Welcome to Room 117 - Gwen Odney and Children      After some thirty years in a classroom--full time, part time, substitute, parochial school, public school, private Montessori, public Montessori--I find the Nokomis experience has been the most satisfying. Twenty-five lively first and third graders live and work in our classroom this year. We've been able to combine the individualized Montessori materials and approach to education with literacy education stressing individual and small group conferences about students' reading and writing.      AND we are fortunate to have the expertise of literacy teacher, Susan Bowman, and ELL specialist, Ela Murphy, to help differentiate instruction for all our learners. As a team during the literacy time, we are able to help the high needs learner to the accelerated student with guided reading, small skills groups, and multi-level independent learning stations. There is a true enjoyment of numbers and mathematics and problem solving for both boys and girls. These children LOVE books and reading and listening to stories. There is also a lot of geography, history and community building going on!      We start at 9:15 each morning with literacy until lunch at 11:30. We continue with writing after lunch and recess. The specialist classes are physical education, science and music. We jump into math at 2:15 and stick with it until the end of our day about 3:30. We welcome parents, grandparents, and other adults into our classroom to volunteer by listening to children read or by helping a child to understand math and cultural concepts. If you have any questions, concerns or pats-on-the-back (!)      I can best be reached by phone at 651-293-8857 after 3:45, or e-mail at gwen.odney@spps.org.