I have updated a tab at the top of the blog with the rest of our field trips for the year. We have so many exciting opportunities for our children this year (all coordinated by Ms. Jalee, so if you see her around, feel free to thank her for all her hard work!) and I will be sending home a permission slip later this week that includes ALL the field trips with confirmed dates and times that require travel outside the school. I will still need to send out one permission form later in the year for our field trip in April, but this should cut down quite a bit on paper and hopefully also save you some time.

Our next field trip is fast approaching at Green Acres Dairy Farm on October 12th! I am waiting to hear back about how many chaperones we can take, but I do know that we will need drivers either to meet at North Shore at 10 AM to transport students or you can meet us there at 10:30 AM. I will share more details when I have them, as well as create a link on Track It Forward.

As always, thank you for your support! I know our class is going to have a successful year with all of your help!

Just as a reminder, Monday is an early out day with school ending at 1 PM. Enjoy the extra time with your student! 🙂

We had a great time on the field trip today! A huge shout-out to our parents, grandparents and other guardians that were able to drive and chaperone the students. They loved it! The performance did get started a little late and lasted longer than expected, including me being stuck in the parking lot at the Browning Center and arriving back to school later than most of you. I apologize for the inconvenience and any concern of where your child was at at the end of the day. Your child was a good hands at the office and we are so grateful for their help. Thank you again for helping us give our students out-of-the-classroom experiences. We couldn’t do it without you!

This week we settled into another part of our classroom organization: daily work plans. Your student will continue to have their weekly work charts where they record their lessons and follow-ups so they know what they need to complete during the week and now we are working with each child individually in the morning to plan their day so that follow-up work isn’t falling through the cracks and we are better able to assist with their workflow. For our second- and third-graders, we are following an identical format to their daily work plans from last year. Our first-graders are quickly catching on and I’ve been so pleased and impressed with how much more engaged they have all been with their work.

The favorite lesson of the week was our look at the Precambrian Era. We watched a video from National Geographic about the earliest of earth’s eons and the children enjoyed it so much that we watched it again at the end of the day. Some of them requested the link so they can watch at home. You can find the video here. It’s fun and very brief, and don’t worry, we had a discussion about how the music is definitely not authentic to the time period. We also enjoyed learning about calendars from other cultures, animal phylum and fractions!

Spelling groups will start this coming week! I do not plan to send the spelling list home as spelling activities will be part of our classroom work, but if you would like to receive the list, I can send a copy home with your student for extra practice.

Our DIBELS assessments will be completed this week, so we should be able to start reading groups in the next few weeks. I have some parent volunteers to help with reading groups, but if you didn’t see that sign-up sheet and would like to be involved, please let me know!

Thank you for getting your permission slips in promptly for our exciting field trip, the wonderful chaperone/drivers we have volunteering their time and thank you to Natalie for arranging the carpool rides!

Chaperones will meet at 11:30am across the street from MMA at North Shore parking lot. We plan to be ready to leave by 11:45am. I will have a map available for all chaperones and parents to show you where to park, where our class will meet, and the building the performance will be held at.

Have a great day!

I think the highlight of the past week for all of us was our first botany lesson with Ms. Rachel. She gave us a wonderful lesson on scientists and the scientific method, an overview of plants and hands-on exploration with magnifying glasses. The children loved seeing plant textures (and so many other things around the room) up close. We can’t wait to learn from her again next month!

We also had a presentation from Ms. Nicoletta about CHAMPS, which is an acronym describing the behavior expectations in our classroom and throughout our school. CHAMPS stands for Conversations, Help, Activities, Movement, Participation and Signals and we discussed and demonstrated how to appropriately express ourselves in these situations.

Last week we finished our initial math and reading assessments. With these done, we now have more instructional time to begin spelling and reading groups. Our curriculum is still reviewing a lot from last year, but we are diving into new material more and more. It is wonderful to see the children getting excited about learning new things, especially in our cultural areas. We had some excellent work this past week on the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the Eras of the Earth and more.

As a reminder, our first field trip is coming up THIS FRIDAY, September 21st. We will be watching a dance performance at Weber State and permission slips must be turned in on Wednesday at the LATEST. I know I have received most of them. Tomorrow I will get in touch with anyone whose form I still don’t have.

As always, thank you for loving and supporting your student!

