Minto-Brown Fieldtrip is official!

We are on our way to Minto-Brown Park on Tuesday, May 24th!  This is a great fieldtrip that culminates our Pond unit of study for Science.  It will be great to see all the information that we have been learning.
We have learned that there are 3 layers in the pond...the muddy bottom, the open water, and the surface.  The muddy bottom has lots of plants that have roots in it and the open water is where lots of our pond animals live their lives.  On the surface are lots of plants AND animals that we see all the time.

For our CCD (cognitive content dictionary-our place for organizing new scientific words) we have have added habitat, living and non-living, and organism.  We know that a habitat is where plants and animals live and grow and we now know that an organism is anything that is living.
We currently in the midst of learning about different pond animals that make the pond their home or habitat.  Soon we will be working on an animal report where we will be choosing our favorite animal and writing all about it.
So make sure you have your permission slip turned in because this is a great fieldtrip!!  I am still missing quite a few and hopefully we will see the rest come in this week!! :)
Also, it was great to see some smiling faces in the crowd today for Myers annual Volunteer Dessert!  All the first grade classes have been practicing for our special performance and it went off without a hitch.  Thank you to ALL of our Myers Volunteers!  You guys are amazing! THANKS!
Happy Mothers' Day and I hope everyone enjoyed our Mothers' Day gifts.  We were very excited to give them to our special moms :)

Mrs. Berry

McTeacher Night Reminder!!

McTeacher Night is Tonight!!!! 

• Where: West Salem- Wallace Rd.
• When: Tonight!! from 4:30-7:30pm
• Why: To help support literacy in the classroom and see your favorite teachers serving up orders of fries with a smile!!

I will be there from 4:30 to 5:30 so come and see me and everyone else at the West Salem McDonald's Tonight!!!  See you there!!

Mrs. Berry

A long time coming...

...And we are back!  WOW! I can not believe I have not blogged since before Christmas!! But here we are in the middle of February and so much has happened and soo much is on its way!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

Gingerbread houses were AMAZING and we had AMAZING help!! THANK YOU!  OMSI was INCREDIBLE!!! THANK YOU all volunteers and families who donated extra money!! And I can not forget our most recent celebration...Valentines' Day!  Everyone had a great time and enjoyed all their yummy goodies especially the sundaes.  Thank you to everyone who donated items and helped out in our classroom.  It was great!

CLASSROOM VOLUNTEERS 

If you have not heard by now, the Salem Keizer Public Library Book Mobile made a stop at Myers Elementary School this last Friday.  We learned all about checking out books at the Public Library.  We learned about books, movies, cd's, and even puppets that you can check out from our very own Public Library.  We also found out that we can keep books for three whole weeks!!! We even got to check out our very own book on the Book Mobile.  We can keep these books for just the weekend or for the entire three weeks.  When you are done with the book there are three different ways of returning it.  You can:

1. Return it to our classroom

2. Return it to the West Salem branch of the Public Library (Located in the Roth's Parking Lot)

3. Return it to the Main branch of the Salem Public Library 

Now all three ways are great but if you return it to the Main branch you will receive a button and a chance to name the Library's new mascot which is a frog!!  So now is your chance to check out the main branch of the Salem Public Library if you have not done so already.  You will not be dissappointed!  You can also check out other fun things happening at the library by going to http://www.cityofsalem.net/Departments/Library/Pages/home.aspx to see what kinds of things you can do at our public library! Have fun!

Grandparents'Day is coming on Tuesday, March 1st, and Myers is hosting lunch for all our special guests.  If you have family members who are interested in coming to have lunch with us please stop by the office to buy a ticket if you want to buy a school lunch that day or if you want to bring a lunch that would be great too.  This is just a nice time to spend with grandparents if they are able to join us for lunch.  Remember our lunch time is from 11:30am to 12pm and everyone is more than welcome to check out the Scholastic Book Fair that will be in the library starting February 22nd and ending March 4th. 

Lastly, Spring conferences are just around the corner!  I will not be meeting with everyone this time around but if you would like to meet, I will be more than happy to set up a time for you.  There will be more information about dates and times in the next few weeks.  So keep an eye out for that!

Once again, thank you to everyone who has helped out, volunteered, sent in a snack or simply stopped by to say hi!  I can not beleive how fast this year is going and time is just slipping away...But be on the the lookout for more information and possible pictures coming soon! 

Hope everyone is enjoying the nice and dry 3-day weekend.  Happy Presidents' Day! See you on Tuesday! :)

Mrs. Berry



Gingerbread house construction sites coming soon!

