We Are In Community

 The title of this post takes it's name from a line in the Orchard School Song. Did you  know we have one?  We sing it at our all school morning meetings every other Friday!  Here are a little bit of the lyrics:

"Here we are /altogether / we are in community / we are one, here at Orchard / altogether in unity"

So lets start in our room- the classroom community!  Here's a look at our new rug.

Moving outside to the courtyard... we like to think we share this space with the Fairies!  Here you can see us building enchanted, small places to attract fairies (some children even left notes) and also helping out by pulling up old sunflowers because it's the end of the season.

Moving out from our "epicenter", this week we had our first Farm to School Session.  Carol McQuillen (former Orchard teacher and current director of Common Roots) and her team deliver carefully planned, hands-on lessons about nutrition and nourishment from the farm. Here are some pictures of our crew doing Apple Yoga, reading an apple story, and chopping and pounding to make apple butter!

And now for the Fun Run- where the community joined US and we're all doing our part to raise our spirits, our fitness, and our funds for Orchard!  Here is a little time line from start to finish.

Learning with Nature IN doors and OUT

 There's a lot of research out there that supports the power of nature to help us relax and feel a part of our surroundings. I think children AND grown ups feel this intuitively as well. With the addition of some collections that families have sent in, the children are creating some magnificent nature constructions and designs.

On Friday we took to the outdoors to search for Signs of Fall.  If you read the previous post you can see how we began the day by predicting what we might find on the search. In the picture below the children are carrying checklists for keeping track as we looked for different color leaves, straw, a pumpkin, a squirrel scurrying, a scarecrow, wind, and more!

Routines In Our Room

It's 7:50 and the children start to filter into the room. After putting  things in their cubbies and making a lunch choice, each child stops by the Morning Message to have a go at the day's job.  Either myself or Ms.Finn is stationed nearby to read and talk it through before sending children to their table spot to complete their answer which they then bring back to tape up.

As you may know from the newsletter, we completed our first Math Menu cycle this past week!  Here is a look at the chart we used to help the class understand how to check off activities as they complete them.  

In addition to Math Menu which happens on several afternoons throughout the week, one typical mid-morning routine is doing a hands-on activity that reinforces a concept from a Literacy Mini-Lesson.  Here you can see us using cereal alphabet letters to spell names and snap words. This followed a lesson about letters coming together to make words.  You can also see us labeling the colors we mixed which followed a reading of Mouse Paint. We've added the color words to our word wall!

A less frequent routine for us is the bi-weekly All School Morning Meetings over Zoom.  This is an adaptation of what we used to do IN-PERSON in the gym every Friday morning.  Below you a can see our class paying closed attention to a student sharing about this month's Reading to Raise Anti-Racists' selection: Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins Bigelow

 

Poetry, Partners, Power (of Yet) and PJs!

 The title of this post says it all!  There is so much to share...

Our poetry journals are works-in-progress that won't come home until the end of the year. Almost every week we make an entry as a way of using our snap words as stepping stones for reading. Poems are also a fun way to use memory, rhyme, and our growing knowledge of letter sounds.  Here you can see the children incorporating science learning about sunflowers and seasonal change into their illustrations.

Partner games are a favorite way to promote math reasoning AND friendship skills.  

Partners can play games together AND make art together!

Some things are fun to do on your own.  Like use the teacher's pointer while you build and feel the Power of Yet. As the song says, "perseverance is paramount"!

After all this work and play, a little relaxing in our PJs was well deserved.  Congrats to the crew for filling our Core Values Chart for the second time.

Building Structures, Building Skills

 As promised I have some catching up to do.  Looking over the past two weeks many of the photos highlight the incredible work the children are doing with designing and building. This is no surprise since we have a shape focus in Math, however the children tap into their design skills during Explore time as well.  Have a look:

During Math we used the book A Shape is Just a Shape as an inspiration to create our own pages about the shapes we see in the world.  A trapezoid can become a boat!

During Explore time children create in two and three dimensions.

Even the chalk became a building material in the courtyard one afternoon.

Once you start focusing on noticing shapes, you can't stop!

Exploring All Around Orchard School

 This past week we had a lot of fun with shapes.  Inside the classroom the children used pattern blocks to make different pictures and recorded how many of each shape they used.

We also went beyond our classroom to see what kind of shapes we could find all around Orchard school.  It was pretty cool to stop and think that the whole world is made of shapes.  Below you can see us finding a triangle, square, and circle.

There is learning to be done and fun to be had all around Orchard!  One of our favorite spaces is the courtyard.  On Friday we took sometime to pick and eat authentic "Orchard School Apples".  We also put our number writing skills to use making hopscotch games and designed and built fairy houses with natural materials.

Back in the classroom we took a few minutes to settle in with some books...the ones we've made and have been saving in our keep boxes!  

Growing Confidence, Growing Friendships

    A look back over this second week reveals how we are making connections through new experiences. Learning takes place in so many ways throughout the day- have a look!

 Below you can see new friendships forming and turn-taking skills strengthening as partners collaborate on different ways to build a hexagon in a math game.

Here you can see tablemates concentrating and sharing collective materials as they work on individual books for their "keepbox" collections.

In this group experience, Ms. Finn guided the children in completing their own copy of the class graph that showed the different ways classmates get to school in the morning.

Sometimes important discoveries are made quietly on your own. Watercolor painting provided this opportunity.

Reaching our goal of 100 apple cores for using Core Values earned us our first whole class celebration- extra recess! It was a great way to end the week.