Meadowlark ACE

It has been a busy month in the Rock-its classroom. We spent the first two weeks getting to know each other, making nametags, posters and decorating binder covers. The students have now settled in to a daily routine of Mind Gym, word of the day, spelling word of the week and writing prompts.

During the month of October our theme was “autumn.” The Rock-its had the opportunity to complete the following prompt, “If I could make it rain anything except water, what would it rain? How would this rain affect people and the environment?” Ask your child how they responded; each of them had creative and fantastic ideas.

In addition, the Rock-its have been hard at work illustrating and creating pages for a book we are writing. Our book is titled “Filling the Bucket 101: Easy Ways to Fill a Bucket” and is inspired by the book “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids,” by Carol McCloud. The students have worked hard and are looking forward to sharing the book with parents/guardians on November 13, at the ACE Family Pizza Party.

Our theme for the month of November is “gratitude.” Watch for information about our gratitude projects in the next posting.

The Superstars have just finished their leaf projects. Leaves were collected and each student wrote a fact about their favorite tree and why they liked it. We all learned many things about our trees. Next, November’s theme is gratitude. The Superstars will be writing gratitude journals and working on other projects.

Some of our classroom projects have been movement to music, nature walks, making a treasure box filled with rewards, and learning how to listen and follow directions. The Green Lizards have been working hard on a surprise project for our Pizza Party Night on November 13th. Please visit us in room 17.

After doing a few art projects to establish our group, and after all students decorated their special writing binders, we Magenta Magicians have now built some good daily routines for drawing, writing, and learning. We’ve read a couple of books in class so far; “Caps for Sale” was a favorite, and more recently we read “B is for Beaver,” an alphabet book about Oregon. After we learned a little about our state, we thought it would be fun to learn about each other, so we followed a template for an “I am” poem: “I am goofy and smart, I like to play baseball,” etc. A few wrote seriously, while others used their imaginations to write funny or scary poems inspired by Halloween (one girl pictured herself as a vampire and wrote from that perspective). Also, everyday at ACE we learn a “word of the day,” and groups take turns presenting a skit about the word. Yesterday we Magicians performed the best skit yet seen at ACE, involving the word “embark” and a noble dog-sledding team in Antarctica. Ask your child for a reenactment: you’ll be impressed! (Kids love showing off to their parents about new words they’ve learned.)

Our first family night will be Tuesday, November 13, 2007. The students are invited to stay after ACE and families will join them at 5:30 for a fun filled night of Pizza and ACE Activities until 6:30. Our entire staff will be there and they can’t wait to meet you!!

We’re now more than two weeks into the program, and so far things are going great! On one of the first days we read a book called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? It’s about how every person in the world carries an invisible bucket. When you do something good for someone, or when say something nice about someone, you fill that person’s bucket. At ACE, we try to fill other each others’ buckets as often as we can. Also, we have a beautiful bulletin board with a bucket that’s starting to overflow with all the good things that ACE teachers have said about the students, written with the student’s name on little blue pieces of paper in the shape of raindrops. Next time you come to school, be sure to look at our board and see if you can find your child’s name on it!

Well, we are about a week and a half away from receiving students and we are getting so excited! The academic and recreation staff have been preparing for the last few weeks and we are counting down the days to share our wonderful program with the fabulous ACE kids at Meadowlark. We’re looking forward to October 8th for the beginning of a year of fun with writing and recreation!

Today was the first meeting of the brains behind the ACE program (IA’s that teach the language arts piece). We came up with many exciting new ideas including having special Fridays and creating our own literary magazine. I am so excited to continue our meetings putting our ideas into practice.

My name is Rebecca Cohen and I am the new counselor at Meadowlark Elementary as well as the new ACE coordinator. I am very excited about starting the new year and especially excited for the students to come. I can be reached at cohen_r@4j.lane.edu, by calling the main office at Meadowlark, or by stopping by room 23 at Meadowlark. I am looking forward to a fantastic year!!!