Don't forget that on Friday we will be making our Gingerbread Houses and I am super excited about it...and the kids are too! :) 
If you signed up for something to donate to our house decorations, please make sure you have sent them in so we know how much we will still need.  Thank you sooo much to those of you that have already send in your items.  It has definitely helped! 

Also, one more reminder---The OMSI fieldtrip is on JANUARY 26th...not January 12th.  Just making sure that gets out there more than once.  Thanks again for understanding and sorry about the confusion. 

Happy Building!
Mrs. Berry

 

Run, run, as fast as you can....

During Literacy this week we will be learning about story elements using The Gingerbread Man and other variations of this familiar story.  We will identify the characters, setting, and the beginning, middle, and end of all our gingerbread man stories.  We will also compare and contrast these stories to find similarities and differences between them. 

In writing, last week, we started working on making our writing more interesting to read.  We used different books to help us find great ways to start a story.  We are calling these great story starters-- Beautiful Beginnings.  Some beautiful beginnings we started using were:

One day
Last night
The other day
Once upon a time
When
In the beginning
On Monday, Tuesday, etc...
A long time ago

We also learned about Terrific Transitions.  These would be:
Next
Also
Then
After
Soon
While
First, second, third

When we work on our writing this week, we will be describing our very own gingerbread men and then use a "Beautiful Beginning" and some "Terrific Transitions" to write some of our own gingerbread stories.  If you are doing some sort of writing at home, encourage your first grader to start using these great words to enhance his or her writing!

In Math we have been learning about addition and subtraction and how to tell the difference.  We have been talking about how you now have to watch for sign of which to do and if our answers will "get bigger" by adding or "get smaller" when we subtract.  We have also been working on counting by 5s and 10s and we have been working hard on making groups of 10s and counting on from 10.  This week in math we will do something different with some gingerbread babies...aaawhhh!  We will use some gingerbread babies to measure things in our room including ourselves!! Can you predict how many gingerbread babies tall your 1st grader will be??  You just may find out this week!!

We have started our Simple Machines unit for Science and are currently learning about pulleys.  We learned that a pulley lifts objects either up or down and makes work easier for us.  We found out pulleys are found on flagpoles, sailboats, and window blinds.  See if you can find more pulleys around your house that makes your work easier. 

I was very excited to send home the permission slip for our OMSI fieldtrip in January!!  Apparently I was soo excited that I did not do a FINAL read through on it and there is a mistake with the date that we are going....ooops!  January 26th is the correct date of our fieldtrip.  We were not able to book all 4 classes of 1st graders so two classes will be going on January 12th and two classes will follow behind on January 26th.  We are the followers going on January 26th along with Mrs. Brenner's class.  I am soo sorry if it caused any confusion.  I was just too excited to get those out there that I did not make one last revision! 

I hope everyone is enjoying the little bit of warmer weather courtesy of the Pineapple Express weather front that has blown into the Valley!  Is this what Christmas in Hawaii feels like?? It's kind of nice...

Aloha??
Mrs. Berry

A little gobble gobble and we are onto December!

Wow! I am amazed that Thanksgiving Break has come and gone!  I hope that everyone had a restful and relaxing few days with family and friends!

I wanted to say Thank You to everyone for making their conference time.  It was a quick 20-30 min, but I had the chance to meet with almost every family either on Monday or Tuesday. I also wanted to say thank you to those families who braved the "First Oregon Snowfall of the Year" to make it to your conference that morning!
I had the chance to chat quit a bit about reading and goals for the rest of the year either academically or socially for each student in my classroom and it definitely helps to know that we are all on the same page and it takes a team to see 1st graders succeed. 

Please let me know if there are any other questions you have or things you want to know because having a good relationship between parents and teachers is another factor of success that I think is very important to have!

Again, thank you, and watch out....we only have 13 days of school for the month of December!! :)

Mrs. Berry

Toy Story 3 Now Showing at Myers Elementary

Mark your Calendars for MOVIE NIGHT Friday, November 19th at 6:30pm

What: Family Movie Night 
Where: Myers Elementary in the Gym

When: Friday, November 19th at 6:30 pm

Movie:  Toy Story 3     

What to do: PTO is asking for a $1 donation for admission - which includes a raffle ticket for various prizes.  Additional raffle tickets may be purchased, as well as tickets for popcorn/drinks (all tickets $1).  All proceeds benefit Myers PTO.