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.

Week of September 25th

Hello Families!

We had another great week in First Grade!

This week in writing we learned how to bring our writing to life by making our people move and talk in our illustrations. Check some of the awesome work. One student wrote a small moment about our Writer’s Workshop lesson about bringing our small moment to life!

In Social Studies we’ve been learning about feelings. We’ve read a lot of great books and had good discussions about what characters are feeling and times that we have felt the same way. We read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. We talked about how Alexander was feeling and what we can do when we are having our own ‘very bad days.” We made doorknob hangers to let others know when we are having a good day and when we have bad days. The class was very creative!

We practiced our compliment circle again this week. We used our compliment starters to help us give genuine compliments. When we do a compliment circle we get to sit in a special way which I call “long legs” or  “daddy long legs.” When we get a compliment then sit criss-cross. This lets the class know that they have received a compliment and to choose someone who is sitting with “long legs.” It’s one of the few times we get to sit this way so it adds some excitement! The kids all go to rug and exclaim “don’t forget to sit with daddy long legs!”

PPS has managed to earn a celebration at our All-School Morning Meeting four weeks in a row! I’ve been told that we made history when we earned three in a row and we did it again this week! We earned a Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament.

Week of September 18th

Hello all!

Another great week in First Grade! Students have continued to work hard every day! We continue to build our classroom community and to settle into our daily routine. Here's a look at out math rotations. On this day we rotated through using Dreambox, exploring pattern blocks, and a number packet to practice our teens.

On Monday we celebrated Constitution Day. We learned about why the document was written and what it means for our country and how it helps us be good citizens. We brainstormed what it means to be good citizen and the students had amazing responses: help other people, follow the rules and the laws, listen to the police/teachers, help mom do chores, donate to others, among many others! We learned a new song about Constitution Day and it was a big hit!

This week we continue to talk about being a good friend. We have read a lot of books about how to be a friend and how to appreciate our differences! We read Spaghetti on a Hot Dog Bun and did a fun craft about what makes us unique! We also baked our own Friendship Pie after reading Enemy Pie.

My favorite part of our Friendship Unit is the introduction of our compliment circle! This is one of my favorite classroom traditions that I try to do every week! We started this week by talking about what a compliment is and complementing each other’s clothes/appearance just to practice what a compliment looks like. In the future we move past our clothes, but it worked out perfectly for us to compliment our spiffy picture day outfits!

Week of September 11th

Hello again!

We did it! We survived our first FULL week of first grade and it was awesome! We did so much everyday that I may have forgotten to take pictures along the way... but there are a few!

I did manage to get a picture of the rainbows that we made last week! They help to brighten the classroom and look great next to the windows!

Our math routine is off to a great start! We’ve been practicing counting up to 20 and then back down to 0. We've done some dot-to-dots to help us practice. We also learned two new games this week: Top-It and Bunny Hop! Both games have been a lot of fun!

This week we started learning about friendship! We read Big Al by Andrew Clements and talked about what it means to be a good friend and how we can be good a good friend.

There were also two very exciting things that happened this week! We anxiously awaited the arrival of our new rug all week until it finally arrived on Thursday. The kids were so excited for the new rug! We now have more room on the rug and more color in the classroom! I can’t wait to do lots of great learning on our new rug! You can sneak a peek at the rug in a few of the pictures above!

The other exciting thing was that we got to sing a song at our All-School Morning Meeting today (Friday 9/15)! This was pretty last minute, it wouldn’t have happened if Principal Millham hadn’t walked in on us singing one day! It’s the song you can hear us singing in last week's blog post. I’m not sure if anyone was recording us singing but I’ll ask around!

Week of September 5th

What a fun week in first grade! It has been a dreary week so we made rainbows to help brighten up our classroom. Unfortunately, I’m not tall enough to hang them from the ceiling so a picture will be added next week when I have some help! We continue to do get-to-know you activities to help build our classroom community.

We learned a good morning song called “I Say Hello There.” Here is a video of us singing! We will be singing a lot throughout the year! Ask them to sing it for you!

We read the book Molly Lu Melon and talked about the ways that she stood tall. We made our own Molly Lu Melons with all of the ways that we stand tall! We stand tall when we are proud to be ourselves! We stand tall by being: brave, strong, confident, kind, smart, friendly, special, magical, musical. We don’t give up and we keep on getting stronger! We got some of our ideas from this Will.i.am and Sesame Street video. We watched it so many times! We danced along too!

We started our Everyday Math Curriculum this week. I hope the parent letters were informative. We played a few math games such as Penny-dice in which kids practice counting to twenty. We also made counting books to practice subitzing numbers 1-10! We’ve practiced our fluency in counting by fives and by ones.

We continue to practice our handwriting so that when we get to writing stories we can do our very best work!

I hope your child had a great second week in first grade! They are working hard everyday! I already love spending my days with them!

Our First Week

Hello Everyone!

We had a great first week in first grade! We have already done so much! I am so proud of the our class as we adjust back into the swing of school! They have all worked so hard.

We played lots of get to know you games and activities which will continue for the next couple of week! These are important to help us learn more about each other, make connections, and build our classroom community.

In math, we explored manipulatives that we will use throughout the year. A class favorite were geoboards and pattern blocks. Both are great learning tools and the kids had a lot of fun exploring them. We also took a survey on how we got to school on the first day!

In literacy, we practiced our handwriting with both letters and numbers. We also read On Market Street and came up with our own alliterative people! Some examples are: Ashlyn is made of art, Ethan is made of erasers, Aidan is made of acorns, Christopher is made of cars, Lexis is made of Lamps, Mason is made of M&Ms, Madison is made of marbles, and Max is made on Megalodons!

We wrote “I like…” books that helped us get to know what everyone likes. We wrote what we like, drew illustrations, and shared our books with the class. Some of my favorites were: crayons, soldiers, playing outside, flowers, and PPS.

On Friday we had our first All-School Meeting! The students got a reminder of our school expectations and Warm Fuzzies!

Also, bear with me as I figure out the best way to include pictures on Blogger! I want to include a lot of pictures with these posts but I don’t love the way that Blogger formats pictures. I’m playing around with this and will add pictures to this post as soon as possible!

I hope you all are have enjoyed your Labor Day weekend!

All the Best,

Ms. Carilo

Communication update: Blog posts will be posted on Fridays (this weekend was the exception as I had to head out to Connecticut and didn't have Internet!) Newsletters with updates on the upcoming week will be posted on Mondays. I'm going to stick to this schedule as best as I can!

Our Pattern Block creations.
Ask your child what they built!

Important Dates

Mark your calendars with these exciting upcoming events!

August 28 - PTO BBQ 5:30 - 7:00
August 29 - Welcome Back Open House 8:00 - 9:00
August 30 - 1st day of school
September 4 - Labor Day - NO SCHOOL
September 21 - Picture Day

September 27 - Early Release Day (12:45 Dismissal)
September 28 - PPS Open House