Information, Please

There are now many great places to find the information that you might need about the happenings at our school. All of these sites are linked on the sidebar of our crew blog so that you can find them easily.


Our Crew Blog

Our Crew blog is where you will find daily posts about what is happening in our classroom. This blog has tabs across the top that have more information about various topics from Adventure Ed to Resources (for kids) to Parent Resources and more. On the sidebar there is a search box so you can simply search for what you are looking for, too.

Also on the sidebar, you will find links to other important blogs, an archive of previous posts, a cluster map that shows where our blog's visitors are from, and a list of labels. Labels are another quick way to find what you are looking for because this is a alphabetical list of topics that are on our blog. Be sure that you have subscribed to this blog by email or RSS feed so you will always have the most up-to-date information. (Information about subscribing is on the Information page of the crew blog.)

Renaissance Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound School Website

The Renaissance Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound School website is where you will find information about our school and school-wide events. You can find information about our philosophy under the About Us tab. You can find information about each crew under the Parent Central tab. Calendar information is under the Calendar tab. Please take some time to browse this site. It is beautiful and well-organized.

Our Kidblog Page

Our Kidblog page is where you will find individual student blogs written by the students in our crew. The most recent posts will be in the middle of the page and along the sidebar are student names so you can easily find your child's individual blog. Posts will be coming soon - we are still waiting to use our ipads.

The Douglas County School District Website is where you will find district related information. You will find things like school closure information, curriculum and standards and much more. You can find information alphabetically by clicking on the letters below the photos on the main page.

Ponderings of a Principal

Ponderings of a Principal is Ms. Deborah's blog about our school and its philosophy. You can find links to crew blogs on the sidebar of this blog and you can also follow it by email.

Renaissance Art

At the Renaissance Art blog written by Ms. Pam, you can learn all about her philosophy of teaching Art along with updates about what each crew is learning. An added bonus is that this blog is filled with beautiful photographs of Art and life.

Thursday Folder Newsletter Archives

Also on the sidebar of our crew blog, you will find a link to the archives of the Thursday Folder Newsletters that are created by the front office staff. These newsletter will have details about all of the latest happenings and events at Renaissance.

Other helpful links:
Ms. Jill's Crew on Twitter

Renaissance Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound School  on Twitter
Renaissance Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound School on Facebook
Renaissance Student Activities

 Information is all around, you just need to find the sources that work best for you.

Hopefully all of these sites and blogs will help you stay well-informed about our classroom, school and district. Remember, most of them are linked on the sidebar of our crew blog so you can always find them easily.

Independence

One of the things that will help your child most at school is a growing sense of independence. Being able to do things on their own gives children confidence to try other new things and to take risks. This is a good thing in many areas. If a child will take a risk, they will be more willing to try to figure out an unknown word or to try solve a more complicated math problem. They become what we call self-extenders which means that they begin to learn on their own and this makes them feel great. You can help your child with this by asking them to do things that they are capable of doing on their own. I know that it can take way more time and patience on your part (believe me, I know) but it really does pay off in the long run.  So ask your child to do those little things that they are capable of doing on their own.


Some suggestions might be:
learn to write their last name
learn their address
learn a parent's phone number
tie their own shoes
zip their coat
turn their coat right-side out
put on their own band-aids
make their own sandwich or bowl of cereal

These little things will help them become more independent and feel more confident and this will carry over to their academic growth as well.

Mathematical Thinking

We are learning to share our ways of looking at mathematical situations and ways of solving mathematical problems with each other. We are noticing that most of the time there is more than one way to solve a problem or look at a situation. When we listen to each other explain how we figured something out we learn new ways to think about things. This helps us to be mathematically flexible which helps us not "get stuck" when working on math problems. Below are some photos of one way that we look at a mathematical situation - seeing dots on dot cards - in different ways.

We do a short (5 minute) daily activity that involves looking at dot cards. I flash a dot card picture (as seen below) to the crew for a few seconds. After I cover the picture, I ask the crew what they saw. They then tell me how many dots they saw and how they saw it. We have several students share how they saw the dots. Here are a few examples:

One student saw this as the same configuration of dots on a domino. She knew that this was 8 because this is how 8 appears on a domino.

Another student saw this as a row of 3, a row of 2 and another row of 3. He said that 3 + 3 + 2 = 8.

Another student saw the 6 dots on the sides like they are arranged on a 6 domino. She then added the two dots in the middle to get 8.

The next student saw the 3 + 2 + 3 =8 pattern but she saw it in columns instead of rows.

Another student remembered that we had previously seen a 9 dot arrangement on a previous day and noticed that this was the 9 dot pattern with one dot missing in the middle so it had to be 8.

Why do we do this? I explained to the crew that it is similar to reading - we can "sound out" every word we read but that would not be efficient. We need to have a bank of words that we just know so reading can move along quickly. This is true in math, too. We need to have strategies to deal with numbers so we don't have to count every dot to know how many dots there are in a pattern. We become more efficient using numbers.


This activity also helps us be able to break numbers apart into chunks that are easier to work with in our head. This makes us more flexible when adding and subtracting numbers. We will eventually begin to move on from dot cards and to visualizing numbers and basic addition and subtraction facts. Having the dot patterns in our minds can help us make that transition.

One other reason to do this short, daily activity is that it stimulates our creativity. We begin to look at things in more than one way. This helps us be open to finding more than one solution to our problems.

Important Dates
8/29 CogAT Testing - Ask for required paperwork in the front office. Paperwork due by 8/22 at 10 am.
8/30 - 8/31 Fall Voyage - we will return around 3:45 pm or so on 8/31
9/1 Day of Rest for First Grade
9/5 No School - Labor Day
9/7 Love and Logic Class for Parents begins 6:00 pm
9/30 Boot Camp
10/3 - 10/17 Fall Break
10/19 Crew Pictures and Individual Re-Takes
11/8 No School - Professional Development for Teachers
11/14 - 11/18 Book Fair
11/23 - 11/25 Thanksgiving Break
12/19 - 1/3 Winter Break 

Library

We had our second visit to the school library today. Our regular library time will be on Fridays at 3:00 pm. Please help your child remember to bring their books back to school by Friday mornings so that they can check out new books. We love visiting Ms. Diana and the library!

Arts and PE
We will have Art next week.

Recess

Recess - yes, it is a favorite time of the day for most first graders. We have a wonderful playground with many different places to play. It is great for the crew to have some unstructured playtime in their day. There are so many benefits of play not the least of which is that it is fun!

Library - We have library tomorrow. Please help your children remember to return their books if they haven't already done so. We want to be able to check out new books for the weekend.

The Beat

Our all school meetings are called, The Beat. Ambassadors are chosen from various crews and grade levels to set up and run each meeting. When we meet we sit in a circle with an elevated stage in the center of the large group in the gym. Today was the first Beat of the year. Sadie and Skylar represented us well. More of our crew will be chosen to lead as we progress through the year. You will be notified by Ms. Chelsea when your child is chosen. As always, you are invited to attend any meeting. The Beat happens every other Wednesday at around 9:15 am.

Games

Games, games, games! We use games to learn and practice lots of skills. Games can encourage critical thinking, can take the drudgery out of practice and can boost our social skills. We love to play games. Below you will find photos of us playing a math game called Bunny Hop to learn and practice navigating on a number line and a word work game called Sight Word Bingo to help us learn and practice sight words. Sight Word Bingo is available for purchase at Lakeshore Learning  for $10 if you are looking for fun ways to help your child practice sight words. It comes in three levels so you can choose the level that works best for your child.