Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We were very busy this week in school even though it was short.  Remember, we have no school tomorrow and Friday due to in-service and parent-teacher conferences.  Thank you for signing up on our google doc.  I have already met with some of you and I look forward to meeting with the rest of you tomorrow and Friday.  It is always great to share about your child's learning and progress!

This week in writing, the students met with their editing partners to give, and receive, constructive feedback on their stories. The students had a writing rubric to guide their conversations and they did a great job learning from each other.  They also started their covers, with lots of details and catchy titles.  I am sharing these stories at our conferences but I will hold on to them until a little later this year.  Some students have already expressed an interest to have them published in our Reading Restaurant in May. (No worries, first grade parents-you will learn more about Reading Restaurant as we approach May!).

In reading, the students continued their work in our guided reading groups, receiving instruction and participating in small group discussions about the books we read together.  This week, we learned about "schema".  We learned that schema is a fancy word for something that we already know about something.  We learned that if we already know something about, let's say bats, we will learn more new information faster, because we already have references for that topic; a schema.  We practiced using our schema this week by choosing books, both fiction and non-fiction about authors, or topics, that we are already familiar with.  We discovered that we can make predictions and anticipate plots or events by simply knowing the characters from other books by the same author.  We also discovered that it is easier to remember new information when we already know a little about that topic.  We made sure that we continued to practice our "stop and jot" strategies from last week, a time when we actively engage with our books by jotting down ideas, words or queries on post-it notes.  The students love to read and write.  The students also love to read and show their understanding with art.  We finally got our amazing digital self-portraits up outside our classroom.  here is a picture, but please visit our classroom to see them up close.  They are truly amazing.  The students used Paint, a computer program to create their own self-portraits, using illustration techniques created by the author Todd Parr.  Todd Parr has written many terrific books for young children and his message is as powerful as his illustrations.

This week, the students on team Harmony also started participating in our science workshops on "Force and Motion."  For the next several weeks, the students on team Harmony will be mixed up and rotate between all the classrooms to learn about different aspects of force and motion.  I am offering classes and workshops on gravity, Ms. Crowley is teaching pushes and pulls, and Mrs. Benoit is teaching workshops on acceleration and friction.  Here are some pictures of the students from my workshop this week.  After learning about the pull of gravity and air resistance, the students were challenged in a scientific engineering task.  They were challenged to make a structure that could "defy" gravity, and be sturdy enough to hold up an egg, a tennis ball, or a billiard ball on its top.  The students did an amazing job working together and problem-solving, using only the materials provided, while integrating new-found knowledge about gravity.

Have a great long weekend.

Maria