Ms. Wilson– Pre-K and Kindergarten students learned that their names are proper nouns, which means only the first letter of their name should be capitalized (uppercase) and the rest of the letters in their names should be written in lowercase. During the PK/K Geodes block we continued our exploration of South America with the book Fabric of the Andes .  We learned how fabric is created from wool, while finding items in the book that start with the letters/sounds: b, f & t. On Wednesday PK/K students really enjoyed the yellow mystery objects with Ms. Dolphin, and are looking forward to this week’s color: GREEN! During our exploration block in the afternoon PK/K will be doing a variety of activities ranging from story re-telling, reader’s theater to craftivities tied to social studies/science standards. This week we re-enacted one of our favorite songs: 5 green and speckled frogs.

During the K-2 morning academic block, we are focusing on what writers do, and narrative writing. K-2 writers are refining their printing skills while practicing writing declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory  sentences. Once a week we will venture outside for a portion of our writing time for observation and natural inspiration for our nature journals.

Mrs. Ensworth/Mrs. Baird- Kindergarten Reading:

We are learning letter names and sounds as well as recognizing lower and upper case letters.

Punctuation marks have been introduced: ?  !  and .

We are learning to recognize and read the days of the week.

Each child is reading simple stories with one syllable words using short vowel sounds.

First Grade Reading:

We are practicing consonants and short vowel sounds as well as blends  ( ex. tr, dr, gr) and digraphs (ex. ch, sh, th )

First grade is also reading short stories at their level of reading.

Punctuation marks have been introduced: ?  ! and .

We are learning to recognize and read the days of the week and weather words.

Second grade Reading:

We are reinforcing consonant and short and long vowel sounds.  This includes reading words with the silent Ee rule.  Second graders are finishing up learning the first 100 Fry words and will soon move on to the second 100 Fry words.These are basic sight word lists.

Punctuation has been introduced ? ! . and quotation marks.

We also spend time on phonetic sounds work daily as well as learning blends  ( ex. tr, dr, gr) and digraphs (ex. ch, sh, th )

Second grade is also reading Days of the Week words, weather words and months of the year words.

First and Second Grade Science/Social Studies:

The Unit of study these past two weeks has been on Stories, Words and Libraries.  We have read books about stories written on cave walls, a Library in Egypt that actually had a library cat to keep the bugs and rats from eating the stories written on scrolls, and “The Story Ship” about a Ship in Norway that brings the library to children living on the coast in Norway. Each day we look at maps to see where these stories take place.  We are beginning to identify States in the United States and different continents ie. Europe, Africa and North America.

Mrs. Courtot- In math class this week some of the math groups continued to work on ways to make ten, our number words, story problems and different types of graphs. We continue to work on e-spark so we can grow as mathematicians.  Some of the groups used Boom cards and IXL to practice their math skills. One group has been working on writing in their math journals and has been working just getting their thoughts down about the prompt. One of our favorite books this week is One Duck Stuck, a book that teaches about when we work together the task at hand is easier.

Mrs. Thoner- 3/4 ELA 

Written Language – students have been practicing both: 1) the understanding of pronouns and their use; and  2) the understanding and use of possessive singular and plural nouns.  Most students demonstrated mastery of these two concepts.

Literature – students analyzed text and identified the main idea and supporting details.  They continued with their reading of Rez Dogs and Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back.

5/6 ELA Students read Chapters 10 – 15 of Chains and analyzed how the primary source at the beginning of each chapter related to the events in that chapter.  Students also practiced responding to questions – factual, inferencial, and probing – citing the page number and quote that supported their responses.

7/8 ELA Literature: Students read Chapters 8 – 9 in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and responded to factual, inferential, and probing questions while citing textual evidence.  Students demonstrated an understanding of the text both through written work and discussions.

Written Language – Students demonstrated partial understanding of the differences between compound, complex, and compound/complex sentences.  They have also started to make plans for their Ellen Writing projects and the children’s book they each need to develop as the culminating project for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

Art

PK-2  Students did a painting of an apple tree to celebrate the apple season and colored in a wood block print of an apple press at work making sweet cider.

3/4  Students began a gridded mapping project of Maine that will take them several weeks to finish.  This project connects to their work with the elements of geography in Super Studies.  With rulers, we set a grid over a photocopied map and a piece of drawing paper.  Then we drew in the land borders with Canada and New Hampshire in accordance with each labelled square and the line therein.

5/6  Students did a wet-on-wet watercolor background on day one—blending a feeling color scene that stays airy and nebulous in form knowing that we would add a silhouetted black form over it on day two.  Then we sketched in the image of two arms, rising vertically, and breaking the chains of shackles.  This piece is connected to their work with the book, Chains, in ELA class.

7/8  Students worked with geometric principles founded in ancient Athens by the mathematician/philosopher Pythagorus—this piece overlaps both mathematics and Super Studies’ focus on ancient Athens and the founding of democracy.  With a compass, students construct a circle and divided it by its’ own radius into six equal parts (“Flower of Life”).  Next, they bifurcated one of the six parts and divided the circle again, with the radius in the compass, to create a twelve petaled rosette.  Lastly, they were able to choose how they house watercolor the shapes of the geometric form drawing and made it their own.

