Newsletter: September 17

Here's a little glimpse of our lives at school over the past week or so...

Lunch in our garden

We have two wonderful tables that were gifted to our classroom a few years ago. Nearly
our entire class can sit at them at the same time. It's great having outdoor space.

Morning Milers

The kids love climbing out the window to read and write in the garden. We have, and
have practiced, a safe procedure for getting in and out. Namely, sit on our bottoms and
do not jump. There's also a door available through the Gathering Room.

The kids grouped the strategies you shared for solving
unknown words in your reading. This first group of strategies
all have something to do with the letters and individual
sounds in the word. Most of these are among
the last strategies we typically employ.

Here's another collection of strategies that
involve seeking outside assistance.

These have to do with using context clues from the
sentence(s) around the word. These are a GREAT place
to start when trying to solve such words. 

These strategies all involved looking at smaller
parts of the word to assist in figuring it out.

In this photo the kids are listening to the morning announcements.
We stand during these announcements to help us better hear and to
keep our hands a little further from the lure of chess pieces, markers,
and decks of cards.

Mr. O'Keefe stopped by this week to tell us about the many ways
he uses his writer's notebook. We are currently conducting a study
of writer's notebooks.

Lots of writing going on, as well as drawing. Drawing helps us generate
ideas for our writing. Other times it distracts us from our writing. Like
many things in life, there is a balance to be struck and we are continually working
to find it. The kids are doing a great job. They're such confident writers!

We're learning about classification in science. We bean by working in small
groups to sort bags of objects by similar attributes.

The kids recorded their work in their Science Journals.