This week, we focused on the important concepts of gratitude and thankfulness. After hearing a wonderful story that inspired reflection, the students took the time to self-reflect and write individual letters expressing what they are most grateful for. These special letters were sent home on Friday in a large envelope. Please encourage your child to read their heartfelt message aloud during your Thanksgiving celebration—it is a beautiful reminder of all the blessings we share!We had a very successful conclusion to our Financial Literacy unit this week, with students completing their final assessment and celebrating their learning with our fun classroom Movie Night! It was wonderful to see so many of you express your excitement for the event. Furthermore, I sincerely appreciate all the notes and feedback many of you shared about what your child was discussing at home regarding this unit—it is always rewarding to hear about that real-world connection!
Looking ahead, we are excited to dive into our next unit, which will focus on Life Science: The Needs of Plants and Animals. We are delighted that Luke Foley from Friends of the Mad River will be joining us to enrich our lessons! The final assessment for this unit will involve students creating a detailed habitat poster of the woods and river area right behind our school. Since we will be taking our learning outside for many of these engaging lessons, please ensure your child is dressed appropriately for the weather each day.
This past week, we finished our super-fun journey with books by Oge Mora, and we wrapped up the Global Read Aloud! Mr. Mongeon read us a great story called More or Less about a child whose house had too much stuff, and how giving things away made everyone feel happy! It sparked an idea: What could we give away? The students thought of an item they could donate to a big community swap. They used cool collage techniques, just like Oge Mora uses in her pictures, to create their own artwork! If you want to see all the great work we did over the last six weeks, please stop by our classroom library! Everything is on display for you to enjoy until the end of February.
This week, the 1st grade students significantly strengthened their mental math toolkit by working on the use of the "Near Doubles" strategy. This technique uses their existing knowledge of doubles facts (like 5 + 5 = 10) to quickly solve doubles plus one or doubles minus one facts (like 5 + 6 or 6 + 5). For example, to solve 6 + 7, they can use the doubles plus one strategy: double the smaller number (6 + 6 = 12) and add one, resulting in 13. They put their new skills to the test on Friday with an exciting speed game called "Boom Blocks," and it was fantastic to see how quickly their fact fluency is growing!
The 2nd graders played SKUNK. Mr. Hubbard has a day before vacation tradition of playing this game. This popular probability dice game is played over five rounds, and challenges students to practice quick addition and strategic risk assessment. Players roll two dice to add to their score, but must decide when to "sit" and lock in their points. A roll of a single 1 will cancel the score for that round, and rolling double ones means losing all points accumulated throughout the game—making it an exciting, high-stakes way to practice number sense! Congratulations to Emma as she won the whole thing on Friday! I hope she and her parents cherish the blue cereal bowl that Mr. Hubbard sent home as a trophy (winner's cup).
STUDENT OF THE WEEK: This week's Student of the Week is this smiley young kid. She is a 1st grader and celebrates her birthday on the 11th of April. When she can, she loves eating her favorite food CANDY! She lives with her mom and dad and has a pet or two as well (I can't tell the exact amount from the picture, one might be a stuffy). She likes to travel on airplanes and her favorite color is purple. Congratulations to this week's Student of the Week.
NOTES:
*As a reminder, I do need every student to have a change of shoes each day (meaning they can;t wear their boots all day). Even with a lack of snow, the mud that comes in on their boots can create quite a mess not he carpets. Students are welcomed to leave a pair for shoes at school.
*Our PE days are Wednesday and Thursday. Kai would like to remind all of you that the students do need sneakers these days.
*We will have a very quick stretch in December and the 3 weeks will have a lot of finalities (with curriculum and assessments) as we get ready for report cards in January. I asked that you do your best to make sure your child is in school as much as possible during this stretch. I thank you in advance for your help with this.
That is all for now. I do hope you all have a heartwarming Thanksgiving with those you gather with and those who you think of in celebration.
Peace,
Tommy
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