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