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