Holiday Party!

Today was our last school day before the December break! We wrapped up our day with a holiday party where many parents joined us for special treats and some fun! We played the dreidel game, made paper reindeer and trees, and enjoyed a break from our usual routine. Thank you to all the parents who sent in goodies and joined us for our celebration! Have a wonderful break and a safe, happy holiday!

Picture slideshow customized with Smilebox

Crayon Resist Tree Project

This week students worked on an art project in class making Christmas Trees with crayons, water color paint, and construction paper. We did something very cool, called Crayon Resist, where we drew snowflakes with white crayon on white paper, then watched them "magically appear" when we painted over them with blue water color paint! We then used rulers to measure different sized construction paper strips which we cut out and glued onto our snowflake papers to make a tree! Our last step was to decorate the trees with glitter, sequins, and a star at the top. Below is a slideshow of our process. We loved this project and the trees came out beautifully.

This picture slideshow created with Smilebox

Holiday Sing Along

On Wednesday December 19 UMS had our annual holiday sing along! Ms. Mutz, our wonderful music teacher, led the whole school in singing songs about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, and more that the children had been practicing in music class! Below are some photos of the sing-along.

Places in Our World Theme Study

First grade students are beginning a unit of study called "Places in Our World." All four first grade classrooms will be doing a country study of Mexico as the focus of our unit. Our class wrapped up our mapping unit early this week where we spent some time learning about where Mexico is in relation to the United States and in the world. This week we did some learning about December holidays in Mexico including Las Posadas, which takes place between December 16-24. We also learned about Poinsettias, which originally bloomed only in Mexico during December. We have a red and green Poinsettia in our room and have done reading and art to learn more about this beautiful plant from Mexico! Below are a few photos of students holding their Poinsettia artwork. We will continue learning about Mexico after we return from December break.

Poetry

Our class is learning about poetry writing! We will be working on poetry for the couple weeks leading up to break then revisit it during the spring. Poetry is a very fun genre of writing for beginning writers because poems can have as much or as little structure as the writer wants, they can be any length or format, and can be about absolutely anything! We have only been working on this for a few days so far but I am already so impressed by the poems the first graders in our class are writing! Below is a poem about snow that we did as a whole-class shared writing activity yesterday.

Snow
falls from the sky.
Snow
comes from clouds.
Snow
falls heavy.
Snow
melts.
No more snow!

CHS Holiday Chorus Performance at UMS

This morning the Freshman Chorus from Colchester High School came to UMS and did a singing performance of different holiday songs for our students! Several of the singers are former UMS students! The chorus will be having a concert at the high school at 7pm next Wednesday December 19 for anyone interested in hearing them sing. It was a special treat to hear them sing for us at school today!

DARE

In January our class will have four DARE lessons, one each week, with Officer Fontaine of the Colchester Police Department. DARE is a great program that teaches students about making safe, healthy choices. DARE looks a bit different at each grade level. In first grade, DARE focuses on personal safety. The four lessons are titled: 1) Personal Safety 2) Drugs: Helpful or Harmful (for first graders the focus is on medicine and medications that might be at home. The lesson teaches children that medicine can be both helpful and harmful and that they should never take it on their own) 3) Learning to Say No 4) Dealing with Angry Feelings If you have any questions about the DARE lessons please let me know!

Photos of Each Grade

On Friday December 7 photos will be taken of all students in each grade for the cover of our yearbook. Please have your child wear his or her UMS t-shirt to school that day for the photo!

Maps and Globes

First graders are learning about mapping during our social studies theme time. Our class has been spending time discussing what maps are used for and what different types of maps there are. We have also been looking a lot at the globe, learning about the continents, the north and south pole, and the equator. For the past two days we have been discussing the difference between globes and maps and have started to learn about the cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west). We will be learning more about maps over the next few weeks! Here are photos of each child with our globe and a map of the USA!

A free slideshow by Smilebox

Thanksgiving projects

This week during school we read books, made projects, and had discussions in preparation for Thanksgiving. We read a nonfiction book by Gail Gibbons called, Thanksgiving Is..., then made our own Thanksgiving Is... books to take home. We made another take-home book called I Am Thankful For... and discussed many of the things we have to be thankful for. Two funny books we read this week were called Turkey Trouble and Run, Turkey, Run! which are fictional stories about how the turkey escapes just before Thanksgiving leaving the farmer to eat pizza (in one book) or grilled cheese sandwiches (in the other book) for Thanksgiving! Early in the week we made adorable paper turkeys with speech bubbles next to them telling what we are thankful for. You will find those hung on the wall outside our classroom when you come in for conferences Monday and Tuesday. Today we made miniature turkeys out of Oreo cookies and a cute Thankgiving picture frame project Elizabeth brought in for everyone! Below are photos of kids working on these different projects. Happy Thanksgiving!

