Meet my 2016-2017 Class!

Here they are!

The End Of Another Year!

Thank you to the families of my students for your continuous support throughout the year!  These are their tie-died field day t-shirts!  They had a blast tie dying!

We Are "Star" Struck At The PTA's Work To Make Us All Feel Appreciated!

This is the bulletin board that the PTA decorated.  It is hanging in the front foyer of our school.

May 2 through 6 was Teacher Appreciation Week!  Our PTA went out of their way to make the week memorable for all of us.  Every day they did something special to show their appreciation for the work we all do.  I took daily photos to document the events of the week.  Although the photos show what they did, they can't begin to capture the appreciation we all feel for making us one of the "Stars" in the lives of their children.

On Monday, May 2, we walked in to school to find the floor of the professional development room filled with stars.  Each star had a name of the staff member - they recreated the red carpet treatment often reserved for Hollywood's stars.  

This is the entrance to the star walkway in the Professional Development Room

This is my star. 

These are some of the stars on the walk way. 

Some of the starry, starry decorations. 

On Tuesday, May 3, our students gave us papers that described why we are stars.  The PTA had sent them home to the students to return to us as gifts.  Here are some that my students wrote.  

You teach us math, science and writing.

She knows a lot about the moon.

Dear Mrs. Henrikson, Thank you for teaching me.  I learned a lot in math.  You are the best teacher.  Love, Olivia

Here is a beautiful plant I received to go along with all of the cards!

On Wednesday, May 4, the PTA prepared a wonderful breakfast for us.

Lots and lots of home made goodies.

We all enjoyed the delicious breakfast!

 

On Thursday, May 5, the PTA had even more in store for us!  There was a selection of coupons from local stores that we could choose from!  I love dark chocolate and was very happy to see the coupon for the Bath Sweet Shoppe!

This is the creative sign with our directions.  (I wasn't a Diva, just to be clear.)

On Friday, May 6, we enjoyed yet another wonderful assortment of food - this time it was desserts!  They even provided bags for us to take some home (which I did)!  The cheesecake chocolate brownies were my favorite.

Lower right are the chocolate cheesecake brownies - my favorite.

Thank you very much, PTA!  You really outdid yourselves and we are very grateful.

A Gift To Every First Grader in Maine!

The Maine Education Association, through a generous grant, purchased and delivered a free book for every first grader in Maine.  Today I gave every child in my class a non-fiction National Geographic Kids Lions book and book mark.

They were so excited that I took a couple of pictures for my blog.  

Everyone is doing a great job reading their book!

Here they are showing off their copies of their new book.

They are quite cute!

A Future Teacher?

Some of my students are natural born teachers.  They seem to know just what to say to make another student feel better in one-on-one situations.  They know how to almost naturally teach their friends in school, and they have lots of empathy for those who struggle.  I had a student last year who fit into that category.

Although she is now in second grade, she still swings through my class every morning just to connect and maybe pick up some more teaching tricks in case she truly does become a teacher some day.  She also likes to practice teaching to my current class.  A few days ago she dropped off a note that she wanted my students to edit.  Here is the note.

It says, "Find all my misstakes

             and have fun!   Avery.

           dear ms henrickson

              you Are th Best

              clas Ever

                       fondly

                       avery

           (Hope I didn't

             mess your plans.)"

So, of course I projected her note on the screen with the document camera.  I made a copy of her note for every student in the class and they had to correct it to:

"Dear Mrs. Henrikson's class,

  You are the best class ever.

                          Fondly,

                          Avery 

My class was just determined to get it right.  They took bright colored markers and fixed all of the "misstakes" that they could find!  My ex-student got a chance to teach, and my current class got a chance to learn from a skilled second grader.  It was a great lesson!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

As has been my tradition for a number of years, I had a guest from the community come and read to my class on Dr. Seuss's birthday.  Cynthia Lewis, a retired special education pre-kindergarten teacher from Massachusetts who taught for 30 years, visited us today.  Mrs. Lewis holds a masters degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a highly skilled teacher.  She did a wonderful job reading Horton Hears a Who to my first graders.  The lesson from Horton Hears a Who is, "A person's a person no matter how small."

Children benefit from the connections they make with members of the community.  For example, today they heard a story read in a different voice than my own.  Throughout her reading, Mrs. Lewis dropped the end of the line rhyming word and my students predicted the word.  She modeled how important reading is throughout our entire life.

Thank you for coming to class, Mrs. Lewis!

FaceTime With a Biologist: Using Technology to Forward the Scientific Process

On Friday, February 12, my first grade class FaceTimed my daughter, Katie.  Katie, a 2012 Morse High School graduate, is currently a senior double majoring in biology and psychology at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.  Since January, 2015, Katie has been doing research on "CRISP-Cas9 mediated inactivation of KCC4a gene in zebrafish" (according to her resume) and consequently has learned to write lab reports to support the scientific process.

Katie as a first grader at Dike-Newell

First Katie showed one of her completed lab reports and asked for comments and questions from my students. Many noticed how neat and organized her report was, how long it was, and that it was typed, not written. Katie commented that she had to write her reports in this manner so that her professors could read them and understand her writing.  

Then, she asked my students specifically what they knew about the scientific process.  Many students could recite the steps: ask a question, generate a hypothesis, gather materials, make observations, and come to a conclusion. She talked about how important it was that their lab reports be neat enough so that they can reread it, and that it was important to be very clear about their observations. This modeling helped my students understand that the quality of their writing matters.

Finally, Katie opened questions and comments to the first graders.  They were very curious about what she was researching.  She told them that she was researching the gene that controls how big zebrafish can grow. Due to security reasons, Katie could not FaceTime from her lab and show them specifically what she was doing. However, the first graders easily connected her research to zebrafish because I showed them some images of zebrafish after we finished FaceTimeing.  

This lesson represented an excellent real life connection between what my students are learning in school today to a job they may want to pursue as an adult.  Connecting learning to real world experiences is a practice that research has identified as contributing to deeper learning outcomes for students (Martinez and McGrath, 2014).  Consequently, I was not surprised when one student told me, "When I grow up, I want to be a scientist. That was just so exciting."

If you would like to learn more about Katie's work, you can read her publications here and here.

Katie as an undergraduate at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts