Our Final First Grade Project!

Today was the last day of our 2012-2013 school year! This morning we had Step-Up Day where students all got to go to their new classroom and meet their new teacher and new class for next year! I got to meet all of my incoming first graders for the fall which was both lots of fun and showed me just how big and grown up my current first graders have become! I had such a fun year and am going to miss my class! I received so many flowers, cards, gifts, hugs, and some tears today. Thank you. I feel very loved and hope that my class does too. I am excited for next year but still have a heavy heart sending my class on!

Yesterday our class made our final project of the school year which was a book for the incoming class called, The Scoop About First Grade. Each student made a page for the book with a large ice cream cone on it. On one of the ice cream scoops they wrote, "In first grade we _____" and filled in the blank with one of the important things we learned or did this year. This morning I read the book to our class, then again to my new class during Step-Up to help get them excited about first grade. Here are the things our class wrote:
"In first grade we...
hatch chicks
write "All About Chicks" books
go to the Flynn Theater to see a play
learn about Mexico
read harder books
write a lot
make a Vowel Bat during word study
make chick projects
go to Airport Park for Field Day and the bike ride
learn to read
do weather projects
do harder math
read chapter books at Read Aloud time
learn about chicks and play with them
write in Monday Journals
have two math journals"

Below are photos of our class making the pages for the book. Enjoy and have a wonderful, safe, fun, and restful summer! I hope to see you all in the fall!

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Field Day

Today was Field Day for students at Union Memorial School! Our whole school spent the day at Airport Park rotating between stations to participate in activities including rope tug, potato sack race, water balloon toss, a water bucket and sponge relay race, blowing giant bubbles, jumping in a bouce house, playing "duck, duck, splash," and playing with frisbees, soccer balls, stilts, and all sorts of fun PE toys! We also had a whole-school BBQ at the park and enjoyed a visit from the ice cream truck, whose driver gave everyone a free popsicle! To make today even better, the rain held off! We had a wonderful day and below is a slide show of photos. If you came with us today, took photos, and would like to email them to me, I will make a second slide show!

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First Grade Bike Trip

Today was our annual First Grade Bike Trip! This morning Ms. Barnett's class and ours rode a bus to Airport park where we met up with many wonderful family members who had volunteered to bring our bikes to the park and ride with us. We rode from the park in Colchester, down the bike path, along Lake Champlain, into the north end of Burlington, then rode back and had a picnic lunch in the park. Mrs. Sorenson's and Mrs. Hughes' classes made the same trip a little bit later in the day and we all were able to avoid most of the rain that came this afternoon! Thank you so much to all of our wonderful volunteers for helping to make this trip so much fun! Here are photos from yesterday, and I just added more. If you took photos on the bike ride and would like to send them to me I will add them in!

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Chick iMovie

Here is an iMovie I created documenting the life cycle of our chicks as it took place in our classroom!It has also been posted to YouTube so that other classroom teachers and students beyond our school can view it!

All About Chicks Writing Share

Our class wrapped up our unit studying the life cycle of chicks with what we call a "publishing party!" As with all of our science and social studies units, students have been putting together "lap books," (which are folders full of their learning on the topic) throughout the course of the unit. On Friday we went through our lap books and gathered many pieces of writing including procedural pieces, labeled diagrams, an introduction, and an "About the Author" page to make into "All About Chicks" books. After the books were bound we had our publishing party, where students got together with different buddies to read, share, and celebrate the books they created! Below are some wonderful candid photos of students sharing with different friends in our class. The "All About" books went home yesterday and the lapbooks with all of our other learning went home today so you can see much of what we did over the course of the unit!

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