Join us for a Multicultural Celebration

On Wednesday, March 19th we will perform at Bella Vista's annual Multicultural Celebration. A Potluck dinner will be served at 5:00pm. The performances will begin at 6:00pm in the auditorium on the first floor. Students should wear white shirts and black pants or skirt.

Unit 7: Keep Trying

Keep Trying is meant to give students many examples of why persistence is so crucial in achievement.

Yoga for Youngsters Funded

I am thrilled to announce that a recent Portable F proposal, Yoga for Youngsters, was funded! We will be learning breathing techniques, as well as muscle and spine strengthening postures. With this program, students will learn positive, kinesthetic ways to develop focus and calm.

Unit 6: Journeys

Journeys aims to help students explore concepts of geography and travel. In the spirit of James Joyce, we'll employ a simplified version of concentric circles. First we need to understand we are in a place or a location. Then we can expand out to the classroom, the city, the state, the country, the continent, the world, the universe. This concept is embedded in the story, "Me on The Map." Understandably, it can be very abstract to young children! And yet, our new model solar system already has students asking questions about planets (No pluto in this line-up!) A lot of students in our class have traveled to places near and far (from Lake Merritt to Tahoe to Chile.) We'll be talking about that as a way to use prior knowledge to make connections. Also look forward to drawing and writing journals which our amazing room mom is getting for us. We will start a daily morning journal time where students will create a message and reflect upon it.

The Drum by Nikki Giovanni

To continue our morning poetry and complement our regular drum lessons led by Mr. Osuna, we've started a new poem, "The Drum" by Nikki Giovanni.

The Drum
daddy says the world is
a drum tight and hard
and i told him
i'm gonna beat out my own rhythm

vocabulary focus: daddy, world, drum, tight, hard, beat, rhythm
high-frequency words: i, the, is, a, and, him, says, out, my

Ms. Conklins in Guatemala and Egypt

My younger sister will be working with young children as a Healthy Schools Facilitator in Guatemala. She has created this blog to chart her experiences with students in Guatemala. I hope we can do at least one pen pal exchange between students before the year is up.. My older sister works in Cairo, Egypt with Save The Children, an organization committed to ensuring that children worldwide have access to food, education and nurturing environments.

Oysters in New York

What did you do on your winter break? I visited my good friend Ann, who is also a teacher. She works at the New York Harbor School in New York City with students in high school. It was so cold in New York! I visited her field class on a learning lab about oysters. The students diagrammed and measured oysters and had a filter competition. Students are learning how oysters help keep estuaries (places where salt and fresh water meet) healthy. We tasted oysters at the South Street Sea Port Museum.

Garden progress

Don't forget to check in on our garden blog, where all sorts of growth is happening!
http://cultivatingnaturalcuriosity.blogspot.com/

Holiday Party

A holiday party is in the works for Friday, December 21st at 1:40pm at Portable F.

Unit 5:Weather

Our new Open Court Reading Big Book theme is Weather. Please chime in with ideas for art projects or learning games!

New Intervention Specialist

It has been really nice to see everyone for parent conferences. All the testing we've done in the past few days indicates the students are on an amazing achievement trajectory. It is my great pleasure to introduce Ms. Alexandra Gonzalez, our new Intervention Specialist. Ms. Gonzalez has a great deal of experience in the classroom. Together with myself and Mr. Osuna, Ms. Gonzalez will be assisting to lead small group work and 1:1 interventions in math and reading. She will be working with our classroom all day to support academic and social achievement. We'll have a picture up soon!

Kids magazines

Magazines offer a great opportunity for literacy development and are relatively inexpensive. You may want to consider purchasing a subscription to one of these. I'm looking into purchasing subscriptions for the class.

National Geographic for Kids: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazines/
Zoo Books: http://www.zoobooks.com/
Time for Kids: http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/
Cricket: http://www.cricketmag.com/home.asp
Highlights for Children: http://www.highlights.com/

Looking into schools

This post was inspired by a parent asking about long-term special education options in Oakland. In Oakland, Special Day Classes are spread around the district. That means if students remain in a Special Day Class placement, they move every few years to a new school. In Oakland, grades 6-8 are together in middle-school Special Day Classes, and 9-12 are together for high-school Special Day Classes. It means that after elementary school, students may be in an multi-grade Special Day Class.

