On Wednesday the students enthusiastically participated in our first sandwich making project for the St. Vincent DePaul Mission located in Waterbury, CT. They were thrilled to donate their energy to making sandwiches for individuals and families that are experiencing hard times. Mrs. Faust and I were so proud of their care and concern as they prepared each sandwich. Thanks again for the donations of supplies and the coordination by Liz Bashawaty!

There was a buzz of activity inside and outside the classroom this week. Many students shared their endangered animal research on circle and with only a few left to share, our goal is to select the class mascot by next week. Sharing work on circle is almost a daily occurrence in the Upper Elementary. After a student shares, the rest of the students and teachers have an opportunity to ask questions or make comments. This is one way students build up their oral presentation skills in a safe setting.

Each morning the students enjoy the opportunity to actively engage in outdoor activities such as running, playing team games or searching for animals. This week a few students located a frog and a newt on the soccer field! After many students got a chance to observe the animals they were carefully released back to the wild.

Now that we have gotten a solid full school week under our belts the students and teachers are beginning to get into a rhythm in the classroom. That rhythm includes recording work in planners, doing class jobs, maintaining an orderly environment and developing a work flow. One of the benefits of a multi age classroom is that the teachers can rely on the returning students to help get this rhythm in sync early on in the school year.

This week we enjoyed some culture lessons about the Timeline of Life and stories of cultures. Students decorated their writer’s notebooks and completed their first writing assessment. Math lessons focused on whole number concepts and prime factorization.

We incorporated the Writing Workshop program in the classroom last year and the students enjoyed the new approach to writing. This year, we included the Reading Workshop program at the Upper Elementary level. Mrs. Faust was excited to take on the Reader’s Workshop instruction, while I am able to present the writing lessons. The small group instruction has gone very well so far and the student participation has been enthusiastic and positive. We look forward to seeing their growth and development in both areas of literacy as the year progresses.

~Parent & Teacher Conferences are coming up!

Parent & Teacher Conferences are on Thursday, October 25^th. 

This is to a wonderful time to learn about your child’s progress; it is strongly encouraged that parents attend.  The online Parent & Teacher sign-up will be live on Monday, October 8^th – please look for more information in Monday’s School News about scheduling your Parent & Teacher Conference online.  If you are unavailable to meet with your child’s teacher on October 25^th, please email your child’s teacher directly about scheduling another day or time that week for a conference.

On Monday we enjoyed our first going out experience together to the White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield, CT. The program started indoors as we learned about food webs, specifically producers, consumers and decomposers. Students got a chance to meet some of these live consumers up close. Next, we went on a hike to search for fungi, mosses, lichens and other plants of the weed world. After our snack break we returned indoors to study seeds and different seed dispersal methods of plants and trees. This was a positive first field trip experience for our class and we look forward to our next trip in October to New Pond Farm to learn about the Woodland Indians. Thanks again to Max’ mother, Jayne who helped chaperone the trip!