Jeh Kulu Dance by Vasanthi's Class

We Have Reached 100 Pennies!

 The students reached their goal of 100 pennies! For marble day we began with a task called "Save Sam" where Sam (the gummy worm) seems to have misplaced his life vest (the gummy life saver) under the boat (the cup). It was the students job to get the life vest back on to Sam without stabbing him or touching him with their hands. They were given two paper clips and had to find strategies to safely put the vest on him! Some students used the paper clips as hooks while others used them as tweezers. Most of the students found it was easiest to stretch the life vest to get it around Sam. Everyone worked with their shoulder partners to successfully save Sammy!

The second activity was helping Harry find a spot to "hang" so he can watch over students to make sure they are doing their work! Each group was given a fuzzy ball with eyes (Harry) a muffin liner (his chair) tape, notecards, and pipe cleaners. The students had to build a place for Harry using the materials provided. They were timed, and by the end of this time they had to create a stable perch for Harry to sit on. They were given five minutes to plan and ten minutes to build. At the end we looked at the different creations to see different strategies and ideas that were used! So much creativity in the classroom today!!

Final Jeh Kulu Performance, International Potluck and a Reader's Theater directed by Harrison!

"What is the heart of your story?"

This afternoon Libby lead our writers workshop lesson!  Our personal narrative unit is almost 1/2 way done!  Today we worked together to discuss mentor texts and how they measured up against our Narrative checklist! We are focused on strengthening our narratives by adding figurative language and details, building our characters and writing so their personality shines through and we striving to use dialogue and inner dialogue to show the emotions our characters are feeling!  We are redraftining, revising and editing so that our stories have "heart"!  We want our readers to know the morals and lessons we have learned from our experiences. Our writing is in ourGoigle Drive, so ask your child to share it with you!  Libby also began her version of Thumbs Ups, ask your child about Libby Love Notes!  

Mary K, guest speaker, lived 11 years in Africa!

We know how to play!

Aura comes to teach us about Colombia

Jeh Kulu

A Busy Tuesday

We had a very busy day today in Vasanthi's classroom! We began the day with morning meeting where we worked with adjectives, difficult math problems, and we created a story together. We had some great project shares today! Tess showed us the beautiful hidden city of Petra, Robbie showed us the Spanish Steps, Abbie showed us Giants Causeway in Ireland, and Dylan showed us the Colosseum in Rome, Italy. It was great to see so many different historical and ancient sites. They all worked very hard and had wonderful presentations. 

In math today we did a problem string with a variety of problems asking students to use their best mathematical thinking while subtracting and adding numbers containing decimals. Students used multiple pathways to solve difficult answers. Some students used ratio tables while others used number lines and standard algorithm. Everyone was able to show their thinking in their own unique ways! We also played a game where students had to use what they knew about creating fractions to multiply that fraction by either 2,3, or 4. 

We ended the day writing and working on our personal narratives. Overall a great day with lots of learning that we will be building off of the rest of the week!

 

The End of My First Week and a Little Bit About me!

Hi families! This is officially the end of my first week student teaching everyday. I must say I have had a blast watching the students learn and I am so thankful that I am in such a great classroom! I thought I would tell you a little bit about myself. I am an Elementary Education major at Champlain Colłege and I am graduating in May. I am from Richmond Vermont and have been attending schools in Vermont my whole life. Both of my parents are educators in Vermont as well, so I have had many opportunities to explore classrooms! When I am not at school I am working my two jobs or relaxing! I love to hike, run and hang out with friends and family. I am so excited to see where the semester brings me!

January 5th

Today number corner began by playing a game where students had to make numbers into fourths,fifths,or tenths. Students had to spin to see if they got a 1,2,4,5,10, or 20 and then had to make this into a fraction using the given denominators. The goal of the game was to get as close as possible to filling up ten grids. It was the kids vs. Vasanthi so it got pretty competitive!! 

In reading we have been looking at Cinderella stories from all over the world. We have been comparing different stories and today we read a Cinderella tale from Egypt. The students explored different aspects of the Egyptian Cinderella compared to the original. It was interesting to look at the pictures and see how different each culture is! We also began with our narrative writing unit, so students got to write about themselves today!

Starting off the New Year

Hi! I'm Libby. I have been coming in the past couple weeks only on Wednesdays, but since it is my last semester of college I will be here everyday! I am looking forward to working in the classroom and learning from both Vasanthi and the students. So far today we have done a few activities in math and social studies. In number corner  we used cubes to find the volume of specific figures based on questions in our number corner books. We also worked with a string of math problems using the give and take strategy. It got pretty tricky once decimals were involved but everyone did a great job trying their hardest! In social studies we explored food from around the world. We looked at a variety of slides of families showing what they eat and how much they spend weekly all over the world. We were amazed to see how little food the family in Chad had compared to other countries. We also looked at graphs from different countries showing the different amount of nutrients and calories each country consumes yearly. We ended with the United States where we discovered we tend to eat a lot of fast food, sugars, and fats. It was fun to compare and contrast our lifestyles and eating habits in relevance to other countries! 

Holiday Presentations

         Our whole class got to work with our friend partner and then Vasanthi put us in groups.  After we were put into groups, we chose a holiday.  Groups have chosen New Year's Day, Holi, Christmas, Day of the Dead and Carnival.  Some of us are doing games, posters and a presentation.  I hope all of the parents can hear about all the fun and learning we are doing!  ☺️. We will present our holidays to Mrs. Crowther's class on Monday!