Family Newsletter

Dear Families,

We had another fun and learning filled week at school.  Read on to learn more about our exciting week together at ABS!

Harvest Soup:
Our annual Harvest Soup was a success again this year.  Thank you to all who contributed with vegetables for the soup and the parents who volunteered to help out.  Due to the cold temperatures, it was decided to keep it indoors.  Here is a video that Ms. Birdsall made for our school.  Enjoy.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B364_8NhelMVX2duZlQ3SGw5MlE/view

Writing:
We started our small moment stories this week.  Please scroll down for more information and pictures regarding our teaching approach.  You can help at home by talking to your child about the everyday experiences that occurs.  There are hidden gems in everything-we just have to slow down to discover them!  I hope the students learned that writing stories and finding appropriate topics is not about trips to foreign countries or adventures at amusement parks.  It is about finding the stories in the everyday moments.  It is about identifying the experiences that at first glance seem mundane or even boring or average, but on closer prove to be fantastic explorations of growth, lessons learned or cooperation.
A particular skill the students worked on this week was how to go back and add more to what was already written.  They also practiced re-reading their own writing before adding more to their stories.

Technology:
We are almost done with the process of sharing our google docs entitled "All About Me".  Only a few students have yet to do it.  We will continue next week.  Many children have asked if they can add to their docs from home.  Of course they can!  I encourage your child to do that.  Additional practice using online resources and typing is beneficial to all.  We will start Typing Club again next week, so please stay tuned for that.  2nd graders probably remember from last year and since the link is still on KidBlog, many have already accessed it.  Thank you again for supporting our digital learning from home too!

First grade math:
First grade mathematician continued their work on number facts and relations to 10 and 10 and some more this week.  They also explored story-problem solving using mathematical representations and equations to show their thinking and justify their answers.  All first grade students took home their math work place planners this week.  Please look through their work at home and praise them for all they accomplished at school.  Sometimes, you will see unfinished pages.  Your child is encouraged to finish these pages at home, but it is voluntary and your child does not have to bring them in again for me to see (unless he/she wants to).  There are many different reasons why pages or parts of a page is left unfinished.  Sometimes, I might have asked a child to stop a game/task for a particular reason, sometimes another teacher comes to work with a child and sometimes the concepts are mastered so we can move on to other games/tasks.  Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any concerns or questions.  Thank you.

Have a great weekend,
Maria

Small moment writing

We read "old" students' small moment writing pieces this week and worked together with partners to find features of such stories. We discovered that small moment stories have many common characteristics. They are all personal narratives and about things that has already happened. They are stretched out over several pages with clear beginning, middle and ends. They also contain many different kinds of describing words and dialogue.
We use the watermelon as a visual aid to help us find good topics. The watermelon is a large fruit and some story topics are too big and too long because they only allow us to tell the story as a sequence of events rather than "digging" deeper into the feelings, the settings, or what something looked like. We use the seed inside the watermelon as an example of the story we want to write.

Measuring in first grade math

First grade mathematicians were busy measuring with non-standard measurement s this week. We used popsicle sticks and unifix cubes. The students learned to make reasonable estimates before measuring and use a sample to help calculate accurate measurements. We will explore traditional rules as well.

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
It was great to meet with all of you last week for our conferences.  It is always fun to share our writing folders, scapbooks and other things we do in class together.  I hope you feel proud of your child's progress so far.  After all, we have only been in school for 37 days!  Isn't that amazing!?

Reading:
The students continued their reading work in our Book Clubs, or guided reading groups.  You should see some of these books come home in your child's book bag on Fridays for reading at home.  We continued reading our Mercy Watson books in read aloud.  The kids are so excited to try new series and they are really improving their abilities to make connections between the characters and the different authors.  In our reading groups, we also continued our work on specific reading strategies for decoding and understanding specific words or vocabulary.

Writing:
We started our unit on small moment writing.  Ms. Alyssa read the book Knufflebunny to the class and the students worked together to find evidence from the book to explain it as a small moment story.  Then, the students worked together to list ideas for how we can turn "big" stories into "smaller" ones.  Small moment stories are personal narratives, they are about something that has already happened and instead of writing about a trip to Florida or to an amusement park, the students are encouraged to "zoom in" and stretch the story our over several pages.  For example, a "big story" such as a trip to Florida might be the small moment story "When I saw a clown-fish at the aquarium."  

