Hi Families! I would love to find a time to connect with you to find out how things are going at home and discuss your child's progress from where we were in our year! I think it would be nice to use conference times to connect about learning at home! I understand this is an extremely busy time for you and that you have a ton on your plate. I think it's safe to say that none of us saw this coming and we would all like it to come to an end as soon as possible! It seems like you are doing amazing, although I know it is not easy. I'd love to have conversations and support you through the learning and talk about your child as a learner. To do this, I want to offer zoom as an option and phone calls as another option. I am completely fine with whichever you choose! I am hoping to chat with some of you this coming Friday and then leave my schedule open for the following Friday. I am available for conversations starting on Friday at 11:30. On Friday, April 10th I will be available all day for conferences. If you'd like to schedule a time with me please sign up on the google doc that I will be emailing to all families! If the times do not work for you, please let me know and we can find another time that does! I am excited to chat with you!
Monday, March 30, 2020
Sunday, March 29, 2020
New Resources & Zoom Schedules
Hi Everyone!
A new weekly schedule was sent out by email with Zoom times and Facetime times. Please let me know if the times don't work for your schedule! I can't wait to start this week with the kiddos! I also want you to know that there have been new resources posted to the SMS wolf site in the first grade section!
I will send out zoom links ten minutes before the meetings! :)
Have a great Sunday night!
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Update on learning from home!
Hi Everyone!
I wanted to give you an update on learning from home! We had a meeting today with admin and the first grade team is compiling more resources for you that we will be sent out by Friday. We are working on things as a team for you and your child to add to your learning from home, such as new bingo boards for reading, writing, math, tech, and outdoor learning! You'll most likely be getting an email from Mrs. Belanger with this information from the whole team! After talking with admin today we were reminded how important it is to pace ourselves and to work through things thoroughly. Working through tasks and using creativity can take more critical thinking than video watching so we are hoping to give you a variety of choices to do with your child. This is a huge learning curve for all of us and I appreicate you being flexible with facetime times and the roll out of plans.
As for our classroom family, here is my vision:
I will be trying to facetime each dragonfly once a week for an independent goal setting conference!
In addition, your dragonfly will have a weekly time for a small group video chat. Zoom will be how we are communicating and you will get an email from me with a time we are meeting and a link to bring you to the meeting! I am trying to work with everyone on times and respect that many of you are working from home, so please just let me know if the time does not work for you and we can easily putyour dragonfly into another group. Please download Zoom so your child is ready for their small group meeting! My vision for the zoom calls is to have the students connect with one another but still use our precious time for learning. We will work on vowel sounds, word work, sight word practice, and math to start. Please remind your child that this time is important for our learning and we need to be ready to learn at this time!
The youtube channel will be a place where you can find short activities for your child to do within your own schedule you created. These will always be available and between facetimes and meetings, I will be recording mini lessons there! I will be posting some things for them to try and some review of topics we need to keep fresh in our brains.
I would love for you to look into these resources, as they are currently resources I am very interested in using. They are engaging and worth the time!
Epic Login:
Go to https://www.getepic.com/students and enter the class code ild2956, after that click their name and you can start reading a lot of different books! Please let me know if you have any questions about Epic!
Raz Kids!
Raz kids accounts are great for leveled reading. Please have your child use this resource because it is a GREAT one! When you login you will need the teacher username which is sdonlon0. The student name is your child's first name only and the password is the fish icon and the turtle icon! I have put their reading level in and books should come up that are just right and a little easier for them to work on their fluency.
Please visit Scholasic at https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome/grades-1-2.html and they have it broken down by weeks of virtual field trips and great reading! I checked this out today and it's awesome!
Readworks.org
This is a resource I heard about from a fellow teacher. It is a reading resource where I can monitor student work and responses to reading. Please go to readworks.org/student and enter the class code. ZXR6Y6. The temporary password is 1234. I will be playing around with this resource and wanted to get it out to you as it seems like families are enjoying it!
Let me know if you have any questions with these resources and I hope you've had a great day!
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Scholastic News Online Resource
Hey Everyone!
I wanted to give you access to scholastic news online for the students to explore! There are a lot of articles with different topis and some short videos! Here is the link to bring you to our account. Once you follow the link you will need to type in our password, which is dragonflies18.
Happy exploring!
https://digital.scholastic.com/ltiLaunch/app/29
Monday, March 16, 2020
Please Read: Update On School From Home
Hi Families!
Well, I never thought this would be an email I'm writing. As we enter these few weeks of working from home I want to remind you of a few resources that I sent home on Friday with your chilld. Each child has a bag of books that were chosen with them to be reading and practicing some skills in! There was a packet sent home with a letter from me on top and some additional resources within it. These bingo sheets are to provide your child with some options at home to keep engaging in their learning. I want you to know that none of this is required by the school but we highly recommend keeping your child enaged and practicing their math facts and any form or writing or reading.
I sent home wonder journals for students to continue writing in. These are a great resource for students to go back and edit their own writing or to make new entries. I encourage you to have our child write for atleast 20 minutes a day- we usualy write for an ahour! This can be as simple as them summarizing a movie they watched or making a journal about what they did to stretch their brain that day. I encourage you to set up a schedule for your child each day. On index cards write out different ideas for them to work on or practice or to break up their day and have them arrange it to work through their day independently. I will be making a tutorial video on this and think they would love it- if you want to have them try it out, I think it would be a great and easy way to start with some structure!
In addition to this, I will be making a Youtube channel to stay connected with the kids! I know they love youtubers and if I can stay connected with them through that and have them work on some extra things at home, I am excited to try! This could range from a check-in, a mini lesson, or a challenge for them to try. If I'm being completely honest, I have NO idea where to start with this. I will be working to set this up today and will be positing daily links to the blog! Please help your child check the blog daily so they can see these videos!
I am hoping to create a facetiming schedule with the students. I know this would require an apple device or the use of an iphone and I am hopingto get your thoughts on this. It is a lot to coordinate for 18 schedules but I would love to have one on one conversations with your child to talk about personal goals and picking up where we left off at school, at home. If you are interested in working with me to create a schedule, please email me! This is not required but it is a way that I could individually connect with students and maintain the growth that we were seeing.
Lastly, I wanted to remind you that there are links on the side of this blog page that are fun resources for students to explore. I also wanted to suggest some differnt apps that you can download or purchase to engage student learning.
Chalkboard Math- Math facts
Sushi Monster- Math facts (crowd favorite)
Moose Math- Math facts
Number Rack- Organizing and sorting numbers
Science360- Science videos
PBSkids
PhonicsNinja- work work
PhonicsGenius- Phonics practice
I will be looking for more apps as well to send a long, the students can probably name their favorties from our math app section of the ipads as well!
I have changed my daily office hour from 9:00am-10:00am daily!
I have changed my daily office hour from 9:00am-10:00am daily!
Stay healthy and please let your dragonfly know that I miss them SO much!
Monday, March 2, 2020
Field Trip to The Music Hall 🎼
The first grade will be seeing The Pout Pout Fish at the Portsmouth Music Hall on March 25th. We will be leaving school at 10:45 and returning at 1:15. We will eat a late snack to help prepare us for our later lunch that day. If you want your child to order a bag lunch for this day- there is still time. Pleae email me to let me know that they would like to order and I will ask them what type of lunch they want! Thank you for sending in permisssion slips! We are super excited for this trip!
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