November 2002 News and Notes

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Our new mission statement, “Learning ... Empowering All People", is at the heart of everything we do at East Kingston Elementary School. Our goal is to teach the whole child and provide learning experiences that will empower our students to be successful in their world. We make every effort to connect the learning that takes place within the walls of EKES with the real world as much as possible. With the elections taking place this month, we are all very cognizant of our rights as adults to make decisions about our leadership and who will get our vote. We understand that we have a voice. We know that those we elect will represent us in making decisions in our government. In keeping with our mission, we wanted students to feel they had a voice in creating the rules for the school.

Using our Responsive Classroom Morning Meetings, each classroom wrote its own classroom rules for the year then selected two student representatives to our first EKES Student Congress. At Student Congress all of the representatives brought their classroom rules and shared them with the other members of the Congress. They noticed many similarities. By working in small teams, they wrote school rules that were based on the common rules they found in most classrooms. They took the rules back to their constituents and posted them in every classroom and around the school. The rules were discussed at the All School Morning Meeting. The students agreed they could live by these rules because they had a voice in their development.

The Schoolwide Rules for 2002-2003 are

KINDERGARTEN

October found the kindergartners observing the changes in the weather and discussing the effect of those changes on the plants, animals and ourselves. We were worried about the animals when we had our early snowstorm this month. We had to add snowy to our weather words quite early this year. We continued our conversations about the bear in autumn and compiled a list of Bear Facts for our science center.

As we continued to learn about each other, we created a Person of the Day Book for each member of the class. The class interviewed each student on his or her special day, and we drew portraits of the person to go along with the interview answers. We’ve had lots of practice making lower case letters of the alphabet as we practiced writing each classmate’s name. These books are proudly on display on the bulletin board outside our room. Take a look at conference time.

We read several books about Halloween this month, including The Costume Parade and There’s A Monster in the Tree. We learned a few new Halloween songs that are new versions of some familiar Christmas songs.

In math we’ve practiced counting to thirty-one on the calendar and counting by tens and ones into the forties for the number of days in school. Our skills are improving daily. The children look forward to their chance to be the calendar person for a week.

Spooky ghosts and goblins were about for the Halloween festivities in the Kindergarten classes. With the help of many parents our centers became creepy craft areas. In the math center we practiced fractions by folding circles into eighths to make them into black spiders complete with eight legs. The morning class made glass Jack O’ Lantern votives, and the afternoon class made Styrofoam Spiders, thanks to the crafty talents of Mrs. Burns and Mrs. Powers. Following directions on folding paper, the classes made witches with Mrs. Davis. Earlier in the month we made gauze ghosts that can magically stand up by themselves. These activities were followed by a Halloween parade through the school and a party of Halloween treats. Thank you to the many parents who helped make the day very special.

First grade is an exciting place to be. We are learning and growing everyday. Our population has grown since last month. We welcome Bruce April and Connor Ridlon to our class, which now numbers twenty-four! Grade one students are learning about their five senses. We’ve had a tasting party where we experienced sweet, sour, bitter and salty foods. We’re guessing the contents of our “feeling box” and even made a five senses hat!

The children’s paper people in the hall are now adorned with very creative masks made by each student. We discussed our skeleton and the various 200 bones in our body, and we successfully put bones together to complete skeletons decorating the hall. This helped to get us in the mood for Halloween activities and parties at our school. Thanks to all who helped make this such a fun time. It was great to see our parade of costumed children.

First graders have been busy with their journal stories and doing excellent work with their writing. We’ve concentrated on choosing a topic, leaving spaces between our words and trying to stretch out our words to write down the sounds we hear. We now know we can spell all kinds of words by ourselves. We learned that every word has a vowel, and we’re trying to add them to our words. We’ve spent the month on short a words and next will come the short i words. Our word wall is growing and we know to look there to help us spell hose words and ones that rhyme with them. Everyone in our class has a published book that has been illustrated and shared with fellow classmates. We plan to regularly publish and add to our library of class-made books.

