Friday Highlights...

Happy weekend! We had a great week, and it was a fantastic Friday! Here are a few photos from our day. Read the captions for more info!

If you were at Open House, you saw your child's writing binder. Yesterday children fixed one thing on their favorite piece of writing, colored it, and added it to the writing binder. We're going to have amazing writing portfolios to take home at the end of 1st grade!

We get to chew gum when we take SWR (spelling) "check ups"! Thank you to those who have sent gum for us. It makes taking a spelling quiz much more fun and it might even help us do better (see below)...

Why do we chew gum during our spelling check-ups?

Here's a snippet from a blog about brain research...

"Research has shown that chewing does indeed increase our ability to concentrate and to retain what we've learned. In fact, studies indicate that, for both kids and adults, mental tasks are completed up to 20% more effectively when we chew gum.

Here's why:  When we chew--whether it's food, gum or just air—we respond by salivating, which releases a surge of insulin. Our body gets ready for a meal. The insulin leads to an increased heart rate and sends glucose and oxygen to our brain.

The result? This blast of brain food helps us learn faster and retain this information longer."

Hmm...maybe we should chew gum during other times of our day, too! We do eat crunchy snacks during math sometimes for the same reason. :-)

Students put their pencils in the air when they are ready to move on to the next word. We are taking our check-ups as a whole group right now, but soon this will likely take place in small groups to better meet everyone's needs.

Jack was SO excited to show his grandparents around our school and classroom. And they shared that they love our blog! It's so exciting to know people are out there (even beyond VT) are checking out what's going on in 1st grade! :-)