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Lyle the Crocodile

This fall, students in Kindergarten and First Grade are exploring the fun of Bernard Waber’s loveable crocodile, Lyle. Each Friday we read a Lyle book and then draw and write about one part of the book. Students enjoy predicting what will happen in the story from the pictures, discussing vocabulary and drawing their own pictures Read More >>

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Copy Word

  Our kindergartner and a few of the first grader students participate in a once a week class called Copy Word.  During this class, students are working on their fine motor skills through cutting and printing.  Each class, students get to look through magazines and pick one word to “copy” neatly and accurately onto their paper. Read More >>

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Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages

Lucy Calkins inspired a poetry unit for our students in grades 1-3. Each week of her unit inspires children to consider a new “ingredient” or strategy. The unit began with experimenting with looking at ordinary things in a new way. Subsequent classes explored looking at patterns in poetry, music, line breaks and the use of Read More >>

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Twister on Tuesday

A small group of students read Twister on Tuesday, a Magic Tree House book about twisters. The  book club focused reading skills such as comprehension, compare and contrast, summarizing, predictions, moods of pictures and text, and relating character traits to yourself. They also worked on vocabulary, and literary elements. The students were assigned chapters of the book Read More >>

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Pick A Poet

The eldest students were given an assignment that involved self-selecting three poets. After browsing through collections of poetry by Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and more, they had to pick one poem from their selected anthology. After copying one poem from the collection, they had to illustrate Read More >>

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Dictation Class

In our dictation class this year students have been working with spelling patterns for long and short vowel sounds in one-syllable words. For example, the short vowel sound is typically spelled CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) and the long vowel sound for many words is spelled CVCe (silent e at the end) or CVVC (vowel team). The students Read More >>

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Fudge Book Club

Students who participated in the Fudge Book Club read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume. This is the first in a series of books featuring Fudge, a toddler, and his older brother, Peter. Fudge’s mischief-making always causes problems for Peter. Students prepared for each week’s book discussion by reading the assigned chapter Read More >>

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All About Books

This unit was started by our student teacher this past fall.  After she left, we slowly have been finishing up what she started.  Each student picked a topic that they knew “all about” and started writing about that topic.   Topics include, cheetahs, NASA, The Fastest Things, Video Games, Tae Kwon Do and more.  Using Read More >>

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Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)

Visual Thinking Strategies provides for open-ended discussions of visual art, increasing students’ critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. We had two groups using VTS this year, one Kindergarten-1st grade students and the other 2nd-4th grade students. Students look at a work of art and consider a question such as “What’s going on Read More >>

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Printing Class All Year

At the start of the school year, children in kindergarten worked on writing upper case letters of the alphabet.   We have now moved on to lower case letters! During each class, we use sign language, the sound of the letter and printing pages to practice on two letters.                 Read More >>