Expecting a Grade A Year!!!

Dear Parents and Students,
Here at the Sunshine Farm, we are tilling the ground and preparing our field for our fruitful year to begin! We are so excited to welcome back our Sunshine Band as well as some new faces as we start our Sunshine Farm with cultivating a community of success :D! We hope that you have kept up your reading and are ready to hit the ground plowing as we start Second Grade. We are going to have a fantastic time learning and growing as we dig deeper to grow more fruitful results. Please enjoy a Welcome Video for Kindergartners that includes some of our former Sunshine Band Members :P.
Ya'll come back soon to check out some more information about Orientation this coming week!

Your Farmers,
Ms. Correia and Mrs. Bridges

Welcome to Kindergarten at Chets Creek from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.

Destination Success Summer!!!

Dear Parent(s),

Please take the time to visit Destination Success this summer!
There are so many valuable resources for your student to take advantage of to maintain and grow in their learning. We have assigned many standard-level and above-level activities for your student to complete. You will also see lessons assigned weekly by our county :D! As a reminder, your student's log-in and password is as follows:

Log-in: FIRSTNAMELASTNAME264 (all caps and our school number:264)

Password: MMDD (birth month and day, eg. June 16th=0616)

Our students will be rewarded at the Sunshine Farm for their progress on Destination during the summer :). Thank you for all you do to keep your student reading and learning!

Happy summer,
Mrs. Bridges and Ms.Correia

http://duval.riverdeep.net

p.s. Leave us a comment or a question on this blog post for extra credit!

New Theme..New Name..New Dreams!

Here at the Sunshine Band...we mean Sunshine Farm, we hope you are kicking back and relaxing during your first days of summer vacation. Your farmers, Mrs. Bridges and Ms. Correia have already dusted off their tractors and plows and are getting ready to cultivate a Second Grade community of learning excellence. We have a new room, a new theme, and a new name, The Sunshine Farm :D!
Check it out:

Chets Creek Elementary School - Cultivating a Community of Excellence from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.

The Sunshine Band is going to Second Grade!

The show must go on and we are taking it to Second Grade! Our band members are so thrilled that we will moving on up to Second Grade together :). Yesterday, the Sunshine Band got a sneak preview of what Second Grade will be like and they even got to see their new room!

We chatted with a Second Grade teacher and heard from second graders just what second grade was really like. They gave us helpful tips and advice and even showed us a Second Grade Reader's Theater from their Author Study, Tomie dePaola. It was a great visit and We feel less nervous about our new venture.

We are so excited to boogie into a new year with old friends!

How Do Living Things Grow and Change?

The Sunshine Band has been working on the essential question, "How Do Living Things Grow and Change?" We have studied the life cycle of a frog and of plants in detail. We have also paired this study with revisiting Report Writing to share our research of living things. In celebration of our efforts, our student were to create a representation of any life cycle they would like (except a butterfly) and present it to out class. Our students and teachers watched in awe today as what can be only described as "super scientists" presented their Life Cycle Presentations. Our students took great ownership with this assignment and we are so pleased with all the hard work! Students are presenting their research with pride as they explain the stages in a life cycle. We even had one student bring frogs in their different stages of growth; live for viewing!!! Thank you parents and students for taking the time to learn more about life cycles and sharing your schema with our class :D! We all learned something new today and look forward to hearing from all of our Sunshine Scientists :). Take a look at what was shared so far..

-Watch a video presentation of the Life Cycle of a Ladybug

Celebrate Reading!

As we near the end of the year, the Sunshine Band is reading chapter books! Instead of responding to literature during Literacy Stations, the Sunshine Band is meeting in chapter club book clubs :)! Right after their own individual reading time with on-level and Literacy Station books, our almost second graders gather in groups around a chapter book. One student will read, the group listens, and then they decide as a group how to respond to the pages read that day. The Sunshine Band is having amazing conversations about their chapter books and supporting each other with comprehension all the way to Second Grade!!!

As almost second graders, our Sunshine Band is supporting almost First Graders with their comprehension and fluency. Last week, band members read with a kindergarten friend and modeled intonation and fluent reading of text. Our Kindergarten Students amazed us with their desire to read higher level text and the room was buzzing with book talk!

A Week Full of Life!

Our students have challenged themselves to observe the trends in how living things grow and change. We have observed the beginning stages of a frog and birds in our classroom and during a nature walk. Our visit the Jacksonville Zoo was also a fabulous opportunity to observe living things up close! If you were with us you know how crazy about creatures our students are!

In your student's planner, you will find a letter concerning a Life Cycle Project. Your student will be able to choose any living thing they would like and represent its life cycle with a poster, puppets, etc. Our students will also re-visit Report Writing next week and will be able to choose their topic.

Please enjoy some of our First Grade Schema for the following living things that we been observing. Please encourage your student to continue his/her research.