Classroom Update! 9/26/21

 Hi Families! 

  I hope you've had a wonderful weekend and that you were able to enjoy the gorgeous weather! I spent every second of it soaking up family time and getting excited for fall! I wanted to give you a few updates on what's been happening in our classroom and also send over a link to our blog! I will be posting pictures there to give you a glimpse into our learning space! I'm excited to do this moving forward so you can feel as connected to our classroom as possible! 

    In reading, we are working on establishing great reading habits! Students have begun choosing their own just right books, and being accountable for tricky words, instead of just skipping over them. We've started using our "Starbooks" Drive through! In their coffee cup students have a job from me for them to work on during their independent reading time. This job follows along with the focus lesson of that day and requires them to show that they have completed the job! As we work on our independence during reading time, myself and Mrs. Larkin will begin pulling small groups for small group reading instruction- as well as independent conferences with each reader! 

   In math, we are working on composing and decomposing numbers, up to ten! We will do so much deep thinking about how numbers work and the rules that they have. Students are learning how to use ten frames, number bonds, drawing strategies, and counting on strategies. We are also using manipulatives to help us see our math thinking. We are using iReady Math which has an amazing aspect of talking about math. We are becoming comfortable agreeing and disagreeing with our friends' math thinking while being respectful and just exploring the different ways numbers work, socially! 

  In writing, we have been creating Mo Willems inspired books! It's so important to foster happy writers at this time of the school year, so we are watching them be so creative and excited about their books! You will be seeing these books on Seesaw very soon! As we leave our Mo Willems inspiration unit, students will create books of their own! We continue to work on handwriting each day to become more confident and fluent in our writing for these writing times! We will begin the Lucy Calkins phonics program soon- right now, we have been reviewing the kindergarten sight words! 

   In inquiry, we will be exploring cycles, starting with pumpkin cycles and then cycling out into different cycle explorations to find connections! 

SEL- Our Social Emotional Learning is intertwined throughout our daily learning in the classroom but we are so fortunate to have amazing teachers pushing into our classroom! Here is a message from one of the school councelors who teaches in our classroom every other week!  

       Dear First Grade Families,

Hello! My name is Jessie Caldwell and I’m one of the School Counselors here at SMS. In case you haven’t heard, I will be working in your child’s classroom for social emotional learning  throughout this year. These lessons called Second Step align well with all the social emotional learning that is already happening in your child’s classroom. This year, we will be discussing a variety of topics from skills to learning (listening, focusing attention, following directions, self-talk for staying on task and being assertive) AND problem solving. We will practice fair ways to play, joining in group activities, inviting others to play and handling peer disagreements. Another important unit will be focusing on emotions, identifying feelings, managing worry, calming down anger and dealing with disappointment.

These discussions and guided practice opportunities will help foster your child’s emotional growth. I’m super excited to be part of this learning process. If you ever have any questions or concerns please feel free to reach me at jcaldwell@sau16.org.  Also please take a moment to check out the SMS Counseling Corner.

Take care,

Jessie Caldwell

I'm so excited to share our classroom with you this week! Students will be uploading "tours" to Seesaw so you can see the amazing space they are working so hard in each day. If you are having any trouble getting onto Seesaw, please reach out to me! I am working with Steve Gagnon (our Makerspace teacher and Tech wiz) to connect some families who were having trouble and I'm happy to help in any way I can! 

Have a great week! 

Best, 

 Miss Donlon

Snow Learning Day Information

Hi Families! 

   In the event that we have a "Snow Learning Day" tomorrow, I wanted to let you know the specifics of that and what it means for 1D! The Superintendent will make the call if the weather permits it. If there are power outages that interfere with our technology use, Dr. Ryan will specify that and we weill go from a "Snow Learning Day" to a school cancellation. Here are the specifics of Snow Learning Days!

I wanted to follow up with you about our Snow Learning Day plan for this year. We  were told that when inclement weather takes place and has many people home (working family members, small children, school aged children, as well as teachers with similar situations) we are to adjust our day to a Snow Learning Day that is consistent with our SAU and what the rest of our school is doing. The idea is to make it a manageable day for all who are involved. With that being said, I wanted to lay out our day for you. We are required to have a morning meeting, one hour of interactive learning time, independent asynchronous work which includes related arts for that day, and an afternoon meeting. This means our day will adjust, but not by too much! If your child finishes their asynchronous work, I encourage you to have them get out in the snow and enjoy the beautiful perks of being a New Englander!  If you want to try and keep the day consistent for your child, I suggest you follow this schedule below. 