Create your own free photo slideshow

Schoolwide Meeting

Monday we had a schoolwide meeting. Mrs. Thibault's class lead us all in a pirate song, Mrs. Howard's class showed us a new greeting, and everyone got to see the ballot box being used in the library on Tuesday. Students got to vote for either the book Duck for President or Grace for President this week during library class. We will see who wins our school election!

Election

Our class has been talking about the national election coming up on Tuesday! I mentioned who the two presidential candidates are but have spent most time discussing elections and voting. We have talked about who can vote (U.S citizens over age 18- though many of the students told me that they feel ready to vote now ;), how we vote, where we vote, why we vote, and what the terms "vote," "candidate," and "election" mean. Every classroom teacher at UMS has been reading the books Grace for President and Duck for President which are very cute stories that help children understand more about voting and elections. Next week students will decide who they think would be a better president, Duck, or Grace. During library class students will cast their vote and we will see who the students of UMS choose. Will it be Grace or Duck? Ask your child next week what the results of our election were! Below is a photo of the two books.

Halloween

We had lots of fun on Halloween! During the afternoon we had some costumed guests from Colchester High School come to school to do dramatic readings of Halloween books for all of the students. At the end of the day we had a harvest party where students made black cat and candy corn crafts and ate treats brought in by lots of very special family visitors! Thank you to all the parents who helped out with our party! Below are photos from our Halloween events.

Slideshow design customized with Smilebox

RAZ Kids

Over the past week and a half children in our class have been practicing using their RAZ Kids accounts as well as a listening station in our classroom during Readers' Workshop. RAZ Kids is a wonderful online resource to which UMS teachers have a subscription. Each student uses a password to log in to a web page with "good fit books" at their reading level to practice reading. Our listening station gives students the ability to listen and follow along with high quality children's literature that is above their current "good fit" reading level. In our classroom, Readers' Workshop looks like a whole class mini-lesson on a reading skill, then silent, independent reading, followed by literacy stations (currently the station choices are buddy reading, RAZ kids, and listening), and last a quick, whole-group reading share. As the school year continues I will introduce more literacy station activities for students to choose from to increase the variety of ways they practice interacting with text. Below are a few photos of students using the listening station and their RAZ Kids accounts. Don't forget, your child can access their RAZ Kids account from home by clicking the RAZ Kids tab at the top of my blog!

Plastic Spoon Request

During snack time each morning students very frequently request spoons. The two boxes of spoons I had left from parties last year are nearly gone. If you are able to donate plastic spoons to our classroom it would be much appreciated. Alternately please consider keeping a clean, re-useable metal or plastic spoon in your child's snack bag to help us avoid creating lots of plastic waste in our trash. Thank you!

Colchester Fire Station Trip

On Monday Ms. Barnett's class and our class walked to one of the two Colchester fire stations in town, just down the street from our school. We learned so much about some of the very important community helpers right here in town. We learned about lots of the tools fire fighters use and the gear that they wear to fight fires. One of the fire fighters helped Ms. Barnett put on all of the fire gear so students could see all the parts and see that even though a fire suit can look scary there is someone friendly who you can trust inside. Both classes also got a chance to sit in all of the different seats inside a fire truck and watch one of the firemen slide down the fire pole! First graders have been learning about community helpers during our social studies theme time and our trips in town have helped us to meet some of Colchester's community helpers.

This digital slideshow created with Smilebox

Burnham Library Trip

This afternoon Ms. Barnett's class and our class took a walking field trip to the Burnham Memorial Library in town! We listened to a story, learned about the exciting things we can do at the library, and learned how to look for books we want in the library. Students got a chance to pick out books and read. Several students got new library cards today and many students who had cards checked out books to bring home today! We had a very fun time checking out one of the important places in our community today.

This picture slideshow customized with Smilebox

Schoolwide Meeting

Today was our first UMS Schoolwide Meeting of the year. Schoolwide meeting follows the same format as a morning meeting (reading the message, greeting, share, activity, news and announcements) except that the entire school does our meeting together in the cafeteria (we do this about once a month at UMS)! Classes take turns running either the greeting, share, or activity portion of the meeting and today our class did a share for the school. We have been practicing the song "What We Are," as seen on Sesame Street (performed by the Sesame Street animals and rapper Will.i.am) for the last two weeks so that we could sing it for the school at meeting. This song has an incredibly fun beat and a wonderful message about believing in yourself. Below are some photos of the class performing and the original video we watched to learn the song. The video played on the big screen in the cafeteria while we sang so the whole school could see it. Enjoy. I absolutely love this song and it was SO fun teaching it to my class! Link to Sesame Street Song

A photo slideshow by Smilebox

Open House

Last night was Open House at UMS! We had a fantastic turn out of family members and the students got a chance to show off all the work they have done so far this school year! Thank you to everyone who came and helped make it an exciting night!

