What are the students learning……

Mrs. Ensworth

Morning meeting: K-2

We always review/sing or act out our poems, songs, and charts.

This week in our charts we noticed two words put together so… compound words were introduced.  What fun we have had finding those in our reading books.

Also, at morning meeting, we have a message for the day written on the board by a teacher.  Here is an example of one of our messages.

G______d Morn___________,

What would be your favorite season if money really grew on trees?  Why?

Students filled in the missing letters, found the question words and question marks and answered the question.

This is a fun time for K-2 to be together and learn together.

We have been reading Pete the Cat books in the morning.  One is “Pete the Cat Rocking in his School Shoes.”and the other is “Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons.”

Reading: K

We read a new book this week at Level B called “The Wet Pet.”  We then made a list of “et” words eg. pet, get, vet, wet etc. We read our word family lists together each day.  We also practiced blending sounds together to form new words. Students read even more basic sight words (Fry words).

Reading: 1st grade

This group also read the “et” word family words as well as the at, it, to words as a review.  It is good practice for them to read short words with short vowels sounds. Fry words were practiced as well.

Reading: 2nd grade

In this group, we really got into compounds words and brainstormed and wrote as many as we could think of.  Possessive ’s was introduced and students had fun completing a paper involving their names incorporating ’s.

Social Studies/Science: 1st/2nd

The unit of study this week was about how animals protect themselves. Students read about the Spiny Mouse (Africa), the Thorny Devil (Australia), the Crab and Sea Urchin (Asia) and four animal groups that stick together to protect themselves, sheep was one (Australia).

Some new vocabulary words introduced this week were, predator, onomatopoeia, flock, herd, and camouflage. These words will be reinforced throughout the rest of the year.

Another “test” was given to show me what they knew.  This should have come home on Thursday in backpacks!

Read Aloud: 1st/2nd

This week I introduced a chapter book read aloud to the class titled, “My Father’s Dragon.”  This is a three book series about rescuing a baby dragon.  Every chapter has a “cliff hanger” at the end.  We have a stuffed little dragon who helps us listen quietly to the story

Ms. Newell and Mrs. Gillen

This week we focused on the letter F, and compared it with the T that we have already learned! Some of our friends even noticed that if we add an extra line to our F, we can make an E! In our conversations we are starting to stop and notice words that begin with the sounds T and F. In math we are starting to learn how to write our numbers. We tried writing 3, but 3 is very tricky because of all the curvy lines. We are still working on that! However, we really liked the number 4 because it is all straight lines like T and F! In social emotional learning, we are doing great welcoming and playing with all of our friends, not just a select few.

Mrs. Courtot

This week in math the Viking mathematicians did a fun math activity with skittles. They had to sort them by color, graph them by color. and make number sentences by combining different colors together. Some of us are still working on those tricky teen numbers, that are made up of ten and some ones. We continue to work on correct number formation and our number fluency. We talked about what does the equal sign mean and how can you tell if a number is even or odd. Every day we count the days in school on our place value chart and talk about how many more to make ten, or a bundle. We are also continuing to work on our number words from one to twelve. Some of us are working on our journal entries.Using capital letters at the beginning of our sentences and periods at the end. We are also working on writing more in our entries.

Ms Porter-Social Emotional Learning classes  

7/8 – We are continuing to work with the cognitive cycle of understanding how our thoughts impact our feelings, which, in turn, effect our behaviors. We discussed different scenarios from the week which we used as examples. We then talked about the fact that everyone has automatic thoughts: positive, negative and neutral. It is important to be aware of automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs. Past of learning about ANTs is also learning about the thinking traps that ANTs like to use, including: jumping to conclusions, magnification, ignoring the good and using should statements. Awareness around these thinking traps will help us manage our ANTs!

5/6 – We started our cyber awareness curriculum, which we will be studying for the next 6 weeks of class. We began with discussion around what it means to have a digital footprint, and how to be a responsible digital citizen.

3/4 – We started our block on self-regulation with a discussion about how to transform “soda water” into “still water” and what happens wen we make soda decisions vs still water decisions. we talked about strategies that we all use to calm ourselves down, and shared ideas. We then wrote down where we feel stress in our bodies, how that makes us feel, and what triggers those situations. The class learned time in the gym to play a favorite game, Shipwreck.

1/2 – We started our block on patience, and all learned about what it means to be a Patient Pirate (dont interrupt, be respectful, one person taking at a time). We practiced controlling our bodies by hobbling around the room saying Argghh Matey! and then coming to stillness and silence when I gave the cue. The class did an awesome job!

PK/K – We practiced identifying different emotions by picking how we felt that day from the feeling cards, and then saying why. We also practiced calming our bodies through breath and movement. We read a story about how a little bear calmed himself when he felt scared.

Ms. Bebell

7/8 Super Studies

Students finished their unit on elections and voting by taking a quiz, analyzing the state’s election data in relation to the school’s mock election data, and encouraging people to vote on Tuesday by standing across the street from the town office with signs. Passers-by were very supportive and students were able to cheer on lots of voters! In boatbuilding, the students almost finished planking their boat. They also practiced chart reading skills by pinning local landmarks on the large map in the school foyer.

5/6 Super Studies

The students made models to show their understanding of the water cycle and then presented them to the class. They made dioramas, posters, slideshows, and videos. On Forest Day, the students helped repaint trail blazes on the yellow loop of the school’s nature trail.

3/4 Super Studies

Students explored the life cycles of different animals this week. They discovered that most animals go through a similar timeline of birth, reaching adult form, reproduction, and death. On Forest Day, students made nature mandalas using found natural objects like leaves, flowers, rocks, and sticks.

Ms. Julie- K-2 Authors and Illustrators are in various stages of completion of their writing projects started with Ms. Blake. Students who finished their books were assessed on their ability to write sentences independently and their understanding of proper use of capital (uppercase and lowercase) letters and punctuation. Students practiced reading their sentences in ways that matched the punctuation, and enjoyed switching periods to question marks and exclamation points.

In the afternoons PK/K students have been writing and illustrating things they are thankful for: friends, ears that can hear, eyes that see colors, voices that sing and family are amongst the appreciated items. During “read and write the room” this week PK/K students found and recorded number words and names of 2-D shapes. In the Geodes curriculum we talked about sorting or categorizing words and phrases based on similarities. We found pictures of words in our book American Gothic that had to do with art: painting, sketching, studio, paint, models and canvas. In the book Red Barn Farm we found pictures of words that have to do with dairy farming: barn, machine, milk, milking, milk truck and udders. Our focus letter sounds during this module: r,p and j.