Ms. Kaley's Classroom Room 24

Hi Everyone!

This Past Week:

This past week we began the 5 Great Lessons.  We got through “The Birth of the Universe,” “Timeline of Life,” and “Timeline of Man.  Everyday after the lesson, I would present the students with activity choices.  It was great to step back and see who is following what choice and what students needed help making a choice.

Friday we started our first class meeting, science, and Library.  In the afternoon we had a great time making our galaxy art shirts!  Thank you Lori, Kristie, Sarah, and Elene for helping out!  Sorry if some of your kids came home with very colorful hands!  Ms. Stephanie loved the project and is making possible decision to let any classroom shirt project be an acceptable MMA approved T-shirt.  Stand by on that.  As soon as I find out anything, I will let you know.

Everything else is going pretty swimmingly.  We are working on grace and courtesy towards each other and when a teacher is talking.

We started cultural lessons as well!  Cultural will slowly work its way into morning lessons, but as we work into transitioning into work cycle, it is in the afternoon time.  Every week we rotate the subject.  The rotation schedule is: History, Zoology/Physiology, Geography, and Botany.  This week we started with History.

Level 1s: Intro. for the year, Months of the year, Months by seasons, Making a Sept. calendar

Level 2s: 3 forms of matter, Cohesion, Centripetal & Centrifugal forces, Friction

Level 3s: Life on Earth, Clock of Eras, Rope timeline with labeling of eras

Upcoming Week:

Monday begins PE and Music in the afternoon right after lunch.  Please make sure your child has some sort of athletic shoe for PE every Monday.

I will present the last two Great Lessons Monday and Tuesday: “The Timeline of Language,” and “The Timeline of Math.”  Wednesday I leave for my trip and will be back in school the 9th.  Our class will take some breaks and do classroom team building games with Ms. Jill’s class

Pizza Friday is going to begin very soon.  I got an email saying it will begin Sept. 4th, but the flyers didn’t go out.  It may still happen on the 4th, so, if you would like your child to get pizza on Fridays the instructions are for you to,  “The forms ask parents to send in the money or check in a sealed envelope for either the week, month, semester, or year.”  Forms must be SEALED, with child’s NAME, TEACHER, and AMOUNT OF $.  Teachers will not be handling the forms this year, the 6th graders are.  ALL MONEY IS DUE ON WEDNESDAYS BY 12:00 NOON!

HOMEWORK! While I am gone, students are going to be working on animal related projects.  Here is what each level will need:

Level 1s: 3 magazines that have examples of living and non-living things in them.  On Wednesday they will make 2 posters: 1 for living things and 1 for non-living things.  1st graders will then be asked to write a sentence or 2 about what a living thing is and what a non-living thing is.  Thursday, 1st graders will choose 1 living animal choice.  They will make a paper plate 3D pop up project on this day.  Students will write 3 sentences about their living animal.  One sentence will explain why it is living, one will be a small fact about that animal, and the last sentence will be why it is not a non-living thing.  If a student has a great animal book at home, send it with them Thursday.  Ask them Wednesday night what alive animal are they thinking of doing!  

Level 2s:  If your 2nd grader has any animal books, please send a few with them for Wednesday and Thursday.  They will making an animal brochure.

Level 3s:  If your 3rd grader has any animal books, please send a few with them for Wednesday and Thursday. They will doing an animal report and make their own non-fiction fact book.

* Reading help will begin after normalization is over (Oct. 1)

Have a great rest of your weekend and upcoming week.  When I get back, I will post another blog entry.

Cheers!

Ms. K

Hi Everyone!

Can I just state how amazing our group is this year!  It feels good to see everyone and their excitement.  Our returning students are begging to start work.  I joked with them saying, “I want to recored each of you saying that so, that when you get grumpy at me in a few months, I can go back and play it.”  They thought that was funny.  I shared with them the changes in work cycle this year, what their work chart is going to look like, and some expectations.  They will get a chance to do some projects this upcoming week and next week.

Great Lessons Start!:

This coming week is the start of Great Lessons.  We will spend Monday and Tuesday on: “The Birth of the Universe;” Wednesday, “Timeline of Life,” Thursday, “Coming of Man,” and Friday, we will do some reading, science, Europe studies, and some art.  The following Monday (Aug. 31), we will do “History of Language and finish our Great Lessons on Tuesday, Sept. 1st with “History of Math.”  For each Great Lesson I give, there will be a few choices of activities for each lesson that students will get to choose.  It is their chance to start easing into work.

Cultural lessons will also being this coming week.  I plan on using the afternoons to introduce our first cultural lesson, History.  As I introduce lessons in the morning, cultural will start working its way into morning work.

