Literacy Reflections, Parent Conferences, All School Meeting, Book Orders, Science, is that it???????

Happy Weekend, Folks!

We have a lot to talk about...

This week we had a great discussion about our house creation and we came to some great new expectations about our cardboard house. It came about by some students experimenting around the space available in the house and the ability to squeeze in as many bodies as they could. As you can imagine, this led to the need for some creative problems solving, which is a skill this group has shown a great ability to do.

Talking About The House At Morning Meeting

Their solution was that on your sharing day you could use your morning playtime to either play in or build onto the house. At any other break time during the day, anyone could work on building/repairing the house. Everyone seemed happy with the outcome and I was so pleased with the thoughtful solution they came up with and I am looking forward to seeing them put it into practice. If only kids were in charge of the world...

A Literacy Reflection From This Week

In literacy this week the kids had a new task. I asked them to make some goals around the words they were learning as well as some independent writing skills that they were going to focus on in their own writing. The kids got to reflect on their progress over the week and give themselves a score. I will be looking at these over the weekend and then sending them home on Monday with a note to them. Please take a look at it and use it as a discussion tool when talking to them about their work.

We have also continued our hard work on our Small Moment stories. The kids are doing a wonderful job thinking about their stories and adding details to help stretch them out. We've talked about transition words (after, next, then, etc.) as well as adding more juicy words to help add to their amazing work. We should be wrapping them up this week in time for us to use them as talking pieces at our parent conferences.

We had a lovely All School Meeting and the kids in the 1/2 did some great singing! We sang the songs "Raking the Leaves", "Crimson and Red" (in a 3 part round!), and "Keep on the Sunny Side". It was especially great to see all of the older students sing along with the songs that they remembered singing when they were in our classes.

Parent Conferences are coming up and there is a sign-up link to share with you:

 http://grades.wcsuonline.org/rumney/conference

Sign up for a time and if you don't see one that works, let me know. I am always happy to accommodate your busy lives.

We will be starting Science in the next couple of weeks, mostly on Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays. Monday and Tuesday afternoons are full of specials. Our opening unit will be on matter and states of matter, which will be full of a lot of fun and learning. Christine and I are hard at work building our unit of study and mapping out our timeline.

Reminders:

Food Drive - Feel Free to send in any non-perishable items for the Middlesex Food Shelf. It is a great resource for the community and any little bit helps our neighbors in need.

Book Orders - Please check out the book orders that are coming home. Feel free to put in an order and return them to school. They will be due on Friday, November 17th.

Link to School Newsletter - https://www.wcsu32.org/domain/175

Harvest Dinner - Consider coming or making a donation to this great school fundraiser on November 4th! See the school newsletter for more details.

We hope you all are having a great weekend, enjoying all of the sunshine!

~Ben and Tammy

Open House and Other Happenings

Hey Everyone,

I hope everyone got to catch up on some rest over the long weekend before we begin our next long stretch before Thanksgiving break. I got to press some apples and share some with the kiddos, always a treat!

Open House is always such a great evening and it was great to see you all. The kids are always great tour guides. If you have any questions/comments about what you saw and want to talk more, let me know. Also, if you couldn't make it but would like the opportunity to come in and check things out, let me know. We can always set up a visit during the day or before school.

A drawing from one page of a storyboard

A "Small Moment" planning sheet

In Writer's Workshop we are working on our Small Moment narratives (stories). We are starting with non-fiction and then moving to fictional narratives next. The kids are focusing on a small moment that they have had related to our Big 4 and thinking about the moral (lesson) they learned. My choice to do non-fiction first is because it is a type of writing that they are more familiar with and one that they are personally connected to. The structure of this kind of writing is different than fictional stories. To meet this challenge, we had kids draw a story that was at least 5 pages long. This is an effective way to help them stretch out the details in their their stories. They will be adding more words next week and we will be looking at the different parts of their writing that we will be looking for. For a look at the writing rubrics we use to score their writing pieces, take a look at the writing section of the blog page.

In literacy I got to start all of my reading groups. In our groups we do word study, reading books, learning about reading strategies, and practice our sight words. Each group meets for 20 minutes and I go through about 4 groups per day, meaning an 80 minute literacy time. The kids are really doing a great job building their stamina. We have also begun to have kids plan their literacy time over the past 2 weeks. Each day they plan what they will be doing in each of the 4 blocks of time during literacy. Next week we will be starting to goal set around writing skills to practice as well as the number of words they want to try and learn each week and then reflecting on their effort and progress at the end of the week. They will be attaching a piece of their writing from the week to show evidence of their progress toward meeting their goal. I'll look at these over the weekend and then return them to bring home on Monday.

A literacy plan from this week

We will be starting word study (spelling) groups in the next couple of weeks. The kids took a spelling assessment early in the year and we grouped the kids between my and Christine's (Ms. Babcock) class according to which spelling rules they are familiar with (long/short vowels, beginning/ending sounds, magic-e words, etc.). It is our hope that we will be able to split the kids up into 5 different groups, but this is depending on which adults are available during our Word Study time.

We'll begin our science work in earnest at the end of the month. In the meantime, we'll be doing some class investigations and doing some modeling of the scientific process in class. I'd like to give a shout-out to our 4-Wind volunteers who will be coming into our class to do some additional science work as well. It is a great program that the kids really enjoy and learn a lot from.

Last, here is a new math link for interested parties:

https://media.pearsoncmg.com/curriculum/math/Investigations3/gamecenter/english/index.html#/Grade:1/

I will add this link to my math page on the blog. I haven't fully explored the page (yet) but what I saw looked like there may be some good stuff.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Ben and Tammy


Other News:

BOOK ORDERS - Please send in any you might want on Monday. We didn't get any this first round. Be on the look-out for the next ones in the coming weeks if you didn't get in on this order.

This November 4th Rumney Memorial School will be hosting the 11^th annual Harvest Dinner to  raise money for two worthy causes—the local foods program at Rumney and the Middlesex Food Shelf.

In the next month leading up to the Harvest Dinner our school community will work together to collect items for the Middlesex Food Shelf. We will have donation boxes in each classroom, staff room, and in our school lobby. We have a goal of collecting 1,000 items, non-perishables and toiletries, before November 4^th.

Please consider bringing in items that you’d stock in your own pantry.  All donations are accepted and appreciated!

If you have any questions or would like to help plan this year’s Harvest Dinner please contact Honi Bean Barrett at hbarrett@u32.org