Happy Holidays

We had a fantastic PJ day today at school. We finished up our writing journals and even had time to enjoy some hot cocoa and watch a movie! I wish you all the very best for the end of 2013 and look forward to seeing you all again in 2014!

Happy Holidays!

Newsletter: Week of December 16

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Want to be an elf? Raney's Rock Stars most certainly do!

I caught some elves in my classroom today ;-)



Happy Holidays to all! I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends.

Fire Safety with Hartford's Fire Dept.

Today Fire Fighter Morse came to our classroom to talk about fire safety. It was the first of six visits he will do this year. He spoke about the importance of having a meeting place outside your home in the event of a fire, where smoke detectors are located, and when to crawl vs walk out of your home if a fire was taking place.

Holiday of Music: Total Success!

Wednesday night was a total success at Dothan Brook School. What a beautiful holiday concert we had. Thank you to all of our families for support our students and attending this event. Even though we were all a little sleepy today, it was totally worth it! So proud of each of them!

Newsletter: Week of December 2

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Estimation and Ginger Bread Houses

This week we focused on collections of things. We estimated and then counted to find the actual amount of various items. First, we had 62 Hersey kisses. Then, we had 842 pasta noodles. Lastly, we had 372 M&M's. Through counting such large quantities, many students soon discovered they needed a strategy in order to remember their number. This became our discovery of grouping by tens and then rows of one hundred. Students were able to look at a number, such as 62 and show what the 6 stood for. Instead of thinking it stood for 6 pieces or the last group of ten counted, they now circle around the entire 60. It was really great to watch them.

Lastly, today Mrs. Krom from our PTO came into the classroom and helped us decorate our very own gingerbread house. Groups of 3-4 students went at a time and each child was able to add 6 pieces of their choice. Thanks to the donations from our families and the rest of the DBS community, there was plenty of candy to choose from. While students were helping create our real gingerbread house, others were using illustrations from Jan Brett (our current author study) to create their own paper houses. 

Adding candy

Adding even more candy!

Adding Peep Snowmen to the side of our house

The final product

It came out perfectly unique and beautiful!

Creating Jan Brett inspired gingerbread houses

Counting up the M&M's

NEED: Gumdrops and Snowcaps before Friday!!

This year we will be creating a classroom gingerbread house to be donated for auction at The Family Place. We need lots of gumdrops and Snowcap candy before this Friday. Please send the candy in with your child if you are able to help. Thank you!  

Happy Thanksgiving to All

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday break! Please remember to pack your child with snow pants, boots, jacket, hat and mittens every day. Also, send your child in with a pair of indoor shoes. Thank you!

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No Newsletter or Friday Folder this week

There will be no newsletter or Friday Folder today. Instead, their folders and a newsletter will be going home on Tuesday.

Pilgrim Story Audio Book

Students worked together this week to decide how pilgrim life was different than life today. We watched various videos and read a few books to help us. With these notes, we created a class book comparing Pilgrim Life to life today. Take a look :-)

Kid Blogging: Behind The Scenes.

Students were typing their journal entries onto the new iPads that have been designated for the K-2nd graders. 

Two girls learning and teaching each other how to upload a picture of their journal to their personal blog! 

Newsletter: Week of November 12

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Using KidBlog: Now With Parent Sign-In

Watch this video to find out how to set-up your parent access to your child's blog. Your personalized access code is coming home today with our newsletter.

Here We Go! Kid Blogging...

So...today we tried something completely new to me and my students...each student attempted to post to their own Blog! Eeeekkkk!

Let me back up a little bit. Last week, Vermont held a technology conference for teachers throughout the state and our district's tech integration specialist went. She came back with some great ideas for the classroom and kid blogging was one of them.

Through the site, Kidblog, I was able to create a classroom account. Inside this account, I was able to create an individual blog for each student. As far as the students are aware, these accounts are only accessible through school. (So if your child comes home wanting to log on, please let them know they can only post while at school.)

My hope is to use these blogs as electronic journal posts and to allow students to post weekly. However, this program is completely new to me.  I am not  promising anything of myself or of my students in how often or how well we will be using Kidblog at this time. We will take it as it comes and use it as well as we can with the time and materials we have available.

Sooo...feel free to take a look, add a comment to your kid's work, add comments to other students, and enjoy! Please email me with any questions you may have.

Click Here for Our KidBlog!

Newsletter: Week of November 4

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Classroom Request

If anyone buys eggs in the plastic foldable containers, please send them in with your child. We will be using them in math. 

