March 19, 2018 ~ Week 25 ~ PBL Wrap Up

Dear Parents & Families,

We are now at 118 days of school.  It’s wonderful the amount of progress we are seeing in all areas.

We are excited to wrap up the Light & Sound Wave Unit.  We will finish our unit and then head to the Montshire Museum on Tuesday, March 26th as our culminating activity, along with a in-class assessment.

We also have completed out Project-Based Learning project: Design Our Dream Playground.  It is amazing how hard all the students work and how they collaborated together to make the best final products as possible.  See the pictures below for progress pictures along the way.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!
~Ms. Gray

January 26, 2018 ~ Week 21 ~ Poetry

Happy New Year – and almost to the 100th day of school at TES!  Getting around to post to the blog has been harder than I thought at the beginning of the year, my apologies.  I’m going to try to continue to post bi-weekly.  Thank you for those of you who check it out!

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Poetry is what we have been studying in reading and writing this month.  Students are working hard to recognize the differences between poetry and prose.  Poetry is a challenge for us as we have been working hard to write sentences.  Getting out of that structure has pushed many of us to really think hard and grapple with challenge.

 

So far in our unit we have worked on the following types/devices of poetry:

  • rhyming
  • alliteration
  • acrostic

 

Here are some examples of poetry from our students this month….

 

 

Sun

Sun, hot, hot, hot

It’s burning me a lot.

It even burns my metal pot

hot, hot, hot

It’s burning me a lot.

–Samson Charron

 

Pokemon

Pokemon is a game

battle

battle

battle

battle everyone you know!

–Jay Hill

 

Love

Loving

Only you

Valentine

Forever

–Orayna Pleake

 

A ridiculous rooster runs up to Ruth, who was riding a raven.

–Benjamin Barton

 

These examples are great! Thanks for taking a look.  If you’re interested in exploring poetry more at home feel free to check out this great site: http://www.gigglepoetry.com/index.aspx

~Ms. Gray

December 8, 2017 ~ Week 15

Dear Parents & Families,

 
Thanks for your continued support!  We now have a full afternoon snack bin – many thanks!
 
This week was great! We are up to the 65th day of school.  We had a good visit to the Zebedee Wetlands and the Town Forest with Bill Shepard.  We did some tree identification and evergreen identification.  Thank you to Bill and Nate Hill for joining us!  See photos below. 
 
We also had a nice visit with our 5th grade buddies in Mrs. Harrington’s class to make ornaments for the holiday luncheon next week. It was great fun!
 
Below you will find our weekly newsletter and a letter and form for our Family Traditions Brainstorm.  Please check out both.  The newsletter has lots of great info – and a new sharing schedule. There is a hard copy of the Family Traditions Brainstorm in your child’s home-school folder. Please the Family Traditions form back as soon as possible.
Have a great weekend!
~Ms. Gray

December 1, 2017 ~ Week 14

Dear Parents & Families,

Thanks for your patience while I took a brief hiatus from blogging.  With parent-teacher conferences and report cards happening back to back, I really needed to focus my energy at school to these two very important things.

It was great to have 100% participation in our parent-teacher conferences.  I was able to meet with all of our families.  Thank you for your continued support and dedication to our continued communication and collaboration between school and home.  Please make sure if you have any questions or concerns about the report card, feel free to contact me.

The week and two days before Thanksgiving was busy working on Thanksgiving themed activities.  Students created “I am Thankful for… Turkeys” and Place Value Turkeys.  These two items are hanging in the hall outside our door.

We have been working really hard on our Community Unit and trying to answer the question, “How does our Thetford Community meet our needs?”  This week students thought about places and things in our community that fall under the terms: education, laws, play, jobs, transportation, companionship, shelter, and goods.  We also took a brief walking tour of the Thetford Hill Green to map the places and things that are in our immediate community.

Next week we will transition to working on letter writing during our Writing Block. Please be on the look out for information coming home about our Family Tradition Writing Project.  A note will come home asking for your help in compiling information about a tradition your family takes part in throughout the year. (Examples: trips, gatherings, swimming holes you visit, seasonal celebrations, etc.)

