guided reading groups. We also talked about recommending books to others and had an opportunity to recommend a book to another friend in our class.  In writers workshop we have continued to learn different strategies for planning our stories before we write them down.  We are looking forward to choosing our best piece to begin publishing next week.

I have been so impressed with the homework that has been coming in every week.  It's great to see so many friends choosing to do the desserts on the menu even though they are optional.  I'm seeing so much creativity and it is giving me an opportunity to get to know each one of my students better.  I look forward to this every week.  Thanks so much for being so supportive of my somewhat  "non-traditional" approach to homework!

 Don't forget this Thursday is Math Night for Adventurers families.  Math night will take place in the Adventurers space from 5:30-7 PM.  Many thanks to all those parents who have been working so hard to put this together for us. 

A quick reminder that Parent Conferences are coming up in November.  Please scroll down to the bottom of the blog to see your scheduled time.  Please contact me if that time won't work for you and we will set up another time that does.

Happy Halloween!

A Short Week

This week we talked about sketching our pictures for writers workshop and learned different ways to partner read in readers workshop.  We also met for guided reading groups to talk about different reading strategies and began reading new books.  Today we worked in partners during social studies to compare Native Vermonters from long ago with Native Vermonters of today.  We compared houses, clothing and food.  We created crabs to make a chart that will help us practice counting by 2s, 5s and 10s in math.  All of our Unit 2  Math work stations are up and running and my friends are working hard at all of these stations.
 Have a terrific long weekend!  We'll see everyone on Monday!

"Trader Dan" and Fried Green Tomatoes

This photo album personalized with Smilebox

This morning we enjoyed a delicious healthy snack that Gracie and her family provided.  We had grapes, melon, popcorn and pomegranate.  Many of us had never had pomegranate before and we discovered that we liked it a lot!  Many thanks to Gracie and her family for introducing many of us to a new food.

We also had a visit from one of the "Green Mountain Boys".  His name was "Trader Dan" and he shared a wealth of information with us about life in this area long ago.  We learned about the history of the area and lots of things about the Abenaki s.  He also shared Abenaki stories with us and taught us how to play some of their games.  He brought lots of items from that period of time for us to explore.  It was a great morning of learning for our team.  Be sure to ask your child about this experience.

This afternoon Mr. Molla came down to do some science with us.  He talked with us about many things which included measurement.  He taught us how to weigh things and helped us with our sunflower experiment.

Our team has been harvesting vegetables from the garden this week.  There were many green tomatoes left that didn't have time to ripen yet.  Mrs. KillKelley made one of her favorite treats, fried green tomatoes, and we all had an opportunity to try them. 

New Math Stations and a Visitor From the Past!

We have been learning about growing patterns in math this week.  Today we learned about several new workstations and had an opportunity to try them out.  These new workstations reinforce students' understanding of growing patterns and support their growth in finding different ways to make numbers.  It was great to see how excited and engaged everyone was working at these new stations.

Tomorrow we will have a special visitor from the past. Dan O'Neal will be visiting the Adventurers team in character as a trader from long ago.  This will be a wonderful opportunity for everyone to learn about life long ago and compare it to life today.  We look forward to this visit tomorrow morning.

This week's homework includes a contest from the Flynn Center as one of the desserts.  This is totally optional.  I have included the instructions for the contest and have also included the link to the Flynn website which has further information about this contest.  If your child decides he/she is interested in doing this activity, they do not need to return it by next week.  They can turn it in anytime between now and the due date for the contest.

Hands On Nature

We enjoyed an amazing lesson about erosion for Hands On Nature.  We watched a great puppet show, then split into two groups.  One group went outside and gathered items from outdoors to create an environment that would discourage erosion from taking place on their hill of dirt.  We imagined there was a house on the top of our mound of dirt and we were trying to protect it from being affected by erosion.  The other group participated in three different stations indoors.  Each station taught them more about erosion and different kinds of things that cause erosion on our earth.  When these groups were done we switched so everyone got a chance to do everything.  Unfortunately, I forgot my camera and did not get any pictures of this great morning!  Next time I will make sure to have it on hand.

Today was also Ian's birthday.  He and his mother shared about his birthday and brought in a special birthday snack for the entire team.  We enjoyed pretzels, popcorn, grapes and strawberries.  A big thank you to Ian and his family for sharing this healthy snack.  A big thank you to Jack and his family for sharing a healthy snack with the team last Friday too.  We enjoyed many different kinds of fruit along with pretzels and popcorn.

