Indoor Recess Successes

As you may have heard, we had an issue with snakes on our playground and had to have an expert come out and help us make sure all is well before opening up the playground again.

While this means we have been bummed to be inside all of this gorgeous fall weather week, we are making the best of it! Look at the tower some of the class worked on today:

As you may have guessed, the tower toppled shortly after the photo was taken...

OREO Challenge & An Exciting Opportunity

Oreo Challenge
Today, we talked about habit 6, synergy. Synergizing is about working together, sharing results, and collaborating for a shared opportunity.

We partcipated in an activity called O.R.E.O. (Our Really Exciting Online project) that schools from all around the world are also participating in. The goal of the project was to obtain a class average of Oreos that could be stacked in a single stack. Taking turns, each child in the class stacked oreos, one by one, until his/her stack toppled. Our average was 14 and our highest stack had 27 oreos! We talked about factors involved in the varying numbers of each stack and we talked about the concept of an average. Once the activity ends on October 1st, we will check the results page and see what other schools found out. It looks like the average from all of the schools that have participated so far is 18 oreos.

Carefully stacking

And, there it goes...

Exciting Opportunity

This week, we had an exciting opportunity brought to us. Mr. Joseph chose Mrs. Kaufmann and I's classes to help him with a special project involving schools and pollution. Our classes will be exploring how Virginia schools (Beaverdam specifically) are polluting the Chesapeake Bay and what we can do to help slow or stop it. Our students will be creating models to show how this pollution is affecting the Bay and they will develop ideas for what can be done. In the process of working on this challenge for Mr. Joseph, we will learn about Virginia's natural resources and the Chesapeake Bay watershed. So far, we have made a list of questions that we need to answer in order to answer the questions being put to us! Stayed tuned for updates!

Back to School Night

My apologies for the late notice, but ... Back to School Night is tomorrow! The teacher introductions and short PTA meeting begin at 6:30 and classroom visits begin at 7. There will be 3 fifteen-minute sessions in the classrooms, with the hopes that you will be able to make it to the classrooms of all of your children.

Hope to see everyone tomorrow night!

First Week - Done!

What a busy first week we had! We focused on getting situated in a new classroom and learning new procedures and routines. Everyone seems to be acclimating quite nicely. I have had several class compliments from resource teachers, which always makes me proud!

This week, we will be working on beginning year assessments and we will be getting started with curriculum.

Language Arts: We are working on...
- remembering read to self and work on writing procedures
- learning/remembering what synonyms and antonyms are
- using a thesaurus to broaden vocabulary
- spelling and reading level assessments

Math: We are working on...
- number of the day (a number sense warm up)
- line and bar graphing

Science: We are working on...
- learning about natural and human-made resources in general and in Virginia
- learning what scientists do and how scientists act

Social Studies: We are working on...
- learning about absolute and relative location
- memorizing our home address
- knowing how to describe Virginia's location, including bordering states and bodies of water

Next week, we will have a fun activity that involves oreos! Be on the look out for more information about our mini in-class project and for pictures!