Book Fair Schedule

During Parent-Teacher conference week and the week following, DBS will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair in the Library. Here are the dates and times the Book Fair will be open:

Thursday 11/7     12:30 - 4 in the lobby

Friday 11/8     8-3 in the lobby

Tuesday 11/12 and Wednesday 11/13  7:30-8:15, 2:30-3:15 in the library

and

Friday 11/15 7:30-8:15 in the library and 6-8pm (movie night) in the lobby

*Next Thursday 11/14 is classroom visit day. We will be going to the Book Fair together. If you would like, you may send money in with your child to make a book purchase on that day. Your child is welcome to visit the Book Fair with you at a different time posted above as well. 

Matter and So Much More

This week we began our science unit on Matter. We discussed what matter was, and the three different states of matter. To begin this unit, we joined classes and introduced the topic together. We then classified objects by solids, liquids and gases. The following day, we conducted a science experiment using ice balloons. We predicted what would happen to the ice once heat was applied. We had great science discussions around our predictions and compared those predictions to the results of our test. Feel free to ask your child to name a solid, liquid or gas around them. Most of us are starting to classify objects on our own.

Introducing Matter to the first grade students

Making our predictions

Using our senses to describe different properties of the ice balloons

Newsletter: Week of October 28

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Unity Day Video

Check out this video compiled by Charleigh Gere's family. Charleigh is a student at our Middle School, and has become well-known as an anti-bullying advocate with @WillUStand.

Click Here to Check It Out

Author Study: Kevin Henkes

Over the past few weeks, we have been taking a close look at Kevin Henkes, a well known children's author. We have enjoyed many of his stories, and even wrote individual opinion pieces around a character within one of his books. To close out this author study, we reviewed each of the books we had read in class and each student chose which book was his/her favorite and why. Each student created a picture illustrating a moment within the text that made the book their favorite. To accompany these illustrations, last week everyone made a digital version of their picture. Take a look on our padlet wall to see their creations. Feel free to add a comment too! Simply double-click on the padlet "wall" and it will open a comment box for you to fill out.

Kevin Henkes Author Study: Padlet Wall

click above

Newsletter: Week of October 21

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Unity Day was the ULTIMATE Success!

Our signs are ready for the assembly!

Raney's Rock Stars rocking out at the school-wide assembly

Putting together our Bully Prevention booklets!
"Be brave, be bold, a teacher must be told"

The "real" DBS Otter came to visit!

What an amazing community our school has! Today was such a great example at how inclusive, caring and supportive Dothan Brook is to every one of its members! I am so proud to work for this school. Today started off with Walk & Ride to school, where students were decked out in orange! Orange shirts, hats, mittens, posters, banners, backpack tags and much more! Upon entering the school, our hallways were filled with bright orange teachers...some even sprayed their hair orange for the day ;-) As students arrived, they received their Bully Prevention pencil toppers created by our 5th grade students, and began their morning journals while writing with an orange colored pencil.  Each student was given a wrist band, individualized with their personal message to stop/prevent bullying from happening in our school. Students created more posters and banners to bring to our All School Assembly.

At the assembly, there were several videos and performances. The teaching staff even pulled off a "flash mob" during the choir's performance of the Unity song.  The students were in complete disbelief. Later in the day, I was told I should become a professional break dancer because, I "got skills!" LOL, I just love them all!

Later in the day, we hung up our posters in the hallways and began creating Bullying Prevention books. However, with how busy today was we did not get to finish them and will be working on them again tomorrow.

After the day was complete, I couldn't stop thinking how wonderful Dothan Brook School really is!

Exciting New Technology in the Classroom!

New Chrome Books have arrived for the K-2 classrooms! So exciting! This morning a few students were able to finish their morning work in time to check them out!

Students are learning how to "log-on". It can be quite tricky, as they
 need to use their Google Account addresses to do so!

Gearing Up for Unity Day: Anti-Bullying

Check out the great article and video WCAX did about DBS today!

Hartford students band together against bullying - WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-

Video For Parents

Last Friday, our K-5 educators throughout the district spent the day focused on our math curriculum and how to align it to the new national standards. During this in-service, a video was shown highlighting the difference between a fixed and growth mindset. It really impressed me, and I thought I would share it with all of you. If you have a moment, please take a look.

