Look Who's Back!

Welcome to our Growing Change student teachers from Dartmouth. We missed you. The fourth graders were thrilled to have you back today. This session will be geared around nutrition. Students were introduced to natural and processed food. We had many interesting conversations about what goes into their bodies, and how it might affect them.

Technicool

Dear Parents,

You are invited to attend a technology safety parent night, to be held on February 13, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. in the Dothan Brook School Library.

This event is brought to you by Prevent Child Abuse Vermont’s technology safety program, TECHNICOOL. TECHNICOOL provides technology safety education to youth, parents, educators, and community members. TECHNICOOL encourages safe online behavior, addresses the benefits and risks presented by technology, and provides adult participants with concrete tools to safeguard the children in their lives.

This presentation is for adults who are caretakers for children (parents, guardians, foster parents, etc.). During this presentation, TECHNICOOL staff will speak with parents about the benefits, risks, and concerns of children’s access to technology; provide action steps for prevention, intervention, and responding to the possible risks and concerns related to this access; and briefly identify a few key technology safety tips for parents and children.

Come together with other parents to learn healthy and active ways to parent children around using technology safely.  

We look forward to seeing you there!

Check out their website :http://pcavt.org/index.php?id=324

Welcome to Our Student Teacher!

Sadie Mayfield is a second semester graduate student at Antioch New England in Keene, NH. She is working on her double Master’s of Education in both elementary education (k-6^th grade) and special education (k-12^th grade.) Sadie graduated with honor’s from Fitchburg State University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Liberal Arts with focuses on Native American Studies, English and History. She went to Hartford High and graduated in 2007. Sadie is an avid reader and also enjoys hiking, being outside and traveling. Sadie lives in Windsor, VT with her fiancé, Chris, and their two cats. We are so excited to have her joining our class.  She will be spending the next 14 weeks with us every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Please welcome her if you get the chance.

Popplet

 We've been working hard on analyzing characters in order to further understand stories that we are reading. The students have learned a lot about empathizing with characters, making predictions based on choices the characters make, looking at how other characters interact and view them, and the objects that the characters might use or have.  I've been very impressed with the deeper thinking that students have been using.

 Today I asked them to synthesize all that knowledge to do a character study. They chose one character that we've read in class, or that they have read in one of their individual books. They used the online organizer known as Popplet to describe their character and prove their thinking.  We will finish this activity next week, and I'll be sure to share some of their finished work.

Gingerbread Houses

 What fun we had today decorating our gingerbread house!  In true Mrs. West fashion, our house is crazy and loud. I love it. The kids had free reign to decorate as they wanted, and their personalities certainly show. The houses will be on display next week at DBS, and then given to a fundraiser in Norwich for the Family Place. The kids truly enjoyed this activity, and many talked about creating their own at home. I highly suggest making your own at home. What a great family activity for the holiday season.

Active Reading

The students have spent the last two days learning to actively participate in their reading. I'm trying to get them to understand that every time you open up a book you open up to a magical place or time. We practiced "becoming" the character, and sometimes that means acting out exactly how they are feeling, or what they are doing. Take a look at this funny video of my students actively reading!

Germs and Bacteria

This very short week, the students learned about being healthy. We had two Dartmouth Grad students come in and do a hand washing lab. The students tested the bacteria on their fingers: first with a finger as a test level, then with just washing with water, then washing with soap and water for various times throughout the class and finally a few students tested using antibacterial soap. For fun the students were also given swabs to test for bacteria in random locations around the room.

We let the bacteria grown for 48 hours before getting a chance to look at the petri dishes. The Dartmouth students brought in a high tech powerful microscope where the students could look closely at the colony of bacteria that were living on their hands. Most all of the students were totally grossed out by what they saw living on their hands and around the room. Check out some of the pictures below.