Children have begun to choose “just right” books to read and retire them after practicing and reading them to themselves, a partner and the teacher. As you can see, our focus this past month has been on literacy.

We’re using our manipulatives in Math to explore the concept of numbers, patterns, addition and subtraction. Some favorites are cards, dice and dominoes.

Morning meeting messages are now read by the students, and we end our day with a cooperative game, story, song or class share.

I want to thank parents for helping their children get in the habit of daily homework and returning their journals. Mrs. Huss and I enjoy working with your children and are excited about the community building and learning that has taken place. Happy Fall to all! Let’s hope it lasts!

Things here in second grade have been very, very busy! We had a very successful bake sale with all of the proceeds ($122.77) going to the S.P.C.A.. Thank you to everyone who helped us with this success! We would not have been able to help the animals without your support! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

We are currently learning all about bats, Brazil, and the Amazon Rain Forest -- the cool thing is that they are all connected! Did you know that there are over 1,000 different kinds of bats that live on every continent except Antarctica?! We have been able to do some “batty” math activities, including measuring the body and wing span of some of the bats that we might find if we visited the Amazon area! We are working on a bat presentation so that we can share some of the important information that we learned with others! Many bats are in danger of becoming extinct! We think that this is terrible news -- they are such gentle creatures! If you are afraid of bats, you should ask one of us about how bats actually help us! We would be happy to share our learning with you!

We are also excited to be learning about another far away place! We are looking forward to having a Brazilian-style carnival where we can share with our parents and friends the exciting things that we learned during this unit. It’s great for us, too, because we are learning Portuguese! We love to learn new languages!

Thank you to our room moms for an AWESOME Halloween celebration!

October reading in second grade was filled with many stories about monsters, fears and frights. We identified character, setting, and problem in many stories. Students wrote and published individual books. Skills emphasized short vowels, and rhyme patterns. In November we will work with long vowel patterns and compound words.

In math we worked with numbers less than 100, looking at how they are related, greater than, less than, skip counting and sequencing. We have begun some multi-digit addition. We will work more with multi-digit addition and measurement and continue practicing basic addition facts with manipulatives, number line, slap counting, cuisenaire rods and memory.

In Social Studies we learned a little about map skills and community building. In Science we learned about bats. We continued learning about trees, how they change color and how to identify some of the trees in our school yard.

In November, second grade will be pretending to travel to South America. We will read folk tales and factual books about South America and learn about geography, people, animals, and crafts in various regions of South America: The high Altiplano, The Amazon Rain Forest, The Pampas, and the Galapagos Islands. We will learn about the ancient Inca people and learn a little Spanish, make weavings, and we will have a Market Day on December 6 with food, crafts and dancing.

October has been a month filled with mystery for 3S, as we have been reading books that keep us guessing until the very end. The books have included The Haunting of Grade Three and the mystery of The Clues in the Woods. We investigated these books and formed guided reading groups around similar titles. We then met to share and discuss our reading. We made predictions as to how the mystery might be solved. The class truly enjoyed this genre. The class also wrote mysterious stories using common vocabulary and beginning prompts, but it was amazing how each student developed totally different story lines. The students also continued developing their own stories in their writing binders, as well as reading their own choices for self-selected reading. Ms. Madden read the story, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, prior to our viewing the live performance at the Leddy Center. She led us in a guided discovery of comparing and contrasting the two using a Venn diagram. What we discovered was very interesting .

The month of November will have us reading selections that will add to our knowledge of the Pilgrims of Plimoth (old English spelling).