Volunteers:

I have heard from a number of you about wanting to help out in our classroom.  If my memory serves me, here is who I have:

• Lori- reading
• Misha- anything
• Tammie- writing and reading
• Michelle- typing up projects and books for students
• Anna’s grandfather (I didn’t catch a name!  Katie, if you could please email me his name and contact, I would love for him to come in a do some art!)- art

If you signed up on the volunteering sheets at Back to School Night, Heidi Bradley is copying those, so when I get those back, I will see who signed up for what.

Do I have anyone who is in the science field?  Do you have anyone in your family who works in a science field?  Has anyone every been to Europe and would love to share facts from their trip?  Do you or someone in your family love to cook and come do some cooking?  I would love to have more guests this year!   Email me if you or someone wants to help.

Friday August 28th Art Help!

I am looking for some helpers for this coming Friday!  I want to do some galaxy art!

Galaxy art project

This project involves a black shirt.  If you would like to purchase your child a  100% cotton all black t-shirt for Friday, please have them bring it in Friday.  NAME PLEASE ON LABEL!

If you do not wish to get your child an all black t-shirt, would someone like to get our class 1 yard of 100% black fabric?  It will get cut into pieces for those students to have.  Email me ASAP if you would like to get our class 1 yard of black fabric 🙂

I’d like to do this activity in the afternoon after their recess (1pm), but I can adjust to move it to the morning if need be.  Email me if you would like to help out and I can base the activity’s time on who’s coming.

Flagging writing/coloring supplies volunteers!  Ms. Emilee and I would like help putting small pieces of Duct tape on each student’s writing and coloring supplies.  We are using the lime green Duct tape to “flag” each supply with their name on it.  If you can email me if you would like to come in this coming week (week of Aug. 24th) or next, please let me know.  Having volunteers will make that job go faster.

Room Mothers:

We have a dynamic duo for our Room Moms!  Jaida Ryan, is our planning room mother this year.  Sarah Boudreaux will help Jaida in class and be her right hand woman 🙂

These ladies will be helping me out with class parties/events, class needs, reminders, and some organization

• Our first big event will be our Fall Class Party on Oct. 30th (a Friday).  I will email Jaida and Sarah more about it.
• Our first field trip is on Oct. 21st to Black Island Farms.

Out of Town:

I will be going out of town on Sept. 2nd and will return the following Wednesday, Sept. 9th.  This is over Labor Day weekend.  That is 4 school days that I won’t be in class.  Ms. Emilee will take over for those days.  Mrs. Chris Lemmon, will help on Sept. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.  Mrs. Melinda Montgomery will help out on Sept. 8th.  Ms. Chris is Ms. Anna’s (Anna in the office) mom and Ms. Melinda in on the MAPA committee and helps out with Junior High.

Any students with sensitive to change will be notified so that it isn’t a big surprise to them.  If you are parent to a student who has a sensitivity to transitions, help me by talking to your child in advanced.

Snack:

Our snack sign up is going great!  Please email me if you don’t get an email update.  We have spots available for later in the year, so if you want to take a look at the sign up and see what is left, there are still sign ups available 🙂

Hi Everyone!  Lots of information below, so please read everything and carefully.

Updates & Protocols:

It has been a busy busy busy week!  I want to thank you for those who came to Back to School Night, wrote me about their child, or just stopped in to drop off supplies!  You as parents and guardians are crucial members of my team.  I need you guys as much as you need me.  Please, at any time, if you have questions, email is best way to get a hold of me.  I check it all the time, but if you write me after 5pm, I will more than likely see it the next morning.  If you write about a concern, email can only go so far to solve the issue.  I prefer we talk in person about any concerning issues face to face rather than exchange a multitude of emails.  Mondays and Tuesdays are my longest days at the school where I attend and run certain meetings.  Wednesdays-Fridays will be the best days to meet with me for anything.

Blog Check!

This blog is super important to check.   If you look over to the right side of this page, you will see a section where you can subscribe to the blog.  Click it and follow the instructions.  Be sure to check your email inbox, as it will ask you to click a link to confirm the subscription.  Once you have done that, overtime I make a post, you will be emailed the post I make.

As we start the year, I will add pages and information to this site.

Snack!

Snack is so critical for our students.  I am going to try a new sign up system that will email you a reminder when it is your turn.  I will be setting that up, so when it is ready, you will see it also to the right of this page at all times during the year.  If I can’t get it up and running this weekend, we will need snack for this coming week (1st week of school).  Please email me if you are willing to send healthy foods for our kiddos.  We will be doing a group snack the 1st (maybe 2nd) week back only.  After the 1st/2nd week, snack will individual and will end at 11:00am.