Health:

PK/K- We finished up our unit on dental health and this week started learning about our 5 senses.  They each shared what they can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel and how we use these senses to keep us safe.

Grade 1/2- We completed our unit on fire safety.  Students learned about fire safety in schools as well as shared the questions that they discussed with their parents to see if their homes are “fire safe”.  Student’s did a great job identifying fire hazards and ways to prevent fires.  They each became “Junior Fire Marshalls”.

Grade 3/4- We are continuing to learn about nutrition.  This week we explored various food items to start to understand what a food label tells us.  I encouraged students to bring in any food labels from home that they want to read and learn about together.

Grade 5/6- This week we completed our lesson on healthy and unhealthy relationship traits.  We discussed the influence of peer pressure and how to say no to unhealthy choices.

Grade 7/8- This week we wrapped up our unit on stress.  As a class we shared what some of our stressors are and healthy ways to reduce stress.  We also began talking about our individual values and how they align with our actions.   I sent each student home with an optional assignment to see how their value traits align with their families.  This is a great conversation starter at home!

SEL

7/8th SEL –

Students are learning 4 sets of problem solving skills based on DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) Each skill is aligned with challenges that are prevalent during adolescence: difficulty managing emotions is aligned with emotional regulation; reduced awareness and distraction is aligned with mindfulness; impulsiveness is aligned with distress tolerance; and relationship problems are aligned with interpersonal effectiveness. We will be working on developing these skills over the course of the entire year. This week we learned about the meaning of dialectics, or finding the middle ground when two perspectives seem polarized.

5/6 SEL -This week we reviewed the function of three different parts of the brain: the pre-frontal cortex, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. Students described situations when their amygdalas were activated and reflected on the fact that the amygdala cannot tell the difference between danger and stress. Students drew pictures of situations when their PFC was in charge, calming their amygdala and lowering their heart rate.

3/4 SEL – Students are developing an understanding of the expectations of the class and practicing impulse control. We began ending the class with a cooperative game.

PK-2 SEL – Everyone shared a worry and we read a story about the Worrybug. Everyone learned that if you feed your Worrybug it will grow bigger and bigger. We all drew Worrybugs and talked about paying attention to how much we feed it. In every class we practice mindful breathing.

All students are visiting Ms Porter for short “Minute Meetings” to establish a very basic mental health baseline.

Mrs. Sproul 

3rd grade math-  The students are continuing to work on math facts. Additionally we are deepening our understanding of what multiplication is and learning to write out equations.  We talked about the difference between writing expressions and equations and practiced writing equations from diagrams as well as sentences.  They were assessed on their ability to do this.

4th grade math   The students are continuing their work with math facts.  Our work with fractions continues as they learn how to put fractions on a number line and learn about equivalent fractions.  They were assessed on their ability to locate where the fraction should go on an empty number line.

5th and 6th grade math Students are continuing their work with their conceptual understanding of fractions.  They learned how to show a diagram of 3 divided by 5 as well as determine what fractional part each person would get. We are spending a lot of time with the conceptual understanding of fractions because too many kids really struggle with fractions in higher level math.  They were assessed on their ability to divide into fractions. The class is really understanding what is happening with fractions and this will make it so much easier later.

7th grade math  Students are continuing their work with scale and learning how to determine the size of a figure that was scaled.  They are learning they need to go back to the original to scale an object in a new size.  They are also relating proportions to scaling.  They were assessed on finding the size of a scaled object (a sign) given the dimensions of a scaled sign and a new scale to work with.  This is challenging for them and we will work on it more this week.

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8th grade math  The students are working with parallel lines cut by a transversal.  They are learning which angles that are congruent based on rigid transformations.  They also learned about the interior angle measurements of a triangle adding up to 180 degrees.  They were assessed on determining angle measurements of angles created by the transversal going through parallel lines.

9th grade math  We are continuing our work with statistics and variability.  They have learned which type of measurement they should use based on the data and the shape of the data on a dot plot.  They are working on higher level thinking problems and being able to figure out what they need to solve the problems.  This is NOT an easy way to do math and they are really beginning to get the hang of it.  They were assessed on which type of measurement they should use based on the data.

Super Studies 

7/8 Super Studies   Students are beginning to prepare for our mock election next month by learning about the structure of government. They read about and discussed how the branches of Maine’s government parallel that of the US government and were introduced to the priorities of different political parties by anonymously completing a quiz online to see where their views align with different parties and candidates.

5/6 Super Studies   The class began its study of the first ancient civilization of the year – Mesopotamia. They have been reading about how and why the cradle of civilization began and demonstrated an introductory understanding of the geography of the region by creating a map. On Forest Day, students practiced identifying organisms in the woods with our classroom collection of field guides.

3/4 Super Studies  The class began a new science unit this week about different types of energy. We explored sound energy by experimenting with tuning forks and measuring the relative decibel levels of our voices and other sounds. We also explored electrical energy with Snap Circuits and by using our bodies and other objects as conductive materials to create music on a computer with a special tool called a Makey Makey. After learning about each type of energy, students are taking notes and drawing diagrams of what they have learned. We will also learn about mechanical, light, chemical, and heat energy.