Our Home-town Heros Come For A Visit

Hello families! We had another fabulous week! Thank you, Mrs. Lutter, for planning our Middleburg Fire Department visit. It was so much fun meeting our community helpers firsthand. We enjoyed learning about fire safety, and had a blast touring the firetruck - very cool! 

In Social Science, we learned about economic problems, including scarcity, limited resources and having to make choices. In Science, we explored motion, force and friction by using ramps and cars. We utilized the scientific method to understand and record our findings. In Math, we deconstructed numbers, learned ordinal numbers, skip counted, scrolled on hundreds charts, and more.

Thank you for reinforcing word study at home. It is important for students to learn and understand spelling patterns. Reading and writing go hand in hand. If you can spell/read "bake" you can spell/read "take" just by changing the initial consonant. Determining why a word is spelled a certain way, and being able to categorize words by their spelling patterns, creates a deeper understanding and leads to future application.

We are looking forward to beginning the assembly of our "Giving Tree" in the Art Museum. Students will be constructing this tree during DaVinci project days in preparation for DaVinci night. It will be used to highlight our growth throughout the year, starting from the roots up.

Please enjoy some pictures from this week!

 Fire Department Visit, Word Study - word hunt, Reader's Theater & Butterflies

 

 

 

Cheers!
The Green Team
(Mrs. Emmel, Mrs. Browning & Ms. Morgan)

Yoga, Reader's Theater, Number Sense and More!

Hello families! Wow - as we come to the end of the fifth week of school, we are so proud of how well our students are picking up the routine, and cheering on success through exploration and socialization. They are starting to demonstrate the acceptance of taking risks in areas of math, science, language arts, and more. In doing so, they deepen their understanding of the subject areas, while building a foundation that supports future learning.

We all come to the table with unique perspectives and experiences. By working as a team of learners, we can gain knowledge that we would otherwise not have gained based on our background knowledge alone. It takes collaboration and exploration to really enrich learning. 

One thing we stress in our classrooms is how we learn through mistakes. MISTAKES ARE GOOD! Without mistakes there isn't any learning taking place. You have to try things over and over again, using different methods, in order to truly master a skill. This is why we encourage our students to think "outside the box." This isn't easy. We are often so used to being told what we should learn and exactly how we should learn. Sure, we can memorize facts and spit them back out, but can we really apply them to real life situations if we haven't been given the chance to explore what works for us. Authors don't write a perfectly crafted book the first time around. They have to read, edit, rewrite, delete, and so on, before the book is ready for publication. Gymnasts don't walk across the balance beam the first time. They train their bodies to balance through years of rigorous training.

It is the choices we make following the mistakes that determine what level of knowledge we will gain. We choose to never give up. Your children make that choice over and over again every day at school. We are proud of the confident human beings they are becoming in such a short amount of time. There are no limits to what they can achieve. Our "Community" unit in Social Studies has really helped us understand the benefits of making good choices, and bringing our best to every situation. 

We continue to discuss, write and read about everyday people in the community, school, and even our classrooms, that help us along the way. Come into our classrooms and you will find a small community of learners who respect each other and our ideas, who are safe to "give-it-a-go" without feeling fearful, and who will turn that puzzle piece just a little more to the right to make it fit, even when it feels like they've already tried every direction. 

We would like to thank the Middleburg Fire Department for taking the time to visit our school tomorrow, Sept. 5th, to educate our students on the service they provide the community. We are looking forward to posting those pictures to next week's post. Also, a huge thanks to Mrs. Lutter for planning the visit!

Thank you for supporting us and your children at home. You are their first and most important teachers - and we are so grateful for you :)

Please enjoy some photos from the week.

Thank you volunteers!

Fitness Friday - It's Yoga Time!

 Wonder Workshop!

Counting and Adding by Rolling the Dice!

Sketching Nature, In Nature - Like DaVinci!

 Reader's Theater - Community Helpers Skits!

Cheers!
The Green Team
(Mrs. Browning, Ms. Morgan & Mrs. Emmel)

Your Trash Is Our Treasure - Reduce, Reuse...Recycled Toys

Hello families! We can't believe we are reaching the end of week 4. Reading and word study groups are under way and we've found our groove in Math, Social Studies and Science too!

Remember, creating patterns with shapes and numbers is our foundation for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Practice skip counting by 2's, 5's, 10's...even 3's, 4's, 6's and 7's. 

Please continue to read with your child every night. Your child can read to you, himself/herself, a sibling, or you can read to him/her. Also, don't forget to practice a few sight words every night. It is our hope that these words will be automatic by the end of the school year. A great way to practice is by creating flashcards, or even your own word wall at home. The repeated readings will help your child recall the words more easily.

In Science, we explored motion. Force (push, pull, twist) creates motion (or movement). Within a group, your child had to figure out how to make a box move without touching it with their hands. Wow, did we have some creative ideas!! Many used their knowledge of magnets, iron and opposite poles to attract - making the box move (pulling). Others pushed the box with a pencil, marker, or glue stick. Next time you take your child to the playground, start up a conversation about swinging on the swings. Pumping their legs (using their muscles) or having you push them are both forces that create motion. There are so many teachable moments you can utilize with your child. You are their greatest teachers!

