Week 4

Pinwheels for Peace

This week we had our first 5 day, in-person school week since March 2020 and life is good at The Elmore School! It feels like an accomplishment, and I will admit I'm a bit exhausted! It was a busy week as we are in the middle of our assessment window for the STAR assessment. Students were issued their iPads (which will remain at school this year unless we transition to remote learning for more than a day). The STAR assessment is taken on student iPads and is a screening tool that we use to help us determine where students are in their math and literacy skills and what skills they are ready for next. We can also use this tool to progress monitor students we are concerned about. For some reason our internet has been operating slower than usual, so this has been more of a process than I expected as only a couple of students can take the assessment at a time. I will be able to share the results of this assessment when we meet on October 11th at our Parent Teacher Conference.

During Writer's Workshop, students have been working on composing personal narratives. Our focus this week has been on bring our characters to life by adding dialogue, using figurative language and comparisons to help the reader paint an image in their mind's eye, and finally, planning and stretching out our small (tiny) moment stories. Several students have shared their stories with the class during Morning meeting.

During Math lessons this week students have been working on addition and subtraction. First graders have been using ten frames (concrete) and number bonds (pictorial) and equations (abstract) to add and subtract up to/within 10. Second graders have been using ten frames and number bonds to add and subtract by making 10's to add (8 + 5 becomes 10 + 3) and subtract (13 - 5 becomes 10 - 8). When students are able to convert problems into a more friendly problem they become flexible math thinkers. Third grade has has been working on a similar goal as they review adding and subtracting by converting an equation to the nearest 10. Additionally, students are solving multi digit addition with regrouping.

In Art this week, we painted still lifes of sunflowers! Students each had a flower (thank you to those who donated a bloom) to look at. First they drew the flower composition on their paper, then they painted using acrylic paint. We will be finishing these up over the next week.

Announcements:

Please email lunch orders to me before 7 pm on Sunday.

Library is Monday. Be sure to bring your Library books!

We will also have our first Farm To School Lesson on Monday, September 27th!

The Elmore School Open House: Thursday, September 30th. Please sign up HERE for 20 minute time slot to visit with your student.

Jon Gailmor Music Residency: October 4-8. We will be filming students performances to share with families as we are not able to host and indoor performance at this time due to the Covid-19 guidelines. We will also be recording a CD or MP3 of the music which will be made available to families.

School Picture Day: Tuesday, October 5th @ 9:00

ECO: October 20th from 9-12

No School: Monday October 11th (Indigenous People's Day). Parent Teacher Conferences. I will have a sign up sheet for you during Open House so bring your calendars!

Mrs. Bellavance will be organizing family provided Hot Lunch. We will also have this available for sign up during Open house as well.

Ann Marie Dryden has volunteered to head up the Elmore School "sale" (yard sale, craft sale, bake sale), which we will use to help build a fund to purchase equipment and gear for our ECO program. Look for information on this coming soon! Thank you Ann Marie!

Caterpillar update: Our Monarch Caterpillar managed to escape the Caterpillar/Butterfly Habitat over the weekend and formed its chrysalis on the ceiling in the classroom! They usually emerge in 7-10 days, so we should have a butterfly emerge in the next week. Then we will need to capture it to release! Stay tuned!