A Glance into E1 – November 2017

Week of 11/17/17

Hello Families!

The time is going by so quickly. Next week is already Thanksgiving!

This week we were busy preparing for Special Person’s Day! It was wonderful to see all the children lead their special person around our school. In preparation for the day, we did a deep clean of our room; the best part of this was our spelling tests! Each week, we have our small group spelling tests. This week, rather than traditional spelling tests written on paper, students used shaving cream to write their spelling words on the table. Afterwards, they wiped the table clean! Other cleaning happened in small groups with a third year student as a leader. It was fun to see the students take great care of their environment getting it in the best condition to show their special person.

In addition to preparing our environment for our guests, the third levels started “the dreaded but wanted” sentence diagramming! Our beginning lesson was on two word sentences such as “Birds fly.” or “Children laugh.” Starting off so basic makes it easier for the students to identify the subject and predicate in further lessons. First years have been busy working with verbs paired with their noun families and second years are analyzing sentences.

A group of first year girls have been working hard on their stamp games to prepare themselves for the lessons on the large bead frame, which moves them more towards abstraction. This week, they met the large bead frame and said good bye to the stamp game. Another group of students are busy working on triple digit and quadruple digit multiplication.

Some independent studies that have sprung up in the room this week are on the Andes Mountains, leather making, and constellations in the night sky. I love how each child brings a different interest into the classroom.

Lastly, our community has been problem solving together and each week we focus on one problem and work hard to better the problem. Our problem this week was that sometimes people are looking for a material and cannot find it. Through talking as a large group, we decided that people are not putting things back where they belong when they are done with them. The solution the community came up with was “We will focus on putting things back where they belong, if someone forgets, we will be a kind classmate and remind them.”

Group problem solving like this helps our classroom tremendously. It is much more powerful to have the children identify the problem and come up with a solution, rather than an adult bringing up the problem and solution. This could be a good practice to come into at home.

“Tell me, and I forget. Teach me and I remember. INVOLVE me and I will learn.” Benjamin Franklin

Don’t forget that there will be no spelling next week due to the holiday.

Have a great weekend and as always, stay tuned next week!

Peace,

Ms. Sara, Ms. Danielle and Mr. Ben

Week of 11/10/17

Dear Parents,

This week we have been busy preparing for the Harvest Festival, which was today. We have a community lunch for Harvest Festival. For community lunch we had a corn casserole, fresh salad bar and a baked apple bread, all prepared by two lower elementary students and two upper elementary students. Parts of this meal did come from our green house. Using food from our greenhouse brings up great conversation about being able to grow your own food and provide for ourselves, purely by putting in a little hard work and getting our hands dirty. This meal was eaten together with specially made place mats that depicted things each child is thankful for.

Our mentoring program is off to a wonderful start. We started three weeks ago; however, students have started talking more and more about it recently. Everyone is excited to learn who will be heading over to help primary students with different tasks. Students are picked to be mentors by setting good examples in the classroom, overcoming personal challenges, and helping others in our environment.

A significant topic this past week has been taking care of our environment and being careful with our choices. We have been talking about how when we take care of our belongings, we have them for much longer. I have noticed students taking great care with our materials after our large group meeting when this has been our focus. Having these conversations really gets them thinking about how and why they are doing something.

In addition to taking care of our environment and being careful with our choices, we are also focusing on filling up each other’s buckets. On Monday, I shared the book Have You Filled a Bucket Today by Carol McCloud and it has brought great acts of service and random acts of kindness in our class. Bringing up filling up buckets with your child could be a great conversation on the drive to or home from school.

Next Friday, November 17th is Special Person’s Day! This is a wonderful day for the children to show their special person their school, classroom and favorite works. If you child will be leaving with their special person, please let me know so I can make note of that. If your child does not have a special person yet, please let us know no later than Monday morning. Let me know if you have any questions about arranging that.

Lastly, thank you to all the people who volunteered for Harvest Festival and those who have brought in materials for baking. If you are looking for ways to help our classroom or volunteer opportunities, please check iVolunteer, http://radmoor.i-volunteeronline.com/.

Have a great weekend!

Kindly,

Ms. Sara, Ms. Danielle and Mr. Ben

Week of 11/3/17

Dear Parents,

It was so nice to touch base with everyone about how your children are doing in lower elementary this school year so far. I appreciate your feedback and questions.

Although it was a short week, we still had a busy week.

We have been talking about La Dia de los Muretos. We even dismissed by honoring those that we have lost in our lives and talked about why we loved them so much. Not everyone deals with death in the same ways. What I like about teaching about La Dia de los Muertos is that death doesn’t always have to be sad, we can teach our children to also celebrate and honor people’s lives.

We have also been talking about strengths and challenges. We discuss how every one of us has things that were are really good at and things that don’t come so easily to us. What is important is that we recognize both aspects and work hard to better ourselves daily.

Third years have been working on finding subjects and objects in sentences, while denoting if pronouns are object pronouns or subject pronouns. It has brought up good discussion, such ask, “What is the subject of my sentence?”

Many of the first years are working hard on clock work and telling time. This is something that we use on a daily basis. The seconds and thirds have been great instruments in helping others tell the time.

Second years are working hard on their math facts and identifying adverbs. In addition to identifying them, they are discussing if the adverb is helping the verb out in telling more about where, when or how the verb is performed.

Just a few reminders. If your child’s blue folder is at home, please have them bring it back to school. Going through the folder with your child on Fridays is a great way to start a dialogue of what is going on at school, also, be on the lookout for their new spelling words. Please be checking i-volunteer for volunteer opportunities.

Until next time,

Ms. Sara, Ms. Danielle, Mr. Ben

Week of 11/17/17

Week of 11/10/17

Week of 11/3/17

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