Colchester Community Food Shelf

We are working together as a school to bring donations to the Colchester Community Food Shelf.  In our work with volunteers at the food shelf, it became clear that it will work best if we work together to stock a particular item of need.  This month's focus is canned tuna or chicken.  We have a box near the front office where donations can be left.

Thanks in advance for any contribution you and your family can make!

Weekly Update

We are learning all about "short e" as a vowel sound this week.  Our word families are ___et and ____ed and we've found many words that fit in these families. 

Thank you to everyone who submitted the field trip permission forms and money, it was the quickest response I've ever had!

I sent out a Sign-Up Genius for our Valentine's Day celebration today.  If you missed it, click below:

Miss Terrien's Valentine's Day Sign-Up

I will send names of the students in our class home in folders before Friday so you can have two weekends to get Valentines completed if you choose to do so. 

We recently completed our Basic Math Fact test for the second trimester and WOW- we have improved so much!  Between Xtra math and the practice at school and at home we saw great success.  Thank you for your continued support of our classroom goals. 

Please remember to access the lunch link if you would like to order for next week. 

Mystery Number Skype

Today we Skyped with Mrs. Hughes first grade class at Union Memorial. We used thoughtful math questions to figure out a mystery number her class had selected.  We also chose a number that her class had to guess.  We had a wonderful time being able to interact with students from another building in our district in such a fun, informational way. 

We asked and answered questions like,

• is your number odd?
• is it greater than 20?
• is it between 14 and 18?
• does it have a 6 in it? And,
• is it a 2-digit number?

We learned about Skype etiquette and how to be helpful listeners.  Overall, it was an AWESOME experience we are planning to try again! 

News from London

Our friends, Amani and Amaal, have taken a trip to London and Pakistan.  Amani sent us an email last night that we thought would be fun to share with all of you.

Amani writes,
"My aunts took me to afternoon tea. English people like to have English tea. I had jam and clotted cream on scones. There were mini sandwiches too. The flavors were cucumber, salmon and egg. In England, scones with jam and clotted cream is a famous food. I also ate a mini tart which had chocolate filling."

Amani, we hope you're having fun!  Keep sending us updates! 

Keeping Warm

It feels like a heat wave today with temperatures in the 20's!  We even got out for morning recess- wow!  Today was a great day to learn all about how Animals Keep Warm in the Winter during Four Winds. 

We learned that in winter, animals can hibernate, migrate, become dormant or stay active.  We also participated in a fun experience with hot water.  We put vials of hot water in feathers, fleece, fur, cotton (and had a control of nothing of course) and made predictions as to which one would keep the water insulated best.  We tallied our votes and set the materials outside.  We brought them back in after 10 minutes and took the temperature of the water again.  The results were exciting! Make sure to ask your first grader about which insulator was the most successful in our experiment. 

Creative Math Time

After our math test today, we had math choice time. These first graders used their time to practice writing math facts. 

Look for your child's math test tomorrow in their folder. 

Wordless Wednesday

Dreams

 

To commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. our poem of the week is "Dreams" by Langston Hughes.  In this poem, Langston Hughes uses two metaphors to convey what it is like to lose one's dreams.  Metaphors are figures of speech that compare two objects that are basically dissimilar.  The metaphors in our poem are, "Life is a broken-winged bird" and "Life is a barren field."  We had an interesting conversation about what we thought these metaphors meant and what it means to dream.  We will be thinking about what dreams we have for ourselves and the world throughout the week. 

We have three word families again this week!  We are working hard to learn the short "u" sound and the red word, want .  We will also continue to practice question marks and uppercasing names in the middle of a sentence. 

Our Unit 5 math assessment will be on Wednesday.

Friday Fun

We earned a school-wide celebration today for filling our warm-fuzzy bin!  We had hot chocolate after recess!  What a treat!  Our friend, Lexi, was a big help at Morning Meeting!  Check out her awesome assistance with the warm fuzzies!

We also worked hard during literacy today- Ky was very proud of his finger spacing and word building.

I'm sending home next week's homework today because of the short week.  Don't worry about doing any this weekend- just save it for Tuesday!

Have an enjoyable long weekend!

Re-telling

Wow!  Thanks so much to everyone who sent their permission slips back so quickly, we're very excited about our trip to the Flynn.

In reading, we've been working to read with expression and to retell the story using first, next, then, last and finally.  The first graders have gotten very good at this and look forward to seeing quotation marks in their books because they know they get to talk like someone.  

We've been learning about double facts, double + 1, and double + 2, in math.  Today, we highlighted a fact table with facts we already know.  We were amazed at how many facts we already knew and how few we still have left to memorize.  We call this, "fact power" because knowing your math facts gives you power.  Sometimes, it even gives you enough power to beat the calculator!  Beat the calculator is a fun game we played today.  You can play with your first grader at home too. 