Here are the electronic versions of our newsletters from November and early December:

December 1

November 17

November 10

Here are a couple of photos:

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Ms. Gray

 

November 3, 2017 ~ Week 10

Dear Parents & Families,

My apologies for not getting to a blog post last week.  I will try to ensure that I update weekly going forward.  Below you will find highlights of the past two weeks. We had a great Hike for Hunger!  It was a great accomplishment to complete our Farm Stand.  All of our hard work and persistence with that really paid off.

This week we moved toward wrapping up our units in science and writing.  Students shared their narratives with the whole class as part of our Author’s Celebration.

We also worked on finishing our final project for our Pollinator Unit.  Students did a great job planning and now building their pollinators and using the knowledge that we learned to make the best pollinators possible.

Next week is another short week, as we have conferences on Friday.  Please make sure to let me know if you need a reminder about your conference day and time.  Next week we will also begin our work with Nonfiction Writing using the Hand Paragraph Structure. 

Highlights from the Last Two Weeks:

  • Hike for Hunger

  • Farm Stand

  • Narrative Sharing
  • Pollinator Planning & Building

Below is a link to our weekly newsletters from last week and this week.

October 27, 2017

November 3, 2017

Have a fantastic weekend!
~Ms. Gray

October 20, 2017 ~ Week 8

Dear Parents & Families,

We had a great week! It was an awesome trip to Cedar Circle Farm.  Thank you to those parents and family members that joined us; it was a great help.
We also had our first visit to the Wetlands! The students did an excellent job working in pairs to complete a scavenger hunt to see what we can discover at the Wetlands.  We look forward to going again in a couple of weeks (weather and temperature permitting).
We really need help from families on Tuesday, October 24th for the Farm Stand.  If you can help out please be in touch as soon as you can.
We need some donated and borrowed things for our pollinator project and the farm stand next week.  See the newsletter for more information.
Here is our newsletter for this week: October 20, 2017

Have a great fall weekend!

Sincerely,

Ms. Gray
Classroom Blog: msgraytes.edublogs.org
Highlights from our week: 10/16-20
• African Drumming
• Cedar Circle Field Trip
• Farm Stand Preparations
    
• Writing thank you notes for TVFD
• Completing our narrative writing
• Self-selecting reading/literacy stations

October 13, 2017 ~ Week 7

Dear Parents & Families,

This week we had a great visit to the Thetford Volunteer Fire Department.  Thank you to the TVFD volunteers and specifically to Moriah Whitcomb for the great presentation and fire safety reminders.  Please remember to check-in with your family at home to ensure you have a safety plan in place for a meeting place in case of a need of an evacuation of your home.  Also, please remember to change your smoke detector batteries! It was a great reminder to me.

We hit 30 days of school this week! We completed our All School Meeting for this school year.  Great work to all of us for succeeding at this accomplishment so early in the school year!

Thank you for those families who have decided to join us for our Field Trip to Cedar Circle Farm on Wednesday, October 18th. We plan to depart TES at 10:45 am.  Chaperones can join us on the bus or meet us at the farm.  Here is the link for information about the trip.  If your child will need a bag lunch from the cafeteria for that day please be sure to let me know by Monday, 10/16.

Reminders:

  • Wednesday, October 18th: Field Trip to Cedar Circle Farm, 10:45-1:15.
  • Thursday, October 19th: Picture Retakes
  • Friday, October 20th: Wetlands Visit, 12:30-2:30.

Below you will see some more highlights from our week:

• TVFD Visit and Fire Safety presentation

• Harvested vegetables from our school garden with Cat

• Took apart and processed sunflowers for our Farm Stand products

• Simulated pollination with a fun science experiment using cheese puffs

• Worked really hard for our All School Meeting – especially on our props!

Here is the link to our weekly newsletter: October 13, 2017

If you can, please volunteer to help out at our Farm Stand on Monday, October 23rd – Tuesday, October 24th or Wednesday, October 25th.  Here the link to sign up for our Farm Stand week: Farm Stand Sign Up  

We are planning to go to the Wetlands on Friday, October 20th (weather permitting!).  Please plan to send in rubber boots to have here at school for our Wetlands visits.

Have a great weekend! Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,

Ms. Gray