Second Step: Accidents Happen

Our Second Step social and emotional learning program lesson focused on accidents this week.  Building on previous empathy lessons regarding identifying and caring about one another's feelings and how feelings change in different situations, activities and discussions used positive and negative if-then scenarios and role playing to define an accident as something that happens to cause an unintended problem and to practice appropriate responses when an accident happens.  Students took turns modeling language for solving the problem when they are the cause of an accident (such as spilling milk on a friend's lunch or throwing a ball that bounces and splashes someone with muddy water): "I'm sorry.  It was an accident.  Are you okay?" or if they are impacted by the result of an accident: "Thank you for apologizing".

Billings Farm: Tools and Work

 

Halloween Parade!

 

Parent-Guardian/Teacher Conference Schedule

Below is the schedule for parent-guardian/teacher conferences.  I look forward to seeing you to discuss your student's academic and social progress so far this year.

Thursday, November 7th

Alexander-7:10-7:30 a.m. Miles-7:30-7:50 a.m.

Noah-3:00-3:20 Brooklyn-4:00-4:20 Barbara-5:20-5:40

Victoria-3:20-3:40 TJ-4:40-5:00 George-5:40-6:00

Josie-3:40-4:00 Logan-5:00-5:20 Winnie-6:10-6:30

Thursday, November 14th

Euphemia-3:00-3:20 Carter-4:00-4:20

Elliot- 3:20-3:40

Apple-3:40-4:00

Literacy: Tools, Habits of Character, and an Upcoming Field Trip

In Literacy students are examining the book, “The Little Red Pen.” First graders are learning to identify characters' feelings using evidence from the illustrations and text. In anticipation of working with a group to create a magnificent thing for our classroom, they continue to learn about habits of character as personified classroom tools pull together to solve a problem. This week’s focus question was: “What work does initiative help the characters do?”

On Friday, November 22 we will be traveling to Billings Farm for a culminating field trip for the tools and work unit. The purpose of this adventure is to learn about tools on the farm and to celebrate Vermont's heritage of hard work. We plan to leave school around 9:30 and will return to school around 1:00. Students should bring a  bagged lunch, including a healthy snack, to eat at the farm (please plan on packing your child a home lunch on that day.)  Please let me know if your child will need a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the school cafeteria that day.

Math: All Kinds of Story Problems

First graders are currently working through the final section of Unit 2, focused on understanding, representing, and solving a variety of story problems types including add to/take from, put together/take apart, and compare problems. Students are investigating how to match equations to story problems and write their own equations to match story problems as the investigate the relationship between addition and subtraction. They are trying to make sense of and use equations with a symbol for the unknown, such as 10 = ___ + 6.  This is meaty work!

Try asking your mathematician to solve the following problems:

(Compare) Clare has 8 pencils. Andre has 10 pencils. How many more pencils does Andre have? 

How do you know? 

(Put Together) Diego has 6 pens. His mother gives him some more pens. Now he has 9 pens. Howm many pens does Diego's mother give him? 

How do you know? 

Look For and Return Parent/Teacher Sign-Up Sheets This Week!

Parent/Teacher conferences are on November 7th and November 14th! Gold conference sign-up sheets are in your child's orange folder this week and we encourage you to indicate your first, second, and third choice of time slots and return the gold sheet to school ASAP.  We will do our best to honor your selections, however conference times will be scheduled on a first returned, first assigned basis. Thank you.