Ms. Wilson– Kindergarten students are working to master the sounds of all uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet with various games, songs and flashcards.  Students are learning that an exclamation point shows excitement or emphasis, and a sentence that contains a question (or mystery) will have a question mark at the end of it. Pre-K and K students explored the first book in the Geodes curriculum Pele, and began learning about South America.

Ms. Baird– In K-2 literacy, we have been working on reading at each child’s independent reading level. To make this clearer, we have been doing reading assessments and letter sound practice and assessments to see exactly where each child should be reading. We are also able to find the strengths in their reading skills and also exactly which skills each student needs to be instructed in to strengthen their reading. Students are hard at work and enjoying learning! In our morning meetings we sing songs, talk about the days of the week and the weather, learn about punctuation, and get to share things we are excited about! Be sure to ask your child why, when we are reciting knock-knock jokes, we do not pronounce the K!

In the K-2 math class we have been working on building our class community. We have read several books, Our Classroom Family and Be You. Our favorite one is After The Fall, about Humpty Dumpty , what happened after he got back up, We talked about how we need to keep trying even when things are hard. We talked about how we should behave in math class and the students came up with some classroom expectations. We have been learning about ways to make ten, skip counting by fives to a certain number. We have been learning some new games and have been practicing how to work together as a group.  We have started doing e-spark again to help us practice math at our individual levels, The second graders have begun  writing in their math journals and working in their math folders and working on math fact fluency.

Mrs. Courtot- In the K-2 math class we have been working on building our class community. We have read several books, Our Classroom Family and Be You. Our favorite one is After The Fall, about Humpty Dumpty , what happened after he got back up.  We talked about how we need to keep trying even when things are hard. We talked about how we should behave in math class and the students came up with some classroom expectations. We have been learning about ways to make ten, skip counting by fives to a certain number. We have been learning some new games and have been practicing how to work together as a group.  We have started doing e-spark again to help us practice math at our individual levels, The second graders have begun  writing in their math journals and working in their math folders and working on math fact fluency.

Mrs. Thoner- 3/4 ELA This week students demonstrated understanding of both the figurative and literal meanings of “costs and arm and a leg” and “spill the beans.”  They also performed mini-skits and retellings of portions of Rez Dogs that we read.  They are learning Wabenaki culture through the stories that Malian’s grandparents tell her.

5/6 ELA

Students demonstrated understanding of the portions of Chains that were read by completing comprehension and vocabulary questions as well as through class discussions.

7/8 ELA

Students demonstrated a broader understanding regarding the impacts of slavery – both on the slaves and on the slave holders.  They also are acquiring a better understanding of compound, complex, and compound/complex sentence structure.

Mrs. Sproul- 3rd grade math – We finished up our time with scaled graphs and took an assessment.  The students will now be moving into multiplication.  Please ask your child what they are working on in math and practice the math facts with them.  Having a good grasp of math facts will help them excel in math as they get into more challenging topics.

4th grade math – Students finished up the unit on factors and multiples and took an assessment.  We are now moving into one of my favorite topics, fractions!  My goal is for the students to get a true understanding of fractions so they are comfortable with them so when we learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions they will feel confident.

5th grade math – Students are finishing up the unit on volume and were quizzed on that.  They will be taking the unit assessment next week. Next we will be moving into fractions which is one of my favorite topics.  This year they will build on their knowledge of fractions by learning how to multiply and divide them after getting a conceptual understanding of what that means.  They also should be practicing their math facts at home.  They know which ones we are working on each day.

7th grade math – We are continuing our work with scale and this week we started looking at how that relates to maps.  This is proving to be challenging and the assessment showed they needed more work with this.  After we finish this unit (maybe by the end of the week) we will move on to proportional relationships.

8th grade math – We are continuing our work with transformations in geometry and looking at how we can use those to prove that shapes are congruent.  The students have been assessed in their understanding of transformations.

9th grade math – This week we worked with spreadsheets and other programs to make sense of statistical data.  We learned how we can program spreadsheets to find the mean and median and used a program that will automatically make dot plots when the data is entered.  They learned that using these programs was an efficient way to show the data especially when the data changes.   They were assessed on their knowledge of using formulas in the spreadsheet.

Ms. Bebell- 7/8 Super Studies

This week, students explored the ancient Greek roots of democracy. They then demonstrated their understanding by reading sections of the US Constitution and comparing and contrasting modern American democracy to that of the ancient Athenians. We’ll be having Forest Day on Thursdays this year (at least until boatbuilding class begins later this fall), and this week we had our first hike on the school nature trail of the year.

5/6 Super Studies

This week, we learned about what makes humans the unique species that we are. We read, discussed, watched PBS video clips, and drew diagrams. To demonstrate their learning at the end of the week, students imagined they had a time machine and could visit the Stone Ages, where they would write letters home to their families in the present explaining what life is like. On Forest Day, we hiked on the nature trail and drew some of our observations in our nature journals.

3/4 Super Studies

This week, students learned about the 5 themes of geography. They reviewed what they learned last year about the differences between a town/city, state, country, and continent. They also practiced identifying the 50 states on a map. Another priority this week was working towards creating a respectful and positive classroom environment. On Forest Day, we visited the grove behind the field for the first time this year and reviewed how to respect ourselves, each other, and nature when we are in the woods. We also looked for ways that the grove has changed since last June and how it has stayed the same.

All students did a still life of a single sunflower from our own Brooklin Community Garden.  The younger children took 15 – 20 minutes to demonstrate, through drawing and coloring, what they could observe and physically manifest, while some of the oldest students in the school elected to use up to 2.5 hours to achieve an element of realism that is really quite impressive.  These drawings are all on display to illustrate how our power of observation and our skillfulness of hand evolve and grow over the grades.

Since the younger grades did not require so much time on the sunflower still life, they put their scissor skills and knowledge of geometry (a circle) to the test and we made little apples out of construction paper to celebrate the current apple picking season.

MUSIC- Grades PK-2 We are establishing a singing circle routine with movement and to establish the synchronicity between beat and body as well as tuning our voices into the appropriate pitch/tones of the song at hand.

Grades 3-6 Students are singing and fluting songs that will eventually be sung and fluted in rounds.  Rounds not only create beautiful harmonies, but they also challenge the student to keep their particular part on rhythm and in pitch while two other groups are singing/fluting their respective parts.

Grades 7&8 Students have been learning flute songs to help support and join in with grades 3-6 at future performances.