week six

Phew!   We've complete our monumental first six weeks of school!  In the teachers world we always view this as a huge accomplishment as we have been working so hard to set the stage for the rest of the school year.  What a week it has been. This week we learned two new letters (our first vowels, i and u), and worked on decomposing (finding the hidden partners) 4 and 5 in math.  We also moved past number 5 this week and introduced number 6.  Students learned how to write the number and showed the quantity six on a five group work mat.

This week students worked on writing books to teach about a topic during Writer's Workshop.   Our lessons in writing this week were focused on work habits of a writer. (When you're done, you've just begun).  Students are learning to go back and add to their pictures and add words (letters and symbolic words at this point).  We also learned we can add onto a book (or story).  I was particularly impressed with the work students were doing while working on writing.

We are working on our scholarly habits. This week we worked on perseverance.  We learned that when we persevere we don't give up even when the work is challenging.   Students worked with other students to build a tower as high as they could using cups and index cards.   The tower needed to be strong enough to hold a Beanie Baby.  This was challenging in several ways.   First, working with a group can be ver difficult.  Second, figuring out how to stack the cups to create a strong but tall tower. Third, trying more than one approach in order to find the best solution. Forth, working through frustration when no solution was found (yet).

ECO

On Friday we had our first full ECO lesson.   Students learned about how the red fox communicates using facial expressions, body language, voice, and their urine to mark their territory.   Students practiced using their sense of smell to track the "fox scent" (peppermint essential oil). During forest choice, students explored the forest finding bugs and slugs, created a forest museum of interesting findings, pretended to be foxes, made leaf rubbings, worked on improving our campsite, and explored and played in a shelter (made last year by middle school students).  Before we went back to the school students found sit spots where they practiced sitting quietly to observe the space around them. We gave a quiet thank you to the forest and then walked back to the school.

Open House

Many thanks to all who attended our Open House on Thursday night. We had great attendance with 10 or 13 students attending with their family members.  your children where ver excited to share with you their classroom and school.

PBL

Information about Proficiency Based Learning (PBL) went home in your Friday folders. look for more information to come next week.  The schools in our district have made the switch to a PBL system.  As we mover forward through the year you will learn more about this system. In short, a PBL is a growth model that allows students multiple opportunities to show what they know and what they can do. We will continually monitor student growth using learning scales. When reporting in a PBL students will be considered Proficient once they have met the Core Standard.  This may happen at anytime during the year but is not expected until the end of the school year.  Therefore students may show that they are making progress or just getting started at the beginning of the year.  There will be targets for each student to meat each trimester leading to proficiency by the end of the year. Feel free to ask me more about this if you have questions.

Fieldtrip

Reminder that we will be going on our first field trip to the Morristown Fire Station on Friday, October 13th.  We will be walking, so make sure you child has comfortable shoes (sneakers preferably) for walking.