Newsletter: Week of October 14

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Parent-Teacher Conference Sign-Ups & Homework

It's that time of year already! Parent-Teacher conferences will be held the week of November 4th. Inside your child's Friday Folder has a sign up sheet attached to their newsletter. Please choose your top 5 choices of time you would like to meet with me. Conferences will last 20 minutes each. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Also, this weekend and most weekends moving forward there will be optional homework for students and parents. Following our social skills curriculum, Second Step, there is a "home link" to be completed weekly. Each week, students learn a new skill or build upon skills already learned, and as an extension have a home link to complete. If you child returns their home link on Monday, they will earn $1 Otter Buck.

A few students building some block creations after finishing their opinion writing pieces today!

We did it!!! We reached $1000 Otter Bucks!

To celebrate reaching $1000 together, the 1st graders enjoyed an extra recess this afternoon!

Newsletter: Week of October 7

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Picture Day and Much More!

Today picture day went great! Everyone was dressed so nice, and the weather was perfect for our class picture to be taken outside. I can't wait for them to come in. We continued our author study throughout the week, reading more books by Kevin Henkes. We also began to take a closer look at the number 10; what number combinations could add up to 10, place value, counting by 10's starting at 10 or starting at other numbers, and so much more!

Author Study: Kevin Henkes

This week we started our author study on Kevin Henkes. He has written several children's books. To begin, we read "Wemberly's Worries". This story is about a little mouse who worries about many things (most of them that would never happen).  Afterwards, we wrote about our own worries. Our list included:

-the dark

-monsters

-the first day of school

-substitute bus drivers 

And much more...

We created our own mice and added worry circles around them. These paintings are now our new bulletin!

 

Newsletter: Week of September 30

Weekly Newsletter

Wowzer!!!!! What a busy week!

This week we dove deep,deep,deep into the question, "What are some of the changes that happen in Fall?" We began by reading, "It's Fall" by Linda Glaser. We used this text all week to take notes and discover the changes of Fall happening around us. We created a class book to capture all of the information we had collected. Today, students wrote their first formal writing piece in response to the question, "What are some of the changes that happen in Fall?" Take a look at the video link below to hear the audio version of our class book.

Fall Audio Book

Our Community Helpers

Created with Padlet

Newsletter: Week of September 23

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First Grade Fun

Busy, busy, busy was the theme of the week. We accomplished so many things in such a short amount of time. First, everyone came in with amazing alphabet items, and clues too! If you haven't already check out our Padlet wall to see them all. Then, we completed our 5 Senses unit on Tuesday. Most students were able to identify each of the 5 senses as well as how each of those senses helped them survive. We discussed Community Helpers this week. We identified what they are, who they are in our community and how they help us. We used the computer lab to create digital art work of our Community Helpers. Stay tuned for the link! Lastly, we ended the week with writing in our September journals and Relax Reading in the afternoon! We definitely had a lot of first grade fun this week!

Staying warm! Remember to pack to your child with layers as the seasons are changing :-)

Classroom Damage...

Today it came to my attention that several pairs of our headphones were damaged. Upon farther investigation, I realized 5 out of our 13 pairs of headphones were broken beyond repair and two more were fixable but left disassembled. The most disappointing part of this all was the fact that not one pair of headphones had been reported broken by a student. 

We had an important class discussion around this today, and how it was everyone's responsibility to take care of the things within our classroom. We talked about how even if they personally did not break the headphones, they should have let me know earlier so we could have fixed the headphones or addressed this issue earlier, preventing more from becoming "unfix-able."

A few of the broken head phone

These headphones are very popular within our classroom. Students use these headphones regularly to stay focused, and cancel out distractions around them. It's disappointing that now less students will be able to use these in the classroom as a result of misuse. I am hoping students will come forward and take responsibility for what has happened. I am also hopeful we, as a class, will be more aware of our classroom materials and  how those materials need to be handled. 

First Round of Homework

Over the weekend, each student was asked to find an item to match a designated letter, then write three clues for that item. Check out our Padlet wall to see our collection as well as our clues. If you would like to add a comment to our Padlet Wall, feel free! All you have to do is find some empty space in our Padlet and double-click. Your "title" can be your name (ex- "Joey's mom", "Polly's Gramma") and then just type your comment below.

Alphabet Clues Using Padlet

Another Great Week!