9:15-9:30

 Morning Meeting (Zoom)

9:30-10:30

 Class learning time (Zoom)

10:30

Asynchronous Work Begins (in any order)

-Related Arts Seesaw Activity

-Two class activities on Seesaw

-15 minutes of independent reading

-15 minutes of typing club

*lunch hour should be taken at any desired time*

2:00 

Closing Meeting (Zoom)

I will be available by email during asynchronous work time if you have any questions!

Spirit Week!

Hi Families!

     I wanted to remind you that there is an optional spirit week for this coming week and the following Monday and Tuesday! Here are the days if you choose to have your child take part! 

Monday- Red and Green Day

Tuesday- Festive Hat day

Wednesday- Sparkly Day

Thursday-Blue and White day

Friday- Flannel Friday

Monday- Ugly sweater day

Tuesday- Red and White day

Wednesday- Pajama day

I hope you had a great weekend! 

Remote Update 11/17

 Hi Families! 

   Happy Tuesday! I hope your dragonfly is adjusting well to their second week in their new remote classroom. Last week, we took it slow and got to know one another. We practiced taking meaningful breaks, performing learning tasks, posting to Seesaw, and just getting used to a new environment, whether it was having a new teacher, or friends, or both! I understand that remote learning has its challenges and in many cases is not ideal but I would like to kindly express my gratitude toward all of you for being so understanding and flexible as we all adjust to this new way of learning. If you've been with me since September, thank you for being flexible as we slowed things down a bit last week for our new friends to adjust! 

    This week we have started some new units. We are entering an addition and subtraction strategy unit for math. We've started with decomposing numbers, fact families, and we will be learning some strategies to work through addition and subtraction problems. We will start with visual strategies and then make our way to the traditional methods that you and I grew up learning! 

      In reading, we are in a tricky word unit. We have talked about some bad habits that we all have done atleast once or twice in our reading! We are going to hold ourselves accountable to fixing these bad habits and replacing them with new ones! By doing this we are going to put some decoding strategies under our belt- starting tomorrow we will be learning some strategies to help us solve words and we will practice how we know when to use each one! On your child's Seesaw you will be able to see them using these strategies! 

       In writing, we are working on a "small moment" unit. This is writing about one memory and including many details. We started by drawing detailed pictures and doing a touch and tell to help us write and include all the details from that memory. As we've become stronger in the ideas we are writing about, now we are starting to look at our writing as editors. Students will be going back into their writing and holding themselves accountable for editing words that are missing sounds or adding words that may have been left out. Editing is a tricky concept for new writers but as we've worked through this together, the students have shown that rereading their writing and editing is certainly do-able even at their early stage of writing! We've also done some free writing to foster the joy of writing during this time! 

      In science we have been having science talks and inquiry. We are using questions from kids around the world through the resource of Mystery Doug to guide our own questioning of our world. Science talks allow us to think about the world around us, try to make sense of it, and realize that there is much more research to be done to figure out the amazing world around us. So far as a new classroom family we have looked at the questions of "What is at the bottom of the ocean?", "Why were emoji's created?" and "Where was the first candy invented?". We have come up with our own class wonders as well and will be researching those ideas all together. 

Tomorrow at 12:00 if you would like to join myself and Mr. G for a zoom lunch, he will be available to answer tech questions! He can also help you set up the Coding Monsters App that we will be using on Fridays. If you can't join us for this lunch but have questions about technology, please email myself and Mr. G and we would be happy to assist you!

It sounds like our SEL sessions will most likely be held on Thursday afternoons. We are trying to offer transportation for families and I will let you know as soon as we get the approval for this new session of SEL days to begin! Please let me know if you plan on attending these sessions if you haven't done so already! 

10/18/20

 Hi Families, 

   I hope you had a great weekend. I know you had some tough decisions to make for your child's school journey this weekend and I hope you are feeling confident in your decision and ready to move forward! Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. The survey is asked to be completed by tomorrow deciding if your child is heading back to school or remaining remote. 

   This week we continue with in person assessments. Please review the google doc with the times and try your best to be punctual with arrival and pick up times, as we only have one hour for many assessments. These have been going great and I can't wait to see the rest of the dragonflies soon! I will meet you by the office doors! Our assessment days are Tuesday and Wednesday this week, while your child isn't getting assessed please use this time to complete the iReady assessment for math at home. Please read through the information I sent home about this assessment, it is very important! 

