Snow, Snow and a little bit of Mo!

Last school week began on a Tuesday with a window that looked like this...

And then a recess that looked like this...

There was lots of adventure in the great outdoors and lots of fun to be had inside as well.  After reading more Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems, the children tried their hands at drawing the characters of Gerald and Piggie.  Have a look...

Other important activities this week included learning a new reading and writing superpower- word part power with Bronagh

and, building an understanding of greater than > and less than< with buddies.  We are busy as ever!

Hello Vyaan!

Here is a message we recorded last week for our friend who is away for a WHOLE month!

Proud to be in South Burlington!

The photos from this week all make me feel proud of our district.  Our commitment to Farm to School education, the leadership responsibilities that our oldest students take on, the ways in which we support coming together around issues of diversity and equity, and the spirited ways our youngest students explore curriculum all speak to the high standards we set for teachers and learners.
Have a look at Miss Meg cooking spaghetti squash in our room, SBHS students leading an assembly about MLK Jr., and students in our room creating posters based on Mo Willem's characters- Gerald and Piggie.

A Look At Math

A while back I mentioned in the newsletter that I wanted to post some math pictures to give a sense of the activity and the thinking that's been happening during our recent sessions. Our current unit has us working with growing patterns, predictions, and counting in groups.  Take a look at two charts we made that tell similar information.

The second chart got erased a bit before the photo BUT, you can see that the children are working on understanding the relationships of wheels to bikes- for every bike there are two wheels. 

Below you can see two recent math games in action- Domino Parking Lot which is played independently, and Count and Collect which is played in partners.  These games are fantastic ways to work on the concept of many ways to make a number.  A domino displaying 10 could show 4 and 6, or 5 and 5.  Similarly, to land your chip on 20, it may take four times of rolling a 5 or many more times if rolling smaller numbers.

Working Around the Glitches

It's been a while since I posted simply because I encountered a problem with all my photos turning sideways when I transferred them from email.  Well, I'm back!  And I will do my best to catch you up.  Soon after we returned from break we found ourselves feeling "winter-y" but with no snow on the ground.  No problem I thought, let's read a classic- Lois Ehlert's Snowballs.  In this book Ehlert, being the amazing illustrator that she is, collages together snow people with natural and found materials.  We took to the playground to collect and then added to our collection with items from the craft shelves.  The next day we created our "snow creatures" and the day after that we named them and wrote about what materials we used. Finally, we had a ton a fun playing a guessing game in the hallway as I looked at the display, read the clues that each child wrote, and then the children guessed which snowman/woman/dog/rockstar etc. was which!  Have a look.

So Much to Celebrate!

Happy New Year and welcome back to this blog in 2019! Before we left school for the break we had two fantastic events in our classroom.  The first was our Story Celebration at which several adult guests came to our room  to listen to the children read their stories.  Akash from School's Out, Ms. Amblo (guidance), Nurse Barry, Ms. Collaro (Literacy Coach), Lobsang (custodian) and of course Mrs. Hayden and Mrs. Knox who played a key role in each student writing a story, were all present to appreciate the hard work of being an author/illustrator.  Have a look... and I apologize for the photo orientation!

On Friday we had our Winter Workshop!  Many parents were on hand to help create some gifts to enhance the spirit of giving.

Better luck in the tech department for me in 2019!