We have been totally enthralled in our Pilgrim simulation unit, a third grade favorite. It integrates many disciplines, such as reading, writing, math, and problem solving. The students work in cooperative groups and actually act out the trials, tribulations and celebrations of the Pilgrims. It is a great activity that teaches the importance of team work. So far our teams have formed lists of colonists, constructed rectangular spaces (figuring area and perimeter) which illustrated what little space the Pilgrims had to travel in for 65 days, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, wrote a compact similar to the Mayflower Compact, and built houses through teamwork; there’s much more to come. We will continue this unit through November and Thanksgiving. The students are writing their accounts in their individual Pilgrim logs, revising each piece using a dictionary and thesaurus. These writing pieces result in fates for their teams so they want their final pieces to be the best they can be. Each team is in competition with the actual Pilgrims and how they fared during their first year in the New World. Our field trip to Plimoth Plantation added so much to this unit; it has made it come alive! Thank you to all the parents who accompanied us on the trip. It was a great learning experience for the class.

In math along with figuring perimeter and area, we have continued to use various manipulatives to lead us from the concrete to the abstracts of math. We have continued to review place value, worked with word problems, graphed mystery pictures, built glyphs based on gathering data, and we have begun our study of multiplication. The students will work at their own pace to master these facts. Any practice with these at home would be a great help.

In science we continue our studies in our health unit. We have studied the food pyramid and learned the parts of the digestive system and how food choices benefit our bodies. During Red Ribbon Week we learned how drugs and alcohol can effect our bodies. We made healthy choices at our Halloween party as part of our study. Thank you to all who contributed. The students enjoyed this yummy celebration!

I look forward to seeing everyone at parent conferences on November 13.

What an exciting October we've had in third grade! We had a marvelous trip to Plimoth Plantation, and, as always, our third grade students couldn't have been better. We're so very proud of them! Our visit to the Mayflower and the Plantation happened to be on one of the most beautiful days of this fall, and we enjoyed every moment. Our students were full of questions for the Pilgrims and Native Americans they met, and they were very interested in learning about life at Plimoth Plantation in 1627. All in all it was a wonderful day. We'd like to thank our parent chaperones for taking time out of their busy schedules to join us. It was great having you with us for the day.

Everyday Math has continued to work its charms with 3W. Our students are enjoying math and learning many new and exciting strategies. They love using the calculators, playing the math games, and they even love working in their math journals. It's great to hear, "I love this stuff!" from our kids! We've just finished Unit 2, and we'll be working in Unit 3 and beginning Unit 4 during November.

In our language arts program we've been concentrating our reading and writing on our Plimoth Plantation Unit. We've been doing class reads with some terrific stories including Squanto, Who's That Stepping on Plymouth Rock, Sarah Morton's Day, Samuel Eaton's Day, and If You Came Over on the Mayflower.... We've been writing in our Pilgrim Journals about our trip to the New World, surviving that first winter, and building the settlement. We've been learning how to organize information using prewriting skills, and we're very pleased with the results.

In science we're learning about the Food Pyramid and eating healthy. We're incorporating the digestive system with this unit as well.

Our Halloween party was a howling success! Those eyeball ice cubes were quite a hit with 3W! We'd like to thank parents for organizing a wonderful party for us. It was just great!

Each 4A student created a Math-o-Ween activity to share with the class. We had a wonderful variety of puzzles, problems, tape recordings, and games that involved algebra, calculations, estimation, money, and probability. It was obvious that much time and thought went into creating them. Halloween was a big math day in 4A. We even played multiplication BINGO at our party. Thank you to all the parents for your help with the math projects and for making our party a success.

Multiplication and problem solving, particularly the strategy of making an organized list, have been our October math focus. We are currently working on the distributive property of multiplication.

Sharing experiments was the culminating activity of our plants unit. Pictures of all the accompanying posters can be seen on the Plants Unit section of our WebCT page. We are moving on to the earth science component, which coordinates with the water and land forms unit in social studies. We will begin IIM research soon about geographic features of the United States, but first we will review notefacts and bibliographies before choosing a topic to investigate.