We had another great week! This week, we really looked into the value behind a number; what it meant to count on the off-decimal by 10's (3, 13, 23, 33, 43) instead of just memorizing 10, 20, 30, 40, 50... We also practiced counting backwards. This was much trickier than most expected it to be. In science, we finished our discussions around the 5 Senses. Next week, they will be tested on their knowledge of the five senses and how they are used to help us survive. In writing, we have been working on writing with detail and expanded sentences. Instead of writing, "I like cats", we are writing, "I like cats because they are cuddly." or "I like brown and white cats." Reading groups began this week! It was great to meet with other first graders outside of our own classroom. Lastly, students were able to cash in some of their "otter bucks" for prizes in our school store today! A large thank you definitely goes out to anyone who donated to this store. We certainly had plenty of items to choose from!

There is homework this weekend. Please work with  your child to complete the task. I have attached an electronic copy to our blog, in case anyone misplaced their copy.

Newsletter: Week of September 16

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Also there is homework this weekend...

Click here for a copy of the homework

The ABC's of the Tunbridge Fair

Check out our video! We used photos we took at the fair, and connected them to the correct letter in the alphabet. If you listen carefully, you can hear every first grader's voice throughout the video. *Sorry about the volume of some voices. After watching the video today in class, students realized they need to speak up a little more when creating audio clips.

Great Math Discussions

Today we had some wonderful math discussions around quantity of number and estimating. We introduced new sea creatures as a math station. At first, everyone made an estimate only by looking into the bucket. Next, we spread the creatures out in front of us and checked or changed our estimate. In the end, we counted all 96 sea creatures and compared our estimates to the real number. Students used great math language and communication skills during our lesson today. We also looked at place value and the value of different numbers...we even counted by 10's on the off-decade. For example: 3,13,23,33,43,53 rather than 10,20,30,40,50.

First Field Trip

We had a great time at the Tunbridge Fair yesterday. The rain held off for us, and the mud wasn't very thick. We enjoyed looking at all the different animals, antiques and artwork on display. During our trip, we focused on two things: the alphabet and our 5 senses. Students were on a scavenger hunt to find something inside the fairgrounds beginning with each letter of the alphabet. We took many pictures of these items, and will be doing more with them next week! After the trip, we discussed how our 5 senses helped us and what information was taken in by our various senses. It was pretty neat to listen to them describe what they saw, smelled, tasted, felt and heard while at the fair. You might want to ask your child yourself and see what he/she says!

Taking a look at some very tall sunflowers...one was 13 feet!

Meeting one of the local farmers

Testing our strength...working a hand water pump is harder than it looks!

Checking out the printing press

Newsletter: Week of September 9

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Newsletter: Week of September 9

Open House and So Much More!

Today was filled with so much fun. We continued to explore the five senses, focussing our discussions around sight and how it helps us to survive. We began solving word problems created by our classmates. Students had to look at these word problems and decide what picture and equation they would use to solve them. Towards the end of the day, we met our 5th Grade Book Buddies for the first time. They spent some time reading with us today. This evening ended with a wonderful Open House. We had a great turnout of families and friends of Raney's Rock Stars. I had a blast getting to know families and touching base about everything that takes place inside our mini-world at DBS on a daily basis. Thanks to all those who came out (and for filling out last minute permission slips for the fair!)

Manic Monday

Sometimes Mondays can feel a bit like a tornado, everything hits all at once and you're not quite sure where it all came from. Luckily, today wasn't one of those Mondays. Today went rather smoothly, as students are beginning to remember our daily routines and become more independent. We worked together to solve and create new bug word problems. We discussed how one problem could have many different ways of solving it. This was an exciting idea amongst our classmates! It also required us to be able to explain and support our ideas, rather than just "have an answer". We continued to look at our surroundings with our senses and had some time to play cooperatively at the end of the day. 

Exploring With Our Senses II

This week we explored the outdoors using our senses (all but taste!) The students worked together to collect video clips and pictures that highlighted the different things they could see, hear, smell and touch. Check out our Youtube video here:

Week 2: Underway!

Well, after a very restful and relaxing Labor Day weekend, week two is underway. We accomplished so much already and have lots to look forward to this week. Today, we began using our September morning journals and our September writing journals. Each morning, as students arrive, they will complete a page in their morning journal, highlighting the day of the week, color of the day, the date in numbers and continuous counting. During our literacy block, students will have a chance to add writing entries. They are already looking great! In math, students explored various geoboard patterns. They also created and labeled their unifix cube patterns. Some patterns were ABAB or ABCABC while others tried more complicated patterns, such as AABBBCC or AABC! Wow! I was very impressed! Lastly, today was our first opportunity to use our Science Notebooks! We have begun our unit on the Five Senses and how they help us survive. We had a science discussion and made observations using our senses. Later this week we hope to explore the outdoors and record how our different senses allow us to observe nature.