Walden School Grades 1 & 2

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Mrs. Kimberly Larose
klarose@waldenschoolvt.org

This year begins Kim Larose's 22nd year teaching in the Walden School. This year she is teaching first and second grade. Her 19 students will be working together to create a safe and nurturing classroom community where taking risks, learning from mistakes, and meeting challenges are encouraged and supported. A big focus in her planning is differentiated instruction. Students will be working on mastering grade level expectations while exploring topics of personal interest. The content will be taught with attention to student learning styles and learning abilities. There will often be choices given for how the work will be completed based on how students like to learn best. We are including opportunities for movement, hands-on learning, discussion and active participation. Students will work in a variety of groupings. Students will be encouraged to talk about their new learning while making connections to prior experiences. Our biggest goal is to make learning fun and to motivate students to show their best effort. This year students will be involved in monitoring their progress with the adults and setting goals for their improvement. Sheryl Moran is our paraprofessional. She helps out in our class all day offering support and encouragement, taking small groups for skills work and helping to remind students to make good choices. See the support staff page to learn more about her.

This summer Kim found time for daily walks with her dog. She read a book for pleasure and agrees with her oldest daughter that Jodi Picoult is a fantastic author. She enjoyed summer tutoring with some of her hard working students. Campfires in the backyard, gardening, and being active with her teenage kids are just a few of her summer pleasures. She is very excited about the new learning and teaching opportunities this year will bring..

In our classroom we start the day with morning meeting. Greeting each other respectfully in creative and fun ways helps us practice friendship. Saying the pledge of allegiance and reading the chart of the day's events are also part of our morning meeting. But the favorite part is sharing. We also like it when we have time to sing songs or do a movement game.

This year math is our first topic of learning. We work on the calendar. We work with money, time, adding and subtracting, place value, telling temperature, and problem solving. We often use games and work places to practice the math skills we are learning about. Using math manipulatives like cuisenaire rods and place value blocks, collections of bugs, buttons, and sea creatures makes the learning even more engaging.

The next part of the day is a favorite. It is snack time. We get to sit together and socialize. If we finish early we have a short time to play with friends.

Literacy is our next learning opportunity. We read familiar books and new books in small groups with a teacher leader. We practice fluency and expression. We also problem solve new words with many different strategies. Talking about the story after the reading helps us show our comprehension. When we are not in group, we have reading jobs. These might include phonics on the computer, writing a response about one of our stories, practicing handwriting, word skills practice or partner reading.

Next, we have phonics instruction. Learning about the letters and their sounds helps us in reading, writing and spelling. Once we have learned the tricks to letters and their sounds we are ready for spelling groups to learn new spelling rules. We sort the words, identify the rules, find examples of those words in our reading books, practice spelling them with a partner, and listen to sounds to write them correctly. Sometimes we work on lifetime words that don't follow the rules. These words just need to be memorized. We work in sand, with magnetic letters, with rhythm sticks or with other methods that help us learn the words we will use often in our writing.

Recess and lunch are next. We like to run and play. We often play tag or with a ball, climb on the dome or slide and swing. We like Sam's cooking. He makes us tasty meals.

After lunch we have allied arts. On Mondays we have Music. On Tuesdays we will be learning about the library and what a great resource books can be in our life for information and pleasure. Also on Tuesdays and Wednesdays we have Physical Education. Thursdays we work with Mr. B again in Health. On Friday we have Art.

When we return to the classroom we have writing. We are working on making our own books. We also do research and write reports. Sometime we write short pieces of writing to show our writing fluency. We always practice editing for punctuation, capitalization and spelling. We have mini lessons to learn about techniques that make our writing better. Sometimes we listen to books that give good examples of an author's craft. We try those same good writing ideas in our books too. We will integrate science and social studies themes into our writing time. Learning about our community and our environment are topics of interest we will be exploring.

At the end of the day we help clean up our room and pack for home.

Come in and visit our room someday. We love visitors!