Our two field trips this month were very successful. Thank you to all the moms who chaperoned our visit to the American Independence Museum in Exeter. Our second trip was a rescheduled one to Sandy Point Discovery Center on Great Bay in Stratham. We boarded an authentic reproduction of the gundalow, Captain Edward Adams, learned about salt marsh haying and about how the Abenakis used the resources of the estuary. The trip was a great review of what we’d been studying about early New Hampshire history.

Fourth graders accomplished a great deal in the first quarter. In science they learned how green plants germinate, grow and reproduce. They were also introduced to the steps of the scientific method, which they used to complete their plant experiments.

Our math focused on place value from thousandths to millions, and the multiplication tables from zero to twelve. We are challenging the students to apply the principles using larger numbers.

4-H also learned about “The People of the Dawn” this quarter in social studies. They each made their own Abenaki weapon or utensil from natural materials just the way the Abenakis may have made theirs two to three hundred years ago. They also wrote a description of how the item was made and how it was used by the Abenaki. We then shared our artifacts in the outdoor classroom. The students took turns interviewing and videotaping the person who was sharing. The footage may be used by our classroom broadcast station that we are in the process of organizing.

We enjoyed two exciting field trips first quarter. Prior to visiting the American Independence Museum, Mrs. Atkins took both fourth grades on a walking tour through historical Exeter and told us all about the important features and landmarks along the way. We stopped for a picnic lunch on the banks of the Squamscott River to end a delightful day. Both fourth and fifth graders went to Sandy Point in Stratham where the Discovery Center guides led us on a fascinating tour of New Hampshire’s largest estuary. We went inside a Native American tipi covered in large sheets of birchbark, and sampled smoked salmon. We learned about the animal wildlife and the plants and trees of the area and how they were used by the Native Americans and early settlers. We learned about the salt marsh hay farmers and drank refreshing switchel made of molasses, ginger and water. And we boarded a flat-bottomed gundalow used to haul heavy cargo in the shallow waters of the bay and its rivers.

The fifth grade has begun a unit on weather that will last for several weeks. We will be working in our soft cover science books with supplemental information provided. Each section of the book begins with objectives for that section and concludes with check-up questions that are the objectives restated in question form. When we correct check-up homework, it becomes a study guide for that section. Each section also shows the vocabulary in dark print. Students are responsible for knowing the glossary definitions for this vocabulary unless I modify it in some way. About 80-85% of the material on tests comes directly from vocabulary and check-up questions. The remaining 15-20% is from the assigned reading for that section or from information provided in class. Often the science assignment will remain the same for several days before a test; for example, “Read and study pages __.” An assignment like that means read and study to learn the vocabulary, check-up questions, and other emphasized or important information for that section.

For the next few weeks Everyday Math will emphasize estimation, computation, and probability. We will be learning different methods (algorithms) of adding, subtracting, and multiplying whole numbers and decimals. The math vocabulary list will have about 6-8 words weekly (sometimes including repetitions). In class we emphasize understanding the definition (rather than memorizing the glossary definition) and being able to give an example of it in practice.

Thank you, parents, for putting together a delicious Halloween party! Our trip to America’s Stonehenge was outstanding. Every year the Stone family provides something new and interesting for children to view or explore with their hands.

Fifth grade is about to start research on ancient civilizations. Our focus will be the Aztec, Inca, and Mayan cultures. Students will participate in research and report writing, making wares for a trade fair (I will give more information at a later date.), constructing ceremonial masks, and we’ll use Picturing Writing to represent ancient beliefs. We have a full two months ahead of us!

Students have been involved in reading Sign of the Beaver and Call It Courage. Each story shares similar connections with survival, responsibility, and respect.

We have explored so many new things this month in Music class!! Concepts of long and short sounds, fast and slow tempos and the sounds of the autoharp were new in Grade One.

Fantastic singing floats from our room when Second Graders are with me! How they love to sing! Did you know that songs could teach us factual information? “The Pumpkin Man” was a story song that did just that, and to integrate the Second Grade study of bats, we learned “Bats Eat Bugs” which was our big favorite and really taught us many things.

