David Biedrzycki

The students enjoyed getting the opportunity to meet the author of "Me and My Dragon" David Biedrzycki .  What was really neat for the students was that they could see that an author of one of their favorite books is just a regular person like them, AND if you go by the pictures, he can be just as silly as my 1st graders!  Learn more about him at his website:  http://www.davidbiedrzycki.com/Home.html

Week 14 and 15- Thanksgiving Fun!

The highlight of our pre-Thanksgiving weeks was preparing for our Thanksgiving program.  I am saddened that I missed it but I heard it was FANTASTIC!  I have a few pictures to share.  I have a video at school as well and I'll try to get that posted sometime this week. 


Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and families.  How grateful I am for each and every one of you!!

Veteran's Day

Thank you to all the families that sent pictures or joined us for our Veteran's Day Program on Friday.  It was a very special, moving program.  The kids were a little surprised at my tears and asked "Why are you crying?".  Leah summed it up for them when she said "Because she misses Ben!"  That is of course the main reason why I had tears -- but the other reason is because I am truly proud to be an American and I am so grateful for all those who have, and are, serving our country. 

Week 13 - Author Studies

This week students began a unit on author studies.  We study authors to help us become better writers ourselves.  If we can recognize what other authors and illustrators do that make their works interesting, we can use those same things in our own writing.  We focused this week on Audrey Wood, Jan Brett, and Mem Fox.  Some of the things that we noticed are that these authors use their illustrations to help tell the story, that the words are in different places on the page, and sometimes the pictures go across two pages.  Over the next few weeks we will also be studying David Shannon, Robert Munsch, Tomie dePaola, and Donald Crews.  I love it because I get the chance to read many stories to the kids -- what fun!

Students are working hard on their own stories as well.  It is fun for me to see them utilize some of the traits of their favorite authors when they are writing.  I am THRILLED at how their writing has grown and developed this year.  They are pretty amazing writers!!

:) Mrs. Heath

Week 12- Letters from Loved Ones

What fun it has been to read our letters from loved ones!  It is thrilling to see the kid's eyes light up as their special letter is chosen to be read.  The information being shared about the past is doing more to teach the kids about inventions and how things continually change than any other lesson or books that I could read.  The idea that you had to catch (and kill!) your own food was shocking.  Even more shocking was the understanding that "electronics" did not exist as they do today.  I brought in a record and we compared it to our class ipod.  It is amazing that something so large only held 6 songs on each side while our little ipod holds 1,000's of songs!!  Some other fun things we have learned about are telephone party lines, buying 2 candies for one penny, going home each day for lunch, and hanging laundry around the house to dry.  Serveral letters have included pictures to share and those have been great fun.  Perhaps one of the most special letters to be read was from Meredith's great-grandmother.  We were able to read it this past Thursday on her 101st birthday.  It was a neat experience to read and see how the world has changed during her lifetime.  We will continue to read the letters this week and record our learnings about the past.  Thanks to all the wonderful family members who took time to write to us!
Love,
Mrs. Heath