Volunteers & Room Mom:

It seems like this year I have a group of you who want to help read, do laundry, cut lamination, work in the garden, etc.  I can’t tell you how great it feels to have a lot of you wanting to help.

Right now, we could use our rugs that we work on washed.  They were washed last in the middle of last year.  There is quite a few of them, but I know a few of you signed up to help.  Please email me if you can take them ASAP.

We are still in need of a Room Mom!  Jaida Ryan was our Room Mom last year and did fabulous things for our class.  Jaida, if you would still like to be our Room Mom, Sarah Boudreaux is willing to help you out.  If you can’t, anyone who loves to plan things for our class parties, send out reminders for field trips and events, you are the person we are looking for.  Sarah is willing to come into the class and help out, but would like help with the planning aspect.

School Supplies:

A good chunk of you have dropped off school supplies.  Ms. Emilee and I and your child will go through the supplies Monday.  It will take us some time to get things in order, so there might be some need for volunteers to help us out.  I will let you know when we cross that bridge.  Please have your child bring in their school supplies Monday.

Schedule:

There is not going be a lot of things coming home (for those new parents who are used to homework, worksheets, etc.)  We are working as a school to reduce paper usage and finding ways to conserve.  Your child will be doing a huge percentage of their work in their binders, journals, and possible workbooks.  When normalization has had its time to occur, for most of the children, (Oct. 1st) you are more than welcome to set up times with me to come observe our classroom in action, or if you want to meet with me to see your child’s work.  Know that I am meticulous at keeping track of your child’s work and every year I make new changes to better my tracking system.  I’ve made some curriculum decisions and changes to further enhance Dr. Montessori’s philosophy of “Follow the Child.”  Every student is going to be at different levels in their education.  I have made myself a Utah Common Core pacing guide of the standards that is organized by what I need to achieve monthly.  I have passed this onto the other Lower El teachers as well.  I use the Common Core standards as goals and as guidelines for how I will then use the Montessori materials to achieve those goals.  This guide, I hope, will also help answer the famous question, “How far behind/above is my child in _____?”

What I can offer you at this moment is our weekly/daily schedule.  It is subject to change and need adjusting, but I think I have it where it won’t much change.  To my parents who have a child with a special need or have a love for knowing the schedule, I would print this out as a resource for your child and of course, you! 🙂

2015-2016 Schedule

Work Charts & Classroom Work:

Your child will follow a work chart in my class.  A change I have made this year is that I am not setting a set number of works your child needs to get done by recess.  That may scare some of you, but know that I will be using the Utah Common Core Standards AND Montessori curriculum to keep your child on track (at their pace!)  If a child is avoiding certain subjects, that is where Ms. Emilee and I will ask your child why they might be avoiding that area that they need to work on.  It might be that they find it too hard, too boring, or need a different way to learn that subject. As a Montessori teacher, I will be looking for quality of work, not quantity of work.  If you want to know what our work chart looks like, please click on the link below.  You can use it as a tool to ask your child what they did that day.

Work Chart 15-16

Green is 1st grade, Blue is 2nd grade, Red is 3rd grade.
Some students may need a modified work chart.  Should your child need a modified work chart, we will inform you of what that will look like and involve you in the planning process.

First Couple of Weeks:

1st Week of School– 1pm dismissal everyday!  We will go over grace and courtesy and classroom procedures/expectations/rules and do team building exercises everyday this week

2nd and 3rd Week of School– The 5 Great lessons will be introduced with activities to follow.  We will be talking about scientific theories during this time.  Please note, the Montessori philosophy offers your child different theories from science and history.  At no point in our school’s curriculum will we tell your child that this is the only theory you should believe or practice.  Our job, in this environment, is to give your child different perspectives so that they see other points of views and learn more about our world and societies.  I will always appreciate your family’s beliefs and values.  What I do care about is that your child respects all the differences we will have in our classroom.  I don’t tolerate any bullying, whether that be physical or emotional.  Kids do joke and make statements, so please let me know if your child is unhappy at any time because some kids will not bring it to our attention and then it can fester into more of an issue.

Our class’s cultural curriculum will also be introduced during the 2nd week of school.

4th Week of School– Your child will be slowly introduced to more of their work chart and materials related to the Common Core Standards and Montessori curriculum.

Upper El Partnership:

This year, we will be working with Ms. Stephaney’s Upper El classroom.  Both our classes will get together frequently to do activities, reading, and go on a field trip during the year.  Thursdays will be our time to get together to do reading and other activities.

Phew!  That was a lot of information to soak in.  If you have any questions, please email me 🙂

Cheers!

Ms. Kaley