Project Inside Out

Today, our Student of the Week brought a book to read to the class.  She did an awesome job and shared many photos of her family with us.  We enjoyed learning even more about Kaylie! 

Please remember to sign up for lunch/breakfast next week using the link on the PPS homepage.

We are gearing up for another awesome year of Project Inside Out!  It is only the beginning and 2014 is shaping up to be a rockstar event!  The annual spaghetti dinner is next week, if you'd like to order dinner or join us, please remember to send back the yellow form that went home today. 

Other important reminders:

RAFFLE TICKETS:

v By Saturday, pictures along with a description of all the raffle items will be up on the Porters Point School web page in the Project Inside Out section.

v On Friday, January 17th, we will be sending home a form that will allow you to purchase raffle tickets prior to the 23rd. Complete the form, include your payment and send into school for Tues, Wed, and Thurs next week and we will take care of the tickets for you.

v If you pick up your student at the end of the school day, we will have the raffle items on display and tickets available for you to purchase from Tuesday, Jan 21-Thursday, Jan 23 from 2:30 to 3PM.

Water Cycle

It's a perfect time of the year to be learning all about weather and the water cycle because we can experience so much of it first hand.  We are beginning a new science unit all about weather this week.  We will learn about weather words, where certain weather happens and why and most importantly that water travels in a cycle. 

We will also be using what we learned about maps to read weather maps.  The first graders are so excited to learn about weather maps and are already asking what the weather is like in places other than New England. 

Kaylie is our student of the week!  We have already learned many new things about Kaylie that we didn't know.  Kaylie is looking forward to sharing her favorite story with us this week. 

Outside Recess

We finally got outside today for recess for the first time this year!  We participated in our walk-a-thon!  Our awesome district grounds crew came by in their HUGE truck and drove through the ice and dropped lots of sand so we could enjoy getting outside for a little while.  Because we may be outside now, even with colder weather, please remember to send your child in with warm, winter clothing.

We had a GREAT day! 

Wordless Wednesday

How-To and All About

We've been learning so much about technical texts that we're beginning to write our very own!  We are writing How-To and All About ______ books.  We are enjoying these books because we're the experts and use them to teach our friends about things we love.  We read Sharks! yesterday by Anne Schreiber and noticed so many features of technical texts as we read.  We saw photos, captions, cut-outs, close-ups, labels, table of contents and a glossary.  We are adding all of these features to our writing bulletin board so we remember to use them in our own writing. 

In math today we explored spacial relationships, weight relationships, and organized money.  We had to figure out how get different objects to level a scale and how to put pennies into groups so it would be easier to count them.  We worked hard and still had time to practice Xtra math!

There are notices in your child's folder today about the yearbook, Project Inside Out and Bookflix.

Please remember to use the Menu Link from the PPS homepage to fill out your lunch order by tomorrow.  Thanks! 

Full, Five Days

This is our first full week in the new year and we are so excited!  All of our regular routines will be back to normal now, so please check for information and homework in your child's folder.

Our red word of the week is they.  Our work families are __ob and __ox and our WOW word is somber.  We had a hard time thinking about times we have felt somber- we figured that was a good thing!

We are beginning to read Mr. Popper's Penguins  as our class read-aloud.  The first graders are so excited to read such an exciting book and are even more excited that it's a chapter book.  Wow! 

We are continuing to learn about place value in math.  Today, we learned about the greater than and less than symbols (<, >).  If you come across any opportunities to discuss number relationships with your first grader, be sure to point them out.  We learned 4 different strategies to remember which symbol to use.  We had a great time playing Greater Than/Less Than Top-It with our friends.  You can play at home with a regular deck of cards.  Ask your first grader to teach you!

Weather-Related School Closings

There are many factors that are considered when school-closings are possible.  Please read the post our on our district blog about how we decide to cancel school or not.

How Do We Decide to Close School?

Welcome Back

Wow!  We had an awesome first day back in the new year.  We were forgetful all day and wrote and said 2013 instead of 2014.  We're confident we'll get better at remembering it's a new year as the year goes on! 

The new lunch menu is now linked from the PPS homepage.  Please be sure to fill out the link by Wednesday of each week for the following week.  If you need help locating the link, please let me know.

We have started a new unit in math that is all about tens and ones.  Please look for the parent letter about this in your child's folder on Monday.  We will be working to make exchanges for 10's and breaking numbers apart based on how many tens and ones make it up. 

We are continuing to learn about maps and technical texts in literacy and social studies.