Highlights

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 24, 2016

A few highlights from our week…….

Math and Science

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 16, 2016

We had a guest science teacher come visit our classroom today!  LES second grade teacher, Miss Reagan, who is away on sabbatical this year getting her Masters at Smith College, came in to lead us in a science activity.  We launched our new unit on Sound and Light.  Today we stood in a circle, listened to a bell chime, and stepped backwards until we could no longer hear it.  Then we went back inside to draw, write about and discuss our ideas on sound and how it travels.  We came up with a great list of questions and ideas which will guide our study.

In math, we have been working in small groups discussing new strategies we can use to help us add and subtract.  This week we talked about helper facts and ways to make 10 when adding big numbers.  We have a new game called Snake Game, which uses Montessori beads to help us add long chains of numbers, making tens along the way until we come to the sum.

We also welcomed a new student to our class last week who joins us from Shutesbury.  It’s been very nice having a new friend in our class.  AND….  we made it to 100 Kindness Notes on our bulletin board.  Woohoo!  We are learning all the many ways to show kindness to others and today we had an ice cream party to celebrate.  Lots of proud smiles today.

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Pajama Day

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 4, 2016

Today was pajama day!  It is one of the sweetest days of the year.  We had lots of time to cozy up and read with friends.

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On Thursday, we came in to the room and were very surprised to see our beautiful bear paintings hanging in our room.  Our custodian, Wayne, hung them up for us.  We wrote thank you letters to him at writing time.  I included a small sample of them here so you could see the kindness coming from the kids in their writing.  Their letters were very much appreciated by Wayne, who works very hard around school for us every day.

Bear Museum Today!

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 2, 2016

Today was our Bear Museum!  Thanks to all the families who came in to visit and for all the people who were not able to be here, please know all the children did an excellent job!  Some highlights for me walking around the room during the presentations was hearing students say, “My name is …. and I am an EXPERT on diet.  I will teach you about a bear’s diet….”  The kids were so confident and proud of their work.  Seeing the first graders partner up and read to the kindergarten students was another great part of the day.  They loved being the “teachers” and sharing all they learned with our young guests.  Ask your child what the highlight was for him/her today and what may have been challenging.  I think we all learned a lot.

Look for these coming home today.

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The children all worked in small groups with a teacher to learn how to read a text and take notes on the important parts.  “Keep the treasure and throw out the trash,”  was an expression we used a lot.  From there,  each child chose one topic that interested them most and wrote a page on that topic using their notes.  We put the writing together to make a book for each small group.  Then each child made a poster about their topic using all we are learning at Writer’s Workshop about non-fiction texts.  Lastly, we worked together to paint the beautiful pictures for our museum.  Thanks again for coming in to celebrate all the students’ hard work!

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