Trick or Treat for Unicef

A note from Ms. LaRose's 2nd graders: 

Porters Point School will be participating in Trick or Treat for Unicef this year.  To learn more about Trick or Treat for Unicef click here to view a short video. Boxes will be sent home on Monday, October 30th and need to be returned to school by Friday, November 3rd.  Thank you! 

Week October 23rd

What a busy week we’ve had!

In math we’ve worked hard finishing up Unit 2 and starting Unit 3. Unit 3 focuses on using addition and subtraction to solve number stories. On Thursday we did math explorations! We compared lengths, we matched pairs, and we practiced counting larger numbers. The kids worked so hard and were brilliant mathematicians!

To celebrate Fall we made torn paper trees and wrote poems about Autumn. The trees came out great and add a nice bit of Fall to our hallways!

We had some awesome visits from local community helpers. Libby and Megan came from Colchester Rescue to talk about their work as and EMS. Officer Mellen came to talk about his job as a police officer. We also had two parents come in and talk about their jobs as a dispatcher and as a health insurance salesperson. The kids did great for all of our guests; we’re working hard on asking questions not just telling stories.

This week was also our walking field trip! We had beautiful weather this Friday and the students enjoyed walking around Porters Point Road to explore the places and community helpers that are all around us.

Some highlights from our short week last week. We practiced our Short O words doing a scoot. Students traveled with a pencil and clipboard, they sorted the words hung around the room based on their short o word family. The kids had a great time! We also learned about dentists and teachers as community helpers.

Week of October 9th

What a fabulous Friday we had to finish out an awesome week!

Our Community Helpers unit continued with making maps of a community, real or imagined. Some students wanted to make their own neighborhood; other students wanted to create their own communities! We did a "Scoot" where students travel around the room and make observations about different types of community helpers. It was a fun way to get up and moving around the room to kick off our learning about community helpers. We also got to see fire truck and learn about fire safety!

This week we’ve been practicing our short vowels and continue to practice our sight words. On Friday we had stations to practice our sight words. Building words with Play-Doh was a big hit!

In Math on Friday we learned about XtraMath--a program designed to help students practice their basic math facts and build math fact fluency. We continue to practice our math skills through math games!

We had our first Four Winds lesson! The kids were so excited! We learned about spiders and different spider adaptations. We took a walk in the forest to search for spiders and spider webs. We also made a web as we shared what we learned about spiders! The kids can’t wait for the next lesson!

Letter from Ms. Foley

Below is a letter from our School Services Clinician. Please contact her if you have any further questions. Thanks!

Hello PPS families,

Happy Fall!

I hope you all are settling in to the new school year.

My name is Courtney Foley (Ms. Foley to the kids) and I am the new “school services clinician” at Porter’s Point School. People also sometimes refer to me as the “school social worker.” I work with kids and families with varying needs and challenges. I am very happy to be joining this community and I look forward to getting to know students and families.

I often meet with kids in my office during breakfast or lunch and sometimes I allow kids to invite a friend or two to join us while we practice social skills and work on building positive friendships. These meetings are informal and occur sporadically for kids who are not on my caseload. As such, your child might get asked, “Would you like to eat lunch with me and Ms. Foley today?” and your child would then get to respond “yes” or “no” for that day. If you are not comfortable with your child being invited to join us for a lunch or breakfast, please contact me directly via email at courtney.foley@colchestersd.org or by phone at (802) 264-5918.

You may hear from me throughout the year about various opportunities for giving and if you are ever interested in donating to the PPS community, please let me know and I can give you more information about how to do so.

Thank you for your time!

Sincerely,

Courtney Foley, MS

Porters Point School

School Services Clinician

Week of October 2nd

What a week in first grade! We celebrated two birthdays which always makes for exciting days! On birthdays, we spend our writing time interviewing the birthday student and writing a page for their birthday books! I’m hoping to get the books out within a week of your child’s birthday.

In reading we started our Guided Reading groups! We are already working hard using the strategies we are learning and applying them to our reading. In our reading group we read new books, re-read old books, practice sight words, and more to become better readers!

We are learning about the human body. We started with the skeletal system and made these adorable q-tip skeletons! We learned about some of the bones in our body such as the stirrup and the femur our smallest and longest bones! We even sang and listened to some bones songs!

We had an impromptu lesson on kindness on Friday afternoon! We read Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler about acts of kindness and how "a slice of nice makes a mile of smiles". Then we wrote a letter to a classmate with one way that they made us smile! It was a great way to spread kindness and build our classroom community.