Parent Conference Sign-Up

Don't forget!

Report cards go home on Friday 2/19

Parent Conferences are Monday 2/29 and Tuesday 3/1

           You can sign up for your conference time by following this link I just added to the right sidebar of this blog (Parent Conference Sign-Up: Pick-a-Time)

The town and school budget votes take place at CHS on Monday 3/1. Please, please get out and vote!

I Love to Read and Write Party

Today as our Valentine's Day celebration we had an "I Love to Read and Write" party in class. Students got to show off their growing reading and writing skills to the many family members who came to join us. Afterward we had snacks and got to enjoy some time having families visit our room. Thank you so much to all of the may family members who joined us and helped make this special! The kids are doing such an amazing job learning to read and write and it was great to be able to show off their progress!

100th Day

February 3 was our 100th Day of School and I forgot to post our photos! We did lots of fun things related to the number 100 in order to celebrate including doing a rotation between the four first grade classes. Each teacher had a different activity related to the number 100 and the students rotated between the four rooms in order to participate in each one. We had a blast!

PhotoSnack | 100th Day (1) - published slideshow details

Scholastic News

Every Friday we have been using our science and social studies time to read Scholastic News Magazine. This is such a fantastic resource because it teaches the kids about important or just fun and interesting non-fiction topics in a very engaging way (while also learning about nonfiction text features). The students each get a copy of the magazine and they look at it as we are logged into our Scholastic News account from which we can project the magazine and accompanying resources on the big screen with our interactive projector. The website allows us to watch a short video giving context for the information we will read, read and interact with the magazine, learn key vocabulary words, and play a related, interactive game.

I have posted photos of us interacting with this before but wanted to post again to share a few of the recent topics. We have learned about some important American Holidays such as Veterans day and more recently Martin Luther King, Jr. Day through Scholastic News. On Monday we will use SN to learn about President's Day. In today's issue we learned about idioms specifically related to the heart since it is so close to Valentine's Day. We learned what idioms like "heart of gold," "pulling on your heartstrings," "learning something by heart," "stealing your heart," and "wearing your heart on your sleeve" mean. We also discussed other idioms we hear a lot such as "hold your horses," "ants in your pants," and "piece of cake" mean. See what other idioms you and your child might notice as people talk to each other at home!

Classroom Creation

Today a group of the boys made a very impressive dinosaur out of our linker cubes. They were very proud of it and wanted to share!

PAX

Our class has been doing something called PAX all year and we started a fantastic new component to it last week. PAX has many components to it but the main idea is that PAX means "peace" and PAX behaviors are those we want to see more of in our classroom (such as sharing, quiet voices, helping others, bodies to self, kind words, etc). To have a PAX classroom we talk daily about PAX voices, PAX hands, PAX feet, and what it means to be a PAX leader (someone who regularly does all of the things we decided are PAX behaviors). You can ask your child about many of the things we do throughout the day like PAX quiet and the PAX game!

The next component we recently added is "PAX-it Notes." Students (and teachers) "catch each other doing something good" and write each other PAX-it notes which we are reading aloud then hanging on the door. We keep them up for the day then send them home and start over for the next day. Some of the messages they wrote today include "you had a great quiet raised hand during Morning Meeting", "I noticed that you were ignoring distractions at at writing time," "you helped me feel better when I was sad," "I saw you cleaning up calmly and quietly after break," "you were very focused during math," etc. I am chuckling to myself typing these because the kids are starting to sound like little teachers but this has really been amazing! The students are learning to notice and acknowledge the good things their peers are doing and this has really been furthering our sense of classroom community. Please take a look at PAX-it notes you see coming home and ask your child about them!

Groundhog Day

Happy February! We are learning about Groundhog Day today and Phil has predicted that spring will come early this year (although it seems like it already has)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg1PhRNfejs