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