GES Grey Wolf Gazette #7

Classroom Highlight and Snapshot Edition

Every two weeks, our GES Grey Wolf Gazette will feature a classroom update from each GES teacher. Happy reading and enjoy the wonderful photographs.

Next week's special is - MUSIC with Mrs. Neilssen

Warm regards,

Nicky Fraley

Principal
Greenfield Elementary School

First Friends (1) Fun with Mrs. Trish

First Friends 1 students have had such a busy start to the year! There is a lot going on outside and in our classroom. We studied shells from the ocean and painted some to take home. We watched Monarch caterpillars eat their leaves and make their chrysalis. This week, two of our Monarch butterflies hatched, and we will be releasing them to the wild. They will be on a long journey to Mexico. We are talking, doing projects and singing about apples. We will also be eating them!! Our walks around the school have taught us about insects and seeds. We made collages with various seeds from the gardens. Ms. Jamie brought in a sunflower that grew as high as our classroom ceiling!!

The afternoon students worked together doing floor puzzles, enjoyed Very Hungry Caterpillar math work and learned about the life cycle of insects and plants. We started learning how to rhyme real words and nonsense words.

Ms. Trish

First Friends (2) Fun with Mrs. Colleen

This week in First Friends 2, we continued learning about our classroom expectations. We practiced our daily routines, learned our class rules, and talked about different ways we can problem-solve when we have a problem.

We also jumped into learning more about butterflies! We watched our caterpillars change into chrysalises, and now one of our three caterpillars has become a beautiful butterfly. The students were very interested and excited to watch the transformation. We are patiently waiting for the other two butterflies to emerge, and then we will release all three into our preschool butterfly garden.

During morning circle, we have started learning how to spell our names. We also practice our colors, shapes, calendar, and weather each day. We learned a new song about kindness and have been enjoying singing it together. We also made a kindness flower and talked about 24 reasons we can be kind to our friends.

At snack time, we learned the signs in sign language for the song “The More We Get Together.”

Our classroom has been busy with art projects! We made beautiful butterfly art to hang around our classroom and in the windows, as well as a colorful flower collage that is now displayed in our classroom.

Our afternoon students have also been busy learning new skills. They have been practicing puzzles, spelling their names, using scissors correctly, and this week identifying, tracing and coloring squares.

We also started our Heggerty unit this week, which helps build phonological awareness through beginning and ending sounds, rhyming, and nursery rhymes. The students have been catching on quickly!

It has been a really fun and busy week here in preschool. We are so proud of all the learning, exploring, and growing our students have been doing!

Ms Colleen

Kindergarten Chronicals

Kindergarten is off to a fabulous start for the year. Even from day one they have demonstrated understanding of what it looks like and sounds like to be in a kindergarten classroom and how we can help each other learn. In math, we have focused on using math materials and following the structure of math centers. In CKLA knowledge, we have been working with nursery rhymes and connecting them to main characters and main events. Science has been all about discovering what scientists do and how we are scientists everyday.

It is so wonderful to have first grade back with me for math time. Our first week together has been about getting back into math by learning new center games and practicing basic addition and subtraction.

~ Mrs. Hodgen

Look Who’s Learning!

What a great start to the school year we have had in first grade! We have worked hard to think about what a school is, why we come to school, and what we want to do at school this year. We have been reflecting on what a community is and have had a great time creating neighborhoods, building our very own first grade community.

Kindergarten has been busy practicing making different types of lines. Learning these strokes now, will help them form letters when we begin writing. We have played several games to practice hearing sounds and follow directions, we love the Bean Bag song and the Instrument detective games!

Have a great weekend,

~ Ms. Harrington

Second Grade Stars

It has been a great start to the school year in 2nd grade. We have been spending time learning 2nd grade routines, creating our goals, and creating our classroom rules to help reach those goals. We have already read alouds and started our time in the garden. Some of the favorite read alouds have been Mother Bruce and Bothered by Bugs. In the garden, we were detectives to look for clues about whether the garden was taken care of over the summer and to find helpful and harmful bugs. The students especially enjoyed learning that bean leaves will stick to your clothes like velcro. We have also started our academics for the year. In math, we have been learning about different ways to add and subtract within 20. The students have played games, used connecting cubes, and shared their knowledge with their peers through conversations. In literacy, we have begun our back to school review of short vowel sounds and explored fairy tales. They created fairy tale posters to share with their peers what they have learned. In science, we have been learning about our classroom butterflies, exploring how animals are classified, and why animals use camouflage.