My conversation with the parent led me to brainstorm about learning communities where students could possibly remain through 8th grade. Below I am beginning a list of schools it may be worth contacting to find out what their programs look like. These will be schools I may not know any specifics about. But, they seem inspiring in their commitment to expeditionary learning and alternative pedagogy. Please chime in with suggestions!

Lighthouse Charter

It's long vowels time

From now until June, we'll be mastering the long vowel sounds and spellings. Initially, most students have challenges differentiating between when to pronounce short and long vowel sounds. Its important to remind students that vowels have two sounds: one like their name and another short vowel sound. We can often tell which sound to make by looking at the way a word is spelled. Here are some words that correspond to the long vowel sounds we'll be learning:
Long A: cake, bay, a,
Long E: peek, treat, Steve
Long I: sigh, my, I, try,
Long O: so, spoke, coat
Long U: flute, blue,

Educational gift ideas?

If you are purchasing gifts for the holidays, here are educational gifts ideas students may enjoy: flower pot with seeds and soil; puzzles; legos; recorders (any instrument); puppets; world map or globe; watercolor paint; kids yoga DVD; books on tape or CD; colored pencils and drawing paper; crayons and coloring books; play dough; linker cubes; wooden blocks. Here are places to peruse items. Please feel free to add more.
Kids Gardening Store: http://www.kidsgardeningstore.com/
(there are so many cool things on this site!)
The Ecology Store, Berkeley: http://www.ecologycenter.org/store/
Elephant Pharmacy, Berkeley: http://www.elephantpharm.com/
Lakeshore Learning: http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/home/home.jsp
Able Play: http://www.ableplay.org/
Amazon Children's Books: http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=4

California State Standards First Grade

Reading

Math

Science

Social Studies

Orgullo:Pride

We still love "My people" by Langston Hughes, but we've started a new poem during morning meeting. "Orgullo: Pride" is by Alma Flor Ada and is in English and Spanish. Here it is:

Orgullosa de mi familia,
Orgullosa de mi lenguaje,
Orgullosa de mi cultura,
Orgullosa de mi raza,
Orgullosa de ser quien soy.

Proud of my family
Proud of my language
Proud of my culture
Proud of my race
Proud to be who I am.

Unit 4: Our neighborhood at work

We've started "Our Neighborhood at Work," the fourth unit in our reading curriculum. We'll be learning about jobs in our community.

My People

My People by Langston Hughes
The night is beautiful
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

Beats for Brilliance Funded

Our proposal to purchase drums for the special education classes at Bella Vista was fully funded on Donors Choose. This is serendipitous, as Mr. Osuna is a percussionist who has lots of ideas about body drumming and making drums. We'll be making beats soon.

New Oakland teacher blog

Follow the insights of new teachers in Oakland on this blog, "My First Year":
http://www.ibabuzz.com/myfirstyear/

Ms. Shepley and Ms. Conklin profiled

Ms. Shepley and Ms. Conklin are profiled on the TEAMS/Americorps web site. Read about how we became teachers and previous service learning projectshere: http://www.teamsusf.org/program/spotlight.html

Blog for new Special Education teachers

Council for Exceptional Children now hosts a web blog for new teachers of special education. Check it out for useful resources: http://cecblog.typepad.com/cec/

Ms. Conklin out on Friday October 19th

Mr. Osuna will be here to ensure students have a great day. The substitute will be Ms. Broome, a former Bella Vista teacher. Schedule will remain as follows: Morning Meeting, Reading, Recess, Math, Lunch, Quiet Time, Big Book and Language Arts, English Language Development, Social Skills with Ms. Shepley's class.

Intervention Specialist Mr Osuna

I received a call from our future Instructional Assistant Mr. Osuna that he is tentatively scheduled to come in this Friday, October 12th. Many thanks go to our superstar room mom who has worked tirelessly to coordinate with Programs for Exceptional Children.