   Family conferences are on the half days of school which are 11/2 and 11/4. I will be sending out a google sign up doc for these days and a few other available times! Be on the look out for this to come to you this week! Your dragonfly should be present during part of the zoom and then we will save time for family questions. I can't wait to connect with you! 

     We will be recording oru favorite piece of writing on Seesaw tomorrow. On Tuesday and Wednesday morning we will be watching each other's stories on Seesaw. We will celebrate each other's work by enjoying popcorn or a small snack while viewing the clips! I am happy with any type of snack but understand there may be different rules for each family about snacks near technology. If you could chat with your child about what an appropriate snack for this time would be, that would be great! :)

   Lastly, we have started conferring about personal goals during reading time. If your dragonfly hasn't had a one on one conference yet, they will soon! We are excited to dig deeper in our curriculum and learning more about ourselves as learners. 

Important information for the week of 9/28/20

 Hi Families!  Happy Fall!

I wanted to let you know some important details for this upcoming week. On Thursday we will be gathering in person for a 90 minute SEL session! Our class is scheduled for Thursday from 12:30-2:00. I am hoping that all the dragonflies will be able to come and learn in person but I totally understand if schedules cause conflict or if families are hesitant to have their child join. Please let me know if you have any questions about this, I would be more than happy to chat with you! 

We will be using Seesaw and following our schedule that was sent out at the beginning of the year for content this week. There will be nothing different on your end, just the shuffling of times that we do certain curriculum areas throughout the day within our current time frame. This will allow for support services to service students easier and for small groups to start happening as we dive into more intensive curriculum! If you child had any trouble logging into Seesaw please let me know, so I can get the tech department on it right away. We will be doing it together as a class this week so we will find out for certain if your child can log on easily, if you haven't already! :)

Clever is updated and has all of the related arts links on it to make it easier transitioning from our class zoom to related arts zooms. Please use the home page of clever to access those! The seesaw link is on there as well! 

I am emailing a contact sheet for you if you are looking to schedule playdates or reach out to families in our classroom family, please let me know if you don't receive it tonight!

Learning Update! 9/21/20

 Hi Dragonfly Families!

I hope you are settling in as we continue our virtual learning. I am hopeful that we will be back together in the classroom but until then it has been so wonderful seeing the dragonflies every day with those big smiles. I've said it once, I'll say it a million times- I have offically hit the jackpot with this class!! They are working so hard and doing such a great job with our virtual learning. Their stamina of learning time and their eagerness to share with others through the screen absolutely blows me away. 

I wanted to give you a quick update on our day to day learning and then give you a heads up as we head into sticking to our classroom schedule and introducing focus lessons- both live and from videos via seesaw. 

As of now, our learning has been around community and building our relationships with our classmates. If you've been listening in or talking with your dragonfly at night, you may have noticed that we are focusing a lot on read alouds, exploring wonders, getting to know one another, completing short tasks, and discussing expecations for zoom and breaks. The students have done wonerful with this! Most of our independet work has been, drawing, writing, reading, or creative playing! We have gotten very good at sharing and listening to our friends as they share. As we continue into this week and next week I will be introducing more academic concepts, launching an identity iquiry, and slowly introducing math lessons. We will also be opening up our seesaw accounts at the end of the week! You will get extra information on this! Starting next week, I plan to stick to our classroom schedule that was sent out at the beginning of the year so that additional services can support our kiddos and know our shedules!  

A classroom list with family contacts will be sent out soon. Feel free to use this for play dates or contacting other families!

I hope you have a great week and as always, please reach out if you have any questions! 

Happy First Day!

 Hello Dragonfly Families! 

 Happy First Day! Here is our classroom zoom information! This will always stay the same! 

Dragonfly Zoom Link: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6194607125?pwd=UGlOT0pNQ2NvSGxZWHZZenpwUWRDQT09

Meeting ID: 619 460 7125      Passcode: 1D

Your Related Arts zoom link for P.E. today is:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9900045988?pwd=WmYzSVN3N2tNM0ppZ1JUVGF3TlE3Zz09

Meeting ID: 9900045988   Passcode: 064966

If you have any technology problems today, Mr. G has made his zoom link available so you can hop on a call with him and tell him your complication! He will do his best to help you!

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2957408757?pwd=NzFJcGxScmpnTWZHOHhPb1FjNWxLUT09