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

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