Today was our first day of reading groups.  Each group joined me at the rainbow table and got their first book to read during this time.  When we were finished learning about the book all of my friends reread the book with a partner from their group during quiet reading time.  Everyone did a terrific job during this first day of reading groups!

October Share!

Today we had a great start to our new week!  We shared about our weekends during Morning Meeting and discovered that the Geocache treasure on this week's homework is no longer where it is supposed to be found.  Benjamin and his family looked very hard for it this weekend, but it is just not there anymore.  This was quite a disappointment, but we will try this activity again sometime soon and hopefully we can find another treasure in the future.

We learned about odds and evens in Math today.  We learned that numbers need a "partner" to be even and we played a game of "guess my number".  I continue to be amazed by the thoughtful questions and ideas everyone is sharing during math time.

We also started Guided Reading Groups today.  Each group met with me today to choose names.  We had some fantastic, creative ideas for names.  The next time we meet we will get our first books for Guided Reading time.

We learned more about birds in science today.  Jordan brought a great book in that talked about "what makes a bird a bird".  We learned that feathers are what makes a bird a bird.  There are other animals that fly, sing, and build nests, but having feathers is the important thing that makes a bird a bird.  Thanks to Jordan and her family for sending in this book along with some others about Native Americans.

We have been enjoying learning about our friends and families during share time at Morning Meeting.  Each family has their own fun and interesting fall activities they love to do together.  The photographs, pictures and other objects that have been brought in have been very helpful.  We've heard about pumpkin painting, apple picking, playing in leaves, hiking and many other great activities.  Thank you for helping your child come to school prepared to share these wonderful activities with our class.

Finally, thank you to all those families who attended our potluck/parent group meeting on Thursday night.  We came up with some terrific ideas for the craft fair and formed a committee to work on this.  We also scheduled two math nights for the school year.  One will be in November and one will take place in May.  We have formed a committee to organize these nights too.  If you are interested in being a part of either of these committees, please contact me and I will give you contact information for these committees.

Native Americans and Birds

This week we kicked off our "Native Americans" and "Birds" units.  We have been reading about Native Americans, discussing what it was like to live long ago and comparing that to how we live today.  I have been amazed by what a wealth of knowledge Pam has about this topic!  We also spent some time practicing walking like Native Americans.  Today we began learning about birds.  Our focus today was geese.  We read a story about a goose and talked about how and why geese migrate.  We will continue to learn about these topics during the month of October.

We are lucky enough to have several parents who have volunteered to do some one-on-one reading during Readers Workshop.  This will be a great opportunity for students to practice their oral language, fluency and comprehension while I am meeting with reading groups.  It is also a great opportunity for children to become more confident readers.  Some parents will also be joining us for Writers Workshop.  This will be a great time for my friends to share their writing and get ideas about how to make pieces they are working on even better.  Many thanks to those parents for this support!

Many of my friends have already handed in their homework.  I have been so impressed with the creativity and effort I have seen with these activities.  It has been great to see many of my friends choose to do the "dessert" options even though they were totally optional.  If you have any feedback or creative ideas for homework, please feel free to share them with me.  My hope is to make homework something that gives them the opportunity to make some of their own choices about how they show their learning and gives them an opportunity to explore their creativiy.

Pesto and Fire Safety!

It was another busy week for Adventurers 1st grade. We spent Monday morning making pesto, had our pictures taken on Wednesday and Fire Safety on Thursday.  It was a week filled with fun and learning.  The Shelburne Firefighters taught us how to call 911 and what to do in the event of a fire.  We talked about tools versus toys and how each is used.  We had a chance to practice "stop, drop and roll" and crawl through a smokehouse.  Finally, we got to explore a fire truck and learn about all the different tools firefighters have and how they are used to help keep us safe.

In Readers Workshop we learned more about what good readers do and what partner reading should look like and sound like.  We practiced partner reading on Thursday.  Assessments are almost done so we will be starting guided reading groups very soon.

We spent some time talking about what writers do when they are finished in Writers Workshop.  We worked together on a piece Miss Claire had done to add details to her pictures and add details to her writing to make it more interesting.  We also talked about starting a new piece.

We will be learning about Native Americans in Social Studies and Birds in Science during the month of October.  If there is something you would like to share with us about either of these topics, please send me an email as we are always looking for "experts" to come in and share their knowledge with us.

This is the first week of homework.  We have spent the last three days talking about homework and everyone appears to understand how it works.  However, there are no guarantees so please feel free to contact me is there is any confusion.  Homework is due back on Fridays.

Have a great weekend!

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