Meet Ms. Chae!

Meet Ms. Chae! Ms. Chae is our student teacher from the Cal State Fullerton Teaching Credential program. She will be with us every Tuesday for the next several months, and then will later transition to five days a week. She will be learning classroom routines and procedures, and learning how to lesson plan and teach alongside Mrs. Dyer. On her first day, she led the class in a fun “Get to Know Ms. Chae” Bingo game!

Each year, Woodbury hosts a handful of student teachers from various universities to help train and mentor future educators. It is a wonderful opportunity to give back to the field and help ensure that future classrooms will have well-trained and well-prepared education leaders.

Some fun facts about Ms. Chae:

  • She was previously a teacher at the Woodbury Catalyst Kids after-school program!

  • She has a pet bearded dragon.

  • Ms. Chae loves using colored pens when planning and taking notes in class.

  • Ms. Chae loves boba and building Legos.

  • She also enjoys going to theme parks like Disneyland!


Living Museum: Prep Guides

Students began working on their Living Museum prep guides in class today. Completed Prep Guides are due Friday, February 6th. The document is saved onto their Google Drives (a blank template can be copied from Mrs. Dyer's Google Drive).  A sample of a completed prep guide with sentence starters that can be used to help the students get started can also be found online. There are 10 interview questions and each question should have a 3–4 sentence response with full details. Truly, the more details, the better. Here is an example:

Sample Question: "When and where were you born? When did you die?

Sample response with full details: "I was born on a chilly Feb. 6 morning in 1872 in the town of Birmingham, Alabama. I've been told I was quite the small infant. Sadly, my mother passed away soon after my birth, and I lived with my father and two older siblings, Michael and Sarah. We lived in Birmingham until I was about nine years old. After a long and happy life, I died of a heart attack on Oct. 14, 1958. I was 86 years old at the time of my death."


Sample response with not enough details (too brief and leaves questions): "I was born on Feb. 6, 1872. I died on Oct. 14, 1958.

Dental Hygiene Month

February is Dental Hygiene month! Dr. Shung of Simply Orthodontics and the Tooth Fairy would like to share a video to teach us about proper oral hygiene! Be sure to brush AND floss at least twice a day!

Snowman Art

To celebrate the last bit of winter, the kids created these adorable aerial view snowmen using chalk pastels. Most people visualize snowman figures head on from the ground so that you can see the top, middle, and bottom layers of snow balls stacked on top of one another. Most people don't visualize snowmen from up above using a "bird's eye view." These art projects turned out so great! A few of the students even chose to have their snowmen looking straight up at the sky!

Studying Fractions

Our class is currently studying fractions. To help with students understand, we used chocolate chip cookies and red vine licorice to visualize equal parts and comparing fractions as a whole. Additionally, our class had a special opportunity to work in cooperative groups to mix ingredients and bake pans of brownies. After baking, we practiced cutting the brownie pans into equal parts and sharing the fractions with each classmate!

It has been such a fun (and tasty) week of math lessons!

Crossing Guard Appreciation Day!

February 3rd is Crossing Guard Appreciation Day! If your family typically crosses the street in the mornings or afternoons before/after school, please be sure to say an extra special thank you to Ms. Rosie, Ms. Judy, and Ms. Thelma— our three crossing guards.

Each of them are dutifully at their stations every day rain or shine, heat or wind, to help make sure our students and families can cross the streets safely.

Global Day of Play

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers

The Global Day of Play is coming on Wednesday, February 4th (though every day should have some time specifically dedicated to play!).

This is a specific day that educators all around dedicate to allowing the children to just do what children are supposed to be doing— PLAYING! All too often, kids are expected to work, work, work, but it is very important, developmentally, that your child has time to PLAY!

In the classroom, we will be playing. All. Day. Long. Yep. You read that right. Your child will get to play all day at school. While to some, it may seem like a waste of time at school— playing is actually incredibly important for children’s development! It teaches the children turn taking, fairness, friendly competition, cooperation, self-control, language skills, patience, sharing, communication, creativity, strategy, organization, and so many other skills that most adults don’t even realize!

To get this day going, we will need various games sent in to school for the children to share- age-appropriate board games, blocks, Legos, dolls, dress up items, etc. The only exception is no electronics, no screens, no toys with batteries. The goal is to spark imagination, cooperation and creative play. Some examples are below.

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BrainPop and BrainPopJr.

BrainPop and BrainPopJr. is an educational website with over 1,000 animated videos made for grades K-12. All Woodbury students have individual BrainPop and BrainPopJr. accounts. Occasionally, assignments will be posted on BrainPop for classwork or homework.

  1. Visit www.brainpop.com or www.jr.brainpop.com

  2. Click on the Login button.

  3. Enter Username (33lastnamefirstname)

  4. Enter password: type the letters “wo” in front of your 9-digit student ID number

  5. Enter the Class Code: possum4257
    This will connect your student account to Mrs. Dyer’s class account.

Teacher of the Year

Every year, Woodbury’s Teacher of the Year is nominated and selected by the teaching staff. In 2022, I had the great privilege of being selected as Woodbury’s Teacher of the Year. It is a very special honor. This year, Mrs. Ehlers (who was the Teacher of the Year for 2025) announced this year’s Teacher of the Year— Mrs. Chaky!

Mrs. Chaky has taught many different grade levels and she is currently the Interventions teacher for our school. She is incredibly dedicated to her students, and works hard helping them with foundational reading skills to help them succeed in class. It was so much fun surprising her with this special recognition during a morning staff meeting. She is so incredibly deserving of this honor. Mrs. Chaky will be celebrated at a formal district event in the spring.

Congratulations, Mrs. Chaky! We love you!

Upcoming Valentine's Day

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We will celebrate Valentine’s Day on Friday, February 13th. As a common tradition, many students enjoy passing out valentine grams to their classmates (but it is most certainly not mandatory to pass out anything).

  • Students will pass out valentines on Friday, February 13th.

  • As of January 12th, we have 28 children (11 girls, 17 boys) in our class. Please do not fill in names in the "To:" field. ONLY fill in the "From:" field on each note with your child’s name.

  • Do NOT send candy/food grams.

  • Alternatives may include non-edible items such as stickers, pencils, erasers, temporary tattoos, simple handwritten notes, plain valentine cards, stamps, glow sticks, rings, mini puzzles, books, bookmarks, etc.

  • Here are a few sample items that make great valentine grams!

  • Lastly, I recently heard of a sweet idea that parents can choose to do. Write your child a surprise love note for him/her to find and read in their snack or lunch bags!

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me! Thank you in advance for your partnership!