Thursday, March 30, 2017

Highlights of Our Week 3-30-17

Hello families,

I've gotten to meet with some of you so far in parent/teacher conferences and I look forward to seeing the rest of you tomorrow. Our class is just amazing and I'm thrilled to share your child's hard work and accomplishments with you.

This week we sadly said goodbye to our friends in Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. The characters in this book taught us a lot about friendship, empathy, and the joy you can find in helping others. 

Our research into PLP topics has been going smoothly. Students are becoming more adept at summarizing information or rephrasing facts in their own words. We are always so excited to share the cool things we are reading so we make sure to take time at the end of each writer's workshop to share cool things we learned with our friends. Here are a few pictures of students working and sharing information this week.








Light and Shadow Exploration Stations
For a few weeks student groups will rotate through these four stations to explore different properties of light and matter. They will discover how light affects different materials, how light travels, and about the availability of light and how that affects sight. Here's a look at what this work looks like at our hands-on exploration stations!

At this station students explore the properties of shadows using cube creations they made.
They make and measure the longest and shortest shadows they can.
Students are prompted to think about how does how you use the flashlight change what happens?
In this exploration students use mirrors to reflect light. They observe what happens when the angle
of the light or mirror changes. Together they might try to find ways to make the path
of the light change directions or even turn a corner!


At this station students test different materials for reflective properties.


Students try to have "X-Ray Vision" and figure out what traits of materials make it so that
some or all light can pass through them while other materials let no light pass through them.

This week we had a ton of fun on the soggy, snowy playground. Many kids came in with soaking wet snowpants, mittens and coats. Until it dries out sending in an extra plastic bag for soggy gear and/or a spare set of clothes is a good idea! We also keep a stash of extra plastic shopping bags here in the room for anyone who needs them. If you have some at home you'd like to donate to the cause please send them in!

On Thursday we had a visit from a sixth grade frog expert. He shared with us all about how he learned about Australian tree frogs, what he does to take care of these frogs that live here at Rumney with Ms. Gretchen, and he showed us the actual frogs too! This is a great connection to our informative writing unit because we ourselves are becoming experts on topics so we can then teach others.







We also made time to visit the Rumney sugarbush and sugarhouse this afternoon. We collected some sap and visited Brian Prendergast in the sugarhouse who was setting up for the first boil of our sugaring season. Our school collected about 40 gallons of sap just this week! Here are a few more pictures from this adventure.









Wow. It's been a busy week! 

 Mrs. Fox


Dates to Remember

Friday March 31 - Parent/Teacher Conferences - No School for Kids
Thursday April 6 - Wizard of Oz dress rehearsal/in-school performance 1:30-3:15 pm
Whole week April 17 - 21 - Spring Break
Monday April 24 - School resumes
Friday May 19 - Our Class Plays, 2:00 seating, 2:15 showtime!! (I know this is a ways out but mark your calendars to attend our shows that afternoon!)

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