Our Principal Ms. Smith joins Second Marking Period Honor students in C8.
Our principal, Ms. Smith was able to find time in her busy, busy schedule to give our students their honor roll certificates for second marking period. Like me, she was very proud of their hard work! Speaking of awards, Mia S. earned her Xtramath certificate for addition this month. Way to go Mia!
Mia is an addition superstar!
We had some special visitors in our classroom this month. Two Dracut firefighters came to teach us all about fire safety. We learned about the importance of having a meeting place in case of a fire, when to change batteries in your smoke detectors, how to safely get out if there is a fire among other things.
The firefighters taught us to “Stay low and go!” by crawling under a gray blanket that represented smoke. Everyone got to practice this important skill.
You can see that the students were very engaged in the discussion!
We also had a recycling presentation by “the recycling lady” who works with the company that does the recycling collection in Dracut. She taught the children about the importance of recycling and what can and cannot be recycled. She had a lot of information and was able to answer the students’ questions. The students also made objects out of recycled items in art this month with Ms. Mullins, the art teacher.
C8 Students learn about recycling!
We have been working on a special author study model curriculum unit in balanced literacy featuring Tomie dePaola. The students have been learning about his life and his work. Here is an example of one of the activities we did so far in this unit. The students were learning about character traits and had to identify character traits for both Strega Nona and Big Anthony, two of Tomie’s more popular characters.
Here are some of our character trait projects on display in the hallway.
Here are the rest of the projects. Each student had to make one for each of the two characters, Big Anthony and Strega Nona.
We studied States of Matter in Science and the class really enjoyed the hands-on science activities we explored together.
Here Dominic and Elizabeth are blowing up a balloon with the gas formed by mixing baking soda (a solid) and vinegar (a liquid).
The students were put into groups and had to observe and discuss the properties of a paper cup filled with frozen water (ice) colored with food coloring. Then they peeled away the paper and placed the ice into a ziplock bag and we taped it over the heater. When they returned from special, they observed that the water had changed from a solid state to a liquid state. They also observed that the liquid takes the shape of the container. They then decided that they wanted to put it in the freezer again to see what would happen so into the teacher’s room freezer they went. Science is more meaningful when we get both our hands and minds involved!
Learning that adding or taking away heat changes the state of matter!
The students shared their timelines that they created at home as a combination social studies/balanced literacy project. After they shared the timelines, we proudly hung them in the hallway for everyone to enjoy! Thank you for helping your child with this special project. I hope it was a meaningful activity for your child.
Colorful timelines on display!
Some more interesting timelines by our students.
Tommy’s creative timeline hung over our doorway.
Four more timelines grace our stair railing.
Last but not least, Brooklynn’s timeline. (We ran out of wall space so her timeline was on the round table in the hallway!)
Finally, we celebrated baseball’s “Opening Day at Fenway Park” by wearing our Red Sox attire and standing in front of a photo of Fenway Park!
C8 says “GO RED SOX!”
We were all ready for our spring break this past week but we have lots more to learn before the month and school year is over!
