First Day in First Grade!!

It's going to be a great year of learning and fun with these 19 cuties!!

End of the Year Fun!!

Our last weeks of first grade flew by swiftly! There were numerous special activities which gave us all an opportunity to celebrate the hard work and great learning of our firsties this year! Check out the pictures below, highlighting a few of these special events!

The first graders enjoyed a yummy lunch in the Kalona Park thanks to the area businesses.  The students munched on pork burgers, chips, bananas and vanilla ice cream!  Although there were pool facility issues, that did not keep our first graders away from enjoying the warm afternoon.  The Kalona Pool helped provide hoses and sprinklers for the students!  There was also a 'homemade' slip and slide to be enjoyed!!  We hope your little one filled you in on the fun of this day!

We are so thankful to have a great team of staff members who worked together to plan a wonderful field day during our final days at WE! We all had a great time celebrating the end of the school year in our Friendship groups. All students enjoyed lawn games, kickball, wiffle ball and free play on the park equipment. And we wish you could have been there to hear the screams of excitement as first graders discovered the surprise as we returned to school-a two person inflatable obstacle course!

And lastly, thank you to the MANY volunteers who made our "trip to China" possible! Students enjoyed traveling to a museum, eating at a Chinese restaurant, playing some traditional games, ribbon dancing and creating their very own Chinese lanterns.

Western Day at WE!!

The students of Wellman Elementary celebrated their great work in following our 3 PBIS expectations of Being Responsible, Being Respectful and Being Safe by having a 'Western Day'.  Students 'moseyed' their way through the day with their cowboy hats and boots.  One student from each classroom also had the opportunity to join Mr. Poock for a story from the Old West at his 'campsite'.  Lastly, when students hit the 'chuck wagon', they got to sit wherever they pleased!!  This was definitely a highlight of the day!!

Field Trip Fun!

Monday was a beautiful day for our first grade field trip! Our firsties enjoyed some great playtime at Sunset Park in Washington and a picnic lunch. We then moved onto Marr Park, with our favorite conservationist, Pam Holz. Small groups of students enjoyed exploring the visitors' center, a scavenger hunt around the pond, and learning more about the life of a seed through a game! It was a wonderful time filled with smiles, learning and exciting discoveries!  

The Whole Crew at Sunset Park

Year End Assessments

The end of our first grade year is suddenly and surprisingly almost in sight! And with the end of the school year comes several important assessments at Wellman Elementary which help us to gauge the growth of our learners over the course of the year. Two of these assessments which are administered building wide are the STAR math test and the aReading test. You may remember hearing a bit about these assessments at your child's conferences earlier in the year, but here's a bit more information to help you understand what both of these tests look like in first grade.

STAR Math: Over the next two weeks, all first graders at Wellman Elementary will visit the computer lab to take the Star Math computer adaptive test. This is the second year Wellman Elementary has utilized this as a school wide screening tool in the area of math for all students. This will be the third time your child has taken this test over the course of the school year. This assessment touches on a variety of math skills and concepts and adjusts the difficulty of the questions to the test taker throughout the test. At the end of the test, each child is given a scaled score, this information allows the teacher to determine growth based of the students' previous score(s) as well as when compared against a national norm.

aReading: The aReading test is similar to the STAR math test in some regards. It is also taken on the computer, the difficulty of the questions increases or decreases dependent upon students' testing responses, it is also given three times a year, and it covers a broad range of literacy skills. We are in our first year of implementation for this assessment at Wellman Elementary. When students complete this test, also receive a score which will show their own growth over the course of the year, and will also be compared to a benchmark score that has been set by the state.

Hopefully this information gives you some insight into some of the testing in schools you may be hearing about on the news. We are confident that each of our first graders has grown in tremendous ways this school year and are excited to share their test scores as one measure of their growth with their end of the year report cards. They have worked tremendously hard this year to make the awesome strides they have gained and even though it's nearly May....we still have a lot of that important work yet to do!! Thank you as always, for your continued support from the home front! Your child would not be the gem they are without you:)    

Friendship Group Fun and Walk-A-Thon!!

What a beautiful day of sunshine we had to celebrate Earth Day and also raise money for Wellman Elementary!  Students helped cleaning our Earth by cleaning up litter and picking up sticks.  We then enjoyed a picnic lunch with our Friendship Group buddies!!  Last, the students and staff burnt off some energy by walking around North Park!  Here are some photos from our fun day!!

All Ready to clean and walk!!!

Students and Staff enjoying the day!!

 

That's all folks!!!