Third grade is off to a strong start!

We kicked off the year by setting personal and collective learning goals. Some of our targets include mastering multiplication facts, reading 10 books, and studying monarch butterflies. To ensure everyone succeeds, we established a classroom agreement. This contract outlines what we need as individual learners and as a community, focusing on using supplies appropriately, practicing self-care, treating others with kindness, and being respectful, responsible listeners. Once every student signs the finished agreement, we will be officially bound to our shared rules for a successful school year!

This week, we also dived into our core curriculum:

Math: We started the year by exploring picture and bar graphs. Students are learning how survey data shows trends, using a graph of our preferred ways to travel as our first example. Their math brains are officially roaring to go!
Literacy: Our first unit is Timeless Tales: Classic Stories, focusing on The Wind in the Willows. Students are exploring the plot, tracking character traits, and analyzing different perspectives. Grammatically, we are practicing building complex sentences by using conjunctions to join subjects and predicates.
Science: We started the year with some fun STEM team activities. Saving Fred, chain building and cup stacking (without using your hands). Ask your student about their experience! We have also begun our unit on life cycles, which perfectly connects to the real monarch butterflies we are hatching right here in our classroom!

In Mrs. Cook’s class, we work hard and we have fun. Our main focus this year is teaching students to advocate for what they need to succeed while ensuring every single child has a voice in their own learning!

Fourth Grade Blast Off!

4th Graders are off to a fantastic start this school year! Our classroom is full of energy as students build daily routines, set our classroom expectations together, and dive into new learning experiences. We even had our first Social Emotional Learning lesson with Mrs. Smith today! Here is a quick look at what we are focusing on in our core subjects over these first few weeks.

Reading & Writing (CKLA)

In ELA, we are starting Unit 1: Personal Narratives & Identity. Over our first four lessons, students are reading memoirs and personal stories to see how authors share memories and express who they are. We are practicing how to find key details in texts to describe characters and understand main ideas. Students are also learning how writers use descriptive words to bring stories to life, and they are beginning to plan and draft their very own personal narrative essays about special moments in their lives.

Mathematics (Illustrative Math)

In Math, we are kicking off Unit 1: Factors and Multiples. Through our first six lessons, students are using visual models and hands-on activities to explore how numbers grow, practice finding factor pairs, and learn the difference between prime and composite numbers. We are working on building strong multiplication fact fluency through games and problem-solving, and students are using logical reasoning to solve fun math challenges like "The Locker Problem."

Science

In Science, students are starting to think like scientists! We have been exploring and observing materials for our upcoming Lemon Lab. On Friday, students will make their hypotheses and conduct the experiment to put their scientific thinking into action.

~ Mrs. Lamere

Wellness Week Was Wonderful!

This week in Wellness...we worked on establishing the learning environment. We talked about expectations and procedures and why it's important to wear sneakers for PE. Some students are revisiting the expectations while others are just learning them. Either way, we supported each other as we are establishing our community in wellness. Students shared how they would contribute to our class community.

Some of the games we played 'would you rather back to school edition', High 5 bank account, rock-paper-scissor challenge, cross the river, using the 'Stop' song to practice freezing, head-shoulders-knees-toes match game, critter connection, hula hut relay, name game/group juggle, musical hoops. We had fun!

Thank you for encouraging healthy choices,

Mrs. Parker

PTO Corner

Fall Mum Fundraiser Is Open!

The PTO Mum Sale is underway and sales are open through 9/14. We are always grateful for your support and appreciate your patience as we transition from paper order forms to our Zeffy Store online. Please feel free to share the link to our mum sale with friends and family via text, email or on social media. Every purchase helps support our mission!

https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/fall-mum-sale-8

Thank you,

The Greenfield NH Elementary PTO

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