We also enjoyed some buddy reading time, using books from our Science basket. Thank you, Mrs. Lutter, for taking a trip to the public library to find great books on motion, force and energy for us.

In Social Studies, we are learning about how community helpers contribute to our communities and what character traits community helpers possess. The students came up with their own lists of character traits and helpers, then shared the lists with the class. After this, the groups each voted on one helper and are currently creating their own skits, equipped with a script (written by them), props and costumes (designed by them). We can't wait to see them act out a scene involving a community helper. Reader's theater is so much fun, especially when we get to be the writers, producers, directors and actors. Good thing we have a theater major on our green team - Ms. Morgan :)

We love our DaVinci STEM project days - every Friday, where we can apply the concepts we learned throughout the week to assemble our toys.

Thank you for continuing to send in recyclables. Please send in masking tape if you have some at home. Magnetic tape would be great too! We started building our toys last week and look forward to incorporating our magnet and motion knowledge this Friday!

Starting September 8th (next week is a short week), we will be sending home a packet/sheet of suggested homework assignments to be completed throughout the week. The packets will include word study activities/words, and ideas for math. Plus, a reminder that your child should be reading for 15-20 minutes a night. If you'd like to borrow any books from our class or school library, we'd be happy to send books home. You do NOT need to send this homework in to school. These activities are meant to be a great way for you to practice what we are working on in school with your child at home. We have active weeknights, and know there isn't always time to complete nightly homework with sports, cub scouts, etc. We are hoping this list of suggested activities will give you the flexibility to practice on your own time schedule. Plus, so many of the best teachable moments are spontaneous.

Have a wonderful and relaxing holiday weekend :)

Cheers!
The Green Team
(Ms. Morgan, Mrs. Emmel & Mrs. Browning)

We Use Our Cartography Skills to Find Treasures and Investigate Virginia's Resources

Hello friends and families! Wow, we are so impressed with how quickly our little Leobreds are picking up the routine and using their math detective, artistic and scientific skills, etc. to explore our community, state, world and universe. We are truly amazed by the innovation occurring within and outside our classrooms. 

This week in Math, we are "using and looking for patterns" in shapes, numbers, etc. Patterns are repetitive and predictable - and everywhere! With the assistance of our fabulous Gifted/Math Specialist, our 12 to 1 student to teacher ratio makes it even more possible to assess and facilitate areas of need and highlight student strengths and achievements. 

During Language Arts, we've started guided reading groups, centers and word study. This small-group environment allows us to lead and participate in constructive literature discussions, explore word patterns, letter-sound relationships, comprehension, and "good reader strategies."

We are continuing to highlight Social Studies concepts during DaVinci Time, where we integrate reading, writing and vocabulary. This week we have been using a variety of texts and other print and technological materials to explore Virginia, and our community's natural, capital and human resources. A great way you can support this at home is to look up your home, or anything else that means something to your child, on Google Earth. Virginia is rich in farms, forests, water and more. Next week we will tie the types of resources in with community helpers. We need human and capital resources to utilize the abundance of natural resources provided by our great State.

We applied our cartography skills to create maps of our classroom so that we could be like pirates and go on a treasure hunt! The students included titles, keys, symbols and more to help their peers find "treasures" that they hid around the room! Afterward we discussed what made our maps helpful and ways we could improve our maps in the future! What a great way to reflect on our own work and strive for our best!

We are ecstatic to begin our first STEM project during Wonder Workshop. Thank you to everyone who has donated their recyclables. The students are excited about collecting recycled materials. We've had many return from lunch with a water bottle or container to proudly donate to our project. They are busy sketching and exploring ways to build toys from recyclables other people might refer to as trash. Not us! We are resourceful and proud of it! Project days will take place on Friday afternoons during Wonder Workshop.

During Science (Wonder Workshop), we continued to investigate magnets. We even "fished" for big and small fish (paperclips) using magnets, a string and a non-sharpened pencil (fishing rod). We charted our findings within a bar graph using tally marks. We were able to determine the number of "fish" caught and display the data within a bar graph. It's a great way to explore more than, less than, and equal to, along with other graphing skills such as the title, labels and skip counting - foundations for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Next week we will dive into the concept of motion.

 Fun with our birthday months and pictographs!

We are hearing great ideas for the community postcard/stamp collection homework project. This project is open-ended, which means any way your child chooses to display his/her postcards and/or stamps is correct. There is no wrong method - scrapbook, PowerPoint, on a map, in the shape of a horse, ANYTHING!!! Students are coming up with ideas we couldn't even begin to imagine, and they're FABULOUS! We hope they can learn about their communities with you (their most important and adored teachers). A perk is they will also have gained knowledge to share with their school community.

We again want to thank all of the parents who have volunteered their time during Arts Hour and lunch. The positive energy and enthusiasm you impart to us and your children make our school not only great, but exceptional. We are the models of community.

Cheers!
The Green Machine Team
(Mrs. Emmel, Ms. Morgan & Mrs. Browning)