In Third Grade, as we prepare to play our first melody instrument, we explored the treble staff and learned how to read pitch from its lines and spaces. The “Navajo Happy Song” was a challenging lesson in beat and movement. We learned also about tied and slurred notes, and eighth rests. We have been so busy!

Dramatization was explored by the Fourth Grade. Our singing, instrumental, or acting roles to dramatize the Abenaki legend “Gluskabi and the Wind Eagle” were videotaped by the enrichment group that meets after school. We learned to put across a story using mime in place of props and costumes; and we saw how movement can depict faceless things such as the wind.

Although the study of composers and classical music is more a focus in Junior High, we got a taste of it for Halloween in Fifth Grade Music. We followed a ‘listening map’ to understand the use of instruments and the progression in Camille Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre. We explored choral reading and painted a picture of sound as it is developed in a piece of music.

Halloween Fun Songs are always a big hit in October. But “groovin’ and cruisin’” with Boomwhackers was the highlight of Halloween week. We “whacked” our heads and hands and even the floor as we made Music!

Our October lessons have continued being focused on interdisciplinary connections. In Grade 5 we completed our pastel radial designs that were inspired by the fifth grade science study of various spheres. Line, shape, color and pattern were all of the art elements that we focused on. The concept of silhouettes was used to explore shape, as well as positive and negative space for Halloween scenes.

Because Grade 4 studied plants, we did studies of zinnias, observing fresh ones. Then the children became very imaginative with their compositions. Techniques such as overlapping, varying sizes, having flowers go off the page were all design ideas presented to explore space. Values in regards to tints and shades were demonstrated with our use of color. The children worked extremely hard on their pastel renditions that are displayed near the office.

With Grade 3 doing a extensive unit on Native Americans, we continued correlating our lessons by making Kachinas and sand paintings. By recycling sturdy tubes, we added cardboard, paper, feathers, pipe cleaners and yarn to make three-dimensional Kachinas. The children loved using all of these textures. Thunderbirds, eagles and turtles inspired our sand paintings. Texture was the art element explored to emphasize shape.

Artistically, we took Grade 2 classroom studies of animals and bats and studied the cave paintings of Lascaux, which the children interpreted using pastels and crayons. They worked in cooperative groups. Bat necklaces and three-dimensional bats were made using paper, yarn, beads, and wiggle eyes. For the younger children these lessons gave lots of opportunity to strengthen hand muscles and coordination.

First Grade studied apples and trees this fall. Consequently, we explored the art element of color by tearing values of red paper to make collage apples. We drew fall trees showing the texture of bark with lines. Tissue paper was used to represent the color of fall leaves and the autumn sky. In our last lesson we traced leaves. This lesson incorporated lots of design elements such as composition, positive and negative space, line, shape and color. Pattern was used to create a border. Craypas and watercolors were the media the children used. Lots of sharing of equipment and jobs were important for the success of the lesson.

So much of what takes place in art class is not just the creative process, but social growth. Children have the opportunity to talk, share and take risks with their creative process. Lots of choices and individual decisions take place in a short time in this process. Responsibility for these decisions is given to the children. Hopefully, confidence develops from their risks and choices. We hope you have a chance to view the children’s work. They are hard working children.

In their book Mosaic of Thought, Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman talk about ways to help children become engaged in their reading. The reading might be for pleasure, a novel or story assigned to read at school or home, or a nonfiction science or social studies topic. She talks about ways to get connected to what we are reading (or listening to), which is what happens when children and adults enjoy reading. Think about the last time you read something you really enjoyed and compare that to when you read something you weren’t very interested in or with which you had little background. Chances are your willingness and ability to share what you read from these two materials varied quite a bit.

Have you ever noticed the flip-top ring collection canister atop the recycling bin for aluminum cans? The rings are collected and turned in to help defray the exorbitant cost of kidney dialysis for needy patients.

~_{Chris Silverman, Classroom Assistant}

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