Room 111 News: Great First Few Weeks

Open House

This Tuesday,

September 16th at 6:00 pm

Mark your calendars! Come meet the first grade team, see the classroom and sign up for your Parent-Teacher Conference with your child's reading teacher this Tuesday, September 16th. The Open House will begin at 6:00 in the auditorium where you will meet Principal Nicole MacDonald and hear from the Technology Specialist Ben Schersten and the PTO. At 6:45 you will go to your child's homeroom (Room 111) where you can meet me, see what's been happening for the last week and a half and familiarize yourself with the classroom, homework, curriculum and communication. At 7:30, you will go to your child's reading teacher to sign up for your parent-teacher conference in December. Looking forward to meeting you all on Tuesday!

First Week Photo!

Here's Our Gang the first week of First Grade:

What Else Have We "BEAN" doing in Room 111?
This past week the first graders harvested the beans which the previous first graders had planted last Spring at the end of the 2014 school year.

First we harvested the bean plants from the Francis Wyman plot of the Burlington Community Garden which had grown significantly over the summer.

We then took the bean plants back to the classroom and removed the beans from the plants:

Next: We will let the bean pods dry out and then pack the beans in jars. We will add rice to the jars to help keep the beans dry. We will then plant these beans in the spring in the Community Garden so that next year's first graders can then harvest the beans from those plants. And so the bean life cycle continues!

Room 111 Are Bucket Fillers!

The entire first grade has read and discussed the book How Full Is Your Bucket? This book describes how we all have invisible buckets which are either filled by kind and helpful thoughts, actions and words or "dipped into" by unkind thoughts, words and actions. Each child has his/her own bucket displayed on the wall. When they are seen being kind and helpful to others or following the rules of the classroom, they put a coupon into their bucket.

After the children earn 5 coupons, they receive a ticket. After 3 tickets, they get a prize from the treasure box. Check out the books shown below! The children beg to have them re-read to them over and over again! Ask your child how (s)he is being a bucket filler at school.

Lately we have been receiving coupons for our buckets by remembering to do the following upon arrival to school each morning (without being reminded by the teacher).

This is what we have been doing over the first 2 weeks!

Morning Meeting:

During morning meeting we practice greeting each other; learn to listen when others are speaking and read the "Morning Message."

Hope and Dreams:

We discussed and shared our Hopes and Dreams for our year in first grade -- you can see them posted on the wall when you come to Open House on Tuesday.

Rules:

After sharing our hope and dreams we discussed and made rules as a classroom that we thought would help us achieve our goals. They are also posted on our wall.