Free digital slideshow generated with Smilebox

Word Study

Each morning after our class Morning Meeting our class works on word study. This half hour of the day gives us the very important chance to practice consonants and vowels, sight words, word families, spelling, and penmanship skills. The words and word families you will see coming home each Monday for homework are words and word families we are learning and reviewing during word study. Each day we do something a little different during word study, giving us many different ways to practice building words. Some of these activities include songs, games, poems, word sorts, word writing worksheets, word writing on small dry erase boards, word building on the smartboard, and more! Below are some photos of students completing word sorts for word families we are practicing in class.

Slideshow made with Smilebox

Recess Running Program

Starting this week at recess on Tuesdays and Thursdays first and second graders at UMS have the fun and healthy opportunity to participate in a running fitness challenge! There are four large signs on our playground, labeled 1-4, set up so that when students run around the playground and touch each number in order four times they have run a mile! A recess duty teacher holds foot-shaped punch cards for each child to record how many laps they have run. After running a mile and receiving four hole punches students receive a little plastic foot charm with a bracelet to hang it on. Students collect these feet and after running 5 miles they receive a "5 mile medal" charm for their bracelet. If students reach 20 miles they receive a special rubber bracelet that reads "Mileage Club!" The children have all been very excited about this program and the majority of them chose to run a mile at recess both on Tuesday and on Thursday of this week! Running at recess will be a choice every Tuesday and Thursday weather permitting and is such a fun way to excercise! Here are a couple photos of kids with the "feet" they earned. I will post more photos of the program soon!

Readers' Workshop

Readers' Workshop is well under way in our first grade classroom and I wanted to take a moment to share about it. Each day Readers' Workshop begins with a focus lesson where the class learns something new. At this point in the year lessons are focused on topics such as how to pick out "good fit books," how to use our classroom library, how to read silently and read quietly with a partner, how to choose a reading spot in the classroom, how to use a book box (for student choice books) and book bag (for good fit books picked by the teacher). After the short focus lesson students have time to practice independently reading to self, reading to a partner, and practicing the skill taught in the focus lesson. The third and final component to Readers' Workshop is a share time. The class comes back together and students have a chance to share what they practiced related to the focus lesson. For example today's focus lesson focused on how to pick a good reading spot in the classroom. Our share time gave students an opportunity to tell the group how they picked a successful spot and what they did there to make it a successful choice during silent reading. Below are some photos of the kids in action during Readers' Workshop on a few different days.

Free picture slideshow created with Smilebox

Guidance

Every Tuesday morning Mrs. McCleary, our school guidance counselor, comes to teach a lesson in our classroom! She has been teaching us about important social skills for the beginning of first grade such as tattling versus reporting (reporting is when something is unsafe or someone might get hurt), interrupting, and personal space. If you click on the tab that says "UMS/CSD links" at the top of my blog you will be taken to a page with links for other teacher blogs. One of those links is for Mrs. McCleary's blog. Below are a few photos taken during guidance lessons in our room.

Self Portraits

During the first six weeks of school at UMS students are spending lots of time learning about themselves and each other as we all build classroom community, develop rules, jobs, and hopes and dreams together. One of our favorite September activities in first grade is the creation of self portraits. We have been reading books, singing songs, and doing activities to celebrate how we are alike, different, and how we all are special. We have been working hard with paint, paper collage, scissors, and glue to create beautiful portraits of ourselves over the last three weeks. These will all be hung up in the classroom for everyone to see at Open House in October! Below are some photos of our process. Enjoy!

This slideshow generated with Smilebox

Counting Project

As part of math workshop this September our class has been doing lots and lots of counting. We made a long list of all the things we could count in our classroom and started counting them and recording our results in pairs. We did lots of great math thinking as the children discovered that counting large quantities by 1 could take a very long time and could get very frustrating if they lost count! Pairs moved from counting by 1 to grouping items they counted and practicing counting by 5s and 10s. We had many great discussions about ways to count and record, how to keep track of our counting, how to check our answers, and how to work on counting with a partner. After many days of counting lots of different items both in our classroom and out on the playground we decided that we were going to try counting all of our unifix cubes as a class (and we have Lots of them!). This project took us several days but we learned a lot! We used ziploc bags to make groups of 10 cubes, then decided to put groups of 10 ziploc bags into plastic grocery bags (to make groups of 100 cubes). The class did a fantastic job of working together, grouping, bagging, and checking their answers until we were ready to do a final count. We ended up with 17 grocery bags of 100, 4 ziploc bags of 10, and 1 extra unifix cubes giving us a grand total of 1,741 unifix cubes! The class was very excited when we reached our final answer. Here are some photos of our process!

Personalize a photo slideshow

Constitution Day

Monday September 17 was Constitution Day. This is great timing in our school year because each September we spend lots of time talking about school rules and why we need rules. On Monday Ms. Barnes' class led us in a Constitution Day assembly and the children learned that the Constitution is like a set of rules for our whole country!

This slideshow made with Smilebox