Vermont Natives

This week in theme, our students began learning about the first people to live in Vermont, the Abenaki tribe. We learned about how they lived using some of our literacy strategies for vocabulary and note-taking. Coming into this next week, students will be assigned a research topic and a specific research question to answer. All of this work will be compiled to create one book per each class and will fill the Abenaki style books students have been working on in art class. We are very excited to see students working on their research and witnessing all of their hard work from literacy, theme and art come together!

We concluded our reading and book clubs about Because of Winn Dixie this week. Ending the book together was sweet and sad, just like how the main character Opal feels when she tastes the Littmus Lozenge. Students worked diligently to describe and analyze one character from the text and this past week we saw engaged learners writing meaningful pieces about their character. The book lends itself to many connections and our students have certainly been “brain in” in making these connections.

In math this week we moved into looking at division and had a math forum on division strategies. Four mathematicians shared their thinking and strategies and our class responded respectfully and thoughtfully by listening to understand, asking genuine questions and seeing multiple pathways to solving problems. Students were able to use this time to learn authentically from each other and to see a variety of strategies that all helped us to solve story problems - and especially to look at remainders and how much the context of the problem matters! We spent time this week talking especially about how what the problem is asking for and what the problem is talking about matters greatly when we solve problems. We know we can split a pizza, but we would never split a person! :)

This coming week we will be wrapping up, studying and then taking our Unit 2 Math assessment on Wednesday. We are also starting to wrap up our November Calendar Grid and Collector in Number Corner because students will not be in school during the week of Thanksgiving and we want to learn and observe all that we can about these two classroom tools during the month!

On Tuesday, we will be attending a Friend 2 Friend puppet show at WCS addressing the Demystification of Autism. We are looking forward to this engaging show teaching us about diverse learners and inclusion. Parents are welcome to attend. We will be in the “dining room” from 9:30-10:30 A.M. This Friday, we will also be joined by parent volunteers for our November session of Four Winds from 10:20 - 11:40 A.M. So far this year, we have learned about spiders and trees and how structure and function relates to the natural sciences. Students look forward to these fun and interesting sessions each month!

This week, Miss Ashley Cota and Miss Sunny Masison (Miss M) will be “taking over” the classrooms and all responsibilities for Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Eaton. Please copy acota@cssu.org on any correspondence for Mrs. Parker and smasison@cssu.org on any correspondence for Mrs. Eaton. We are happy, excited and grateful for this opportunity to learn from such talented cooperating teachers and to experience our first week solo-teaching in such a supportive environment with such S.M.A.R.T. students!

Be well,

Sunny & Ashley