Parent-Teacher Conferences Coming Up

I just wanted to send out a reminder that parent-teacher conferences are coming up! This Thursday, 11/2, students are dismissed two hours earlier than usual so we can begin conferences. On Friday, 11/3, students have no school. I'm looking forward to meeting with you!

Workplaces

We always like when we have time for "workplaces" at the end of our regular math lesson. Workplaces are games and activities that give us chances to practice all sorts  of math skills. Some are partner games, while others are individual activities. Students rotate through all the activities over time, and sometimes even have time to revisit a workplace. I am always changing out old activities and putting in new ones. You may see some workplace logs coming home eventually, where students have kept track of which activities they have completed. 

One of our current activities involves estimating and measuring with Unifix cubes. One has students making a graph and practicing identifying nickels and pennies. One has students practicing adding ten and more and writing equations in proper form. Several current activities feature dominoes and have students practicing various addition strategies to add up the dots.

Dictation

Dictation is a regular routine that is part of our Fundations phonics program. I say a sound or a word featuring the skills we have been practicing, students repeat it, and then they write in on their own dry-erase board or paper. You'll see "check-up" papers coming home from dictation periodically.

When I dictate a whole sentence, it involves looking up "trick words," tapping out other words, and remembering capital letters and punctuation. One student gets to frame out the sentence on the board.

We all like getting a turn to write under the document camera.

Labyrinth Walk

Over the summer a camp group built a labyrinth behind White River School adjacent to the school garden. Above is the design of our labyrinth. Once last week and again today our class walked the labyrinth together as a five-minute energy break in the middle of our afternoon.

We've learned that labyrinths are often confused with mazes. A maze is a puzzle to solve. It has dead ends and can trick you. A labyrinth on the other hand has a single, winding path from the outside to the center and back. If you start on the path it's just a matter of following it through to the end. Labyrinths are said to help with focus. In a labyrinth, things are iterative, not linear; it's a cycle. Labyrinth can be simple or complex, have been made for centuries, and can be formed with various materials. 

Happy Halloween!

On Tuesday, Oct. 31, we will have a little first-grade Halloween celebration. Mrs. Turunen and I will bring in some snacks to share and we will enjoy some time together at the end of the day. You don't need to send anything in. (Please don’t send in Halloween costumes, masks, or face paint, per White River School rules.) 

Reading Workshop

I always love teaching reading, but this year I am more excited than usual because I am trying out some new ideas during our reading workshop time. I always teach a mini lesson on a specific reading skill or habit, then students follow our classroom routines for getting their book bags, setting out their reading mats, stacking their books in the order they plan to read them, and they get started, trying to incorporate the practice we've discussed in the lesson as they read. I can tell you that this class is a group of productive readers and I can already feel them getting stronger! We have some independent reading time every reading session, following by some time for partner reading, reading together, helping each other remember strategies to improve.

The first several of my lessons this year were about developing strong, general habits as a reader. We've been using this word "habit" a lot in first grade this year. They are developing good reading habits-- things they do as readers without even needing to be reminded! 

We spent another series of lessons focus on specific habits of tackling "tricky" words we encounter in our reading (and had some fun giving a name to some bad habits that we want to notice and get rid of).

Lately I have been working  on good habits partners have when they work as a team. 

Please ask your child about reading workshop. And when you are reading with them and they get stuck on a word, try asking, "what are some strategies you could try to figure it out?"

Phases of the Moon

In science we have been studying the phases of the moon. We have done a whole-class short focused research project on this topic. First we read the book Phases of the Moon by Gillia M. Olson and then we read Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin (we read a lot of other books two but these were the sources for our research project). Then we reread book to study the phases one at a time. After we reread and visualized each page, we looked at the illustration of it and drew our own version of that phase with white chalk on black circles. 

We have learned the big idea that the moon doesn't really change shape; it is always a ball. But it appears to change shape depending on where it is in its orbit around the earth and how much of the lit-up side we can see. We wrote a group report to summarize what we had learned. We learned great vocabulary like waxing (growing) and waning (shrinking) as we talked about the cycle. The cycle of the moon phases each month is one of nature's fascinating patterns!

Trading "Greens"

Your child is welcome to save up any green color squares they earn for behavior here at school (I know many already do save these slips of paper at home). When students save 15 green squares—whether that takes just 15 school days or longer than that—they can bring their green squares back to me (as long as they aren’t wrinkled or written on) and trade them in for something special. They might earn a little prize, and I will be able to reuse the color squares. Thanks!

Farm Day

Last Friday was a special White River School tradition: Farm Day! We had the most glorious of fall days for it and we were outside much of the day, as there were animals and other stations all over our school campus. Students came in so excited that morning and we had a wonderful day learning about some of the types of farming in Vermont, farm animals, the work that farmers do, and some products we buy and eat that come from farming. We asked a lot of questions, got to taste things, and participated in hands-on activities.

We learned that syrup comes from sap, which comes from sugar maple trees. We practiced identifying leaves to tell which was a sugar maple.

 We got to try out drilling a whole in a tree trunk to put the taps in. At least one of us got to sample real vs. artificial maple syrup-- and knew the difference right away!

 Billings Farm was here to teach us how to make ice cream the old-fashioned way. The crank was pretty cranky so we had to work extra hard to make it turn.

 There were oxen here as well. We learned an ox is a male cow that has been trained. We saw them follow commands like gee and haw, and got to brush them. They like to be brushed.

 We really liked sitting on hay bales.

 We met two alpacas, which are related to llamas but smaller. We didn't get to pet them, but we felt their wool in a bag and it was so soft.

 Sheep were a highlight. We watched the sheep get sheared with two types of clippers, one that required an assistant to turn the crank. We also got to see a sheep get his hooves trimmed. The sheep said "baaa" several times but didn't seem to mind the attention.

We saw how to spin wool into yarn and some of us got really hooked on that activity. It did not take a lot of wool to make a long piece of yarn. It was interesting that the wool felt very oily and we learned that was because of the lanolin in it. 

 We got to go on a tractor ride around our school-- and we saw a fox dashing into the woods behind the school while on the ride!

 We saw goats and rabbits here to visit. 

 We got to help with all the steps of making cider. We put apples in the press. We pushed them down with a stick while a friend turned the crank to crush them.

 Finally we got to help press the apples, and tasted the freshest cider possible immediately afterward. There were a lot of bees around the cider station by that point in the afternoon, unfortunately. But luckily we got to head inside after that away from the bees for one more apple-related activity. Mrs. Haynes, who had donated apples from her family's apple orchard, taught us about apple picking bags and ladders.

 We got to see the process of making applesauce-- and had to figure out why it was pink even though there were no ingredients other than apples. And of course, we got to taste it.

 Mrs. Haynes led us in some apple tasting. We got to try McIntosh, Northern Spy, Red Delicious, and Cortland. It was really interesting to see what each of us liked best and to reflect that we all have different tastes.