I have updated the tab at the top of our blog page with info on home projects. I also sent home a paper copy with all parents who came to Back-to-School Night. Please read this so that you are aware of the home project expectations. Our first project will be due on October 5th.

The theme for the first project is change. We have talked about many different timelines in class: timeline of life, birth of the universe and other timelines like how things change over time, for example: animal life cycle, plant life cycle, how phones of have changed of over time, and computers, clothing, cars, etc.. Your child can choose how they would like to show change/timeline for their home project to present to the class. They will need to have a visual aid: poster board, clay modeling, mobile, power point, diorama, etc.. They will need a written part to be able to report to the class. 3rd graders are encouraged to start typing their reports.

Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

First up, I forgot a fun part of our second week that I wanted to add here. Our classroom adjoins Ms. Shanan’s Upper Elementary classroom and her students are our assigned Mountain Lion Mentors for this year. The purpose of this program is for all students to feel more connected throughout the school and specifically for the younger students to feel that the older students are there to help and encourage them. As part of this partnership, we will be doing monthyl activities with them as well as interacting informally on a regular basis. On August 31st, we did our first joint activity where we made hats to celebrate Maria Montessori’s birthday. Dr. Montessori was a scientist, doctor and researcher, but she also liked to have fun by dressing up and particularly wearing fun hats. Each of our students got to make a “Maria Montessori hat” and decorate as they chose. We saw everything from military helmets to panda bear hats with pom-pom ears! The kids had fun getting to know their mentor and they all had a great time working together to be creative.

This past week, we had our second great lesson from Ms. Lana where she presented the Timeline of Life. We leard about the different eras of the Earth (Hadean, Protozoic, Neozoic, etc.) and which types of life formed during these eras. All of the children were enthralled with our large timeline and are excited to learn more about the different plants and animals on our planet through our weekly lessons and research projects. We also continued to get more settled into our various curriculum areas and I’m starting to see great daily math practice from the children. This week we will begin spelling assessments so that we can start spelling lists next week. We are also beginning to form reading groups as we finish reading assessments for all new students this week.

As most of you have hopefully seen, our first field trip is coming up on September 21st! We are going to Weber State to watch a Children’s Dance Theater performance. Permission slips were sent home with your student on Friday. If you did not receive one, please let me know so I can send another copy home. We MUST have permission slips turned in by Wednesday, September 19th for your child to be able to attend our field trip. We are also still looking for chaperones and drivers. Please let either myself or Natalie Monsen know if you are available to help with either of these things. We do have multiple field trips scheduled for this year, so we need anyone who is available to support or help (even if it’s just to drive your own child) to do so at least once.

Thank you again for your support!

First, an item of business: permission slips will be going home tomorrow for our first field trip that will be held on September 21st. Students are NOT allowed to attend a field trip if we do not have permission slips returned at least 48 hours in advance. This means that Wednesday, September 19th is the LAST day to turn in permission slips for this trip. If the form is not turned in, your student will have to remain behind at the school that day. Two chaperones have already volunteered, but we are still looking for 2 more (you can sign up here) plus extra drivers that can take students to and from the performance.

We have wrapped up our second full week of school! This past week we began our full-blown curriculum with multiple lesson presentations each day and follow-up assignments to be completed in class. Our second- and third-graders jumped right back into using their work charts and completing their work. Our first-graders are quickly catching on and I’m sure will adjust to the classroom flow soon. As a reminder, if your student is not completing their assigned work in class, I will send home a note with the assignment expectations so they can complete it at home. I know that we have enough time for our students to complete their work if they stay on task and put their assigned work first. It is challenging, but doable and I know our students are capable.

We also started our Great Lessons, which tie together all our curriculum areas and create so much wonder for the students. Last week our lesson was on the Coming of the Universe. We were fortunate to have Ms. Lana come present it to our class. We talked about the Big Bang Theory and other creation stories as part of our understanding of how our universe came to be. Most of the students chose to create a picture of how they envision the starting of the universe or of our solar system. Their work is hanging in the hallway outside our class for you to see during Back to School Night on September 13th.

For anyone who has not yet seen our volunteer sign-up page, please see the link at the top of the blog. There is also an option to subscribe to this blog so that you receive all new posts by email. It can be found at the bottom right of this page.

Thank you so much for your support of our classroom!