First Grade Math:
If you are a first grade math parent, you should have already received a couple of emails outlining what we are doing in our classroom for math. The students work so well together, sharing the materials and math thinking time.  In addition to the number sense learning activities we have been working on in class, the students started comparing numbers using the language "greater than, less than, or equal to."  We have a few games in our classroom, which allows the students to visually see the numbers in many different ways before comparing them, and they love this game.  Ask your child about it.  Another favorite math activity is ordering.  In ordering, the students take a bag of number cards (consecutive sequence for now, non-consecutive later) and order them.  They read the numbers out loud forward and backwards to a friend.  We also play games such as "guess my number", and ask our friends to identify numbers before and after on our number lines.

Upcoming Events and Reminders:

•  ABS School Picture Re-takes are scheduled for 10/26 between 8-9am
• Our traditional ABS Harvest Soup is on Thursday, 10/27 at lunch time.  Please bring in a mug and spoon for your child on Thursday if he/she wishes to eat this soup as well.  Please note that the Harvest Soup is the hot lunch option on Thursday.  If you child does not eat soup, please pack a lunch for that day.  Thank you.  We will also eat outside, so please make sure your child has warm clothing for the outdoors that day.  Thank you.

Best,
Maria    

First Grade Math Unit 1

Dear Math Families,

We are off to a terrific start in our math class.  The children spent the first 36 days of school getting to know each other and learn how we use our math tools and manipulatives in a safe and responsible manner so we can be accountable for our math learning and explorations.

This year, your child’s math knowledge will improve rapidly.  As you probably know, we use the program Bridges at Allen Brook.  Your child will take home his/her first unit work next week.  I hope you will look at the different math concepts explored during the first 36 days of school.  We certainly covered a lot and your child worked hard!

In our first unit of math, the students explored number sense and fluency up to 10.  They worked on their automaticity to understand numbers to 10.  We explored this concept through a variety of games and number sentences.  The children learned that 2+8=10 but so does 6+4 and 7+3.  We explored “turn around facts” for 10, such as 2+8 and 8+2.  We call the “BOGO Math”.  It means “buy one, get one free” because if you know one addition fact, you automatically know the turn around fact!  Students also explored expressing their understanding of relationships in different ways.  For example, we learned that we can write our equations horizontally and vertically, but we can also write them 10=9+1 or with mathematical representations, such as tallies, or story problem diagrams and graphs.

Moreover, the students learned that mathematicians “chunk, or group” numbers into larger units to help them organize and calculate problems correctly.  We learned to chunk our numbers by 5 and 10 and used these skills in many different games.  

Lastly, the students explored graphing and geometry.  They learned about different shapes and that pennies and nickels represent 1s and 5s.  Throughout our math class, we used rekenreks, unifix cubes and our number scrolls to help us solve and justify our thinking.  

In the next few weeks, we will continue working on addition strategies, chunking and parts to 10 and ten and more.  We will also explore measuring and how mathematicians estimate reasonably.  Stay tuned.

Best,

Maria

If you are interested in the year-long math expectations from Bridges, please click on this link:

http://bridges1.mathlearningcenter.org/media/Bridges_GrK-2_ComExp.pdf

First Grade Math Information

Dear Math Families,

I wanted to take this opportunity and introduce myself to all math families since we just completed our parent-teacher conferences and the teachers typically  do not meet with the parents of children in other home rooms.  My name is Maria McCormack and I am your child’s math teacher.  I am one of the 1st and 2nd grade teachers on Team Harmony.  I live in Underhill with my husband, 4 children (ranging in age from 17 to 3) and our dog Link.  

Our curricular math program at Allen Brook is called Bridges.  We feel very fortunate to provide this very interactive and constructivist program to your child. Throughout the year, your child will bring home a variety of  examples of the math work happening in our class.  This is the first year that we do not send home math homework so examples of the work from school will come home less often than before.  Your child will explore math concepts through a series of units.  Each unit has two components to it; a Number Corner component, and a Work Place component.  Your child will transition between different math games and learning activities by using a Work Place Planner.  This Work Place Planner stays with your child and in his/her math mailbox until the end of the unit when it comes home.  Your child will bring home his/her first WorkPlace Planner and math work sheets next week.  Please look for them in your child’s Friday Folder.

In an effort to stay connected more frequently, I wanted to let all families know that I periodically post about first grade math on my classroom blog, which can be reached at our Harmony Web-site or directly at http://harmonyblog2010-2011.blogspot.com/  As a result of no homework coming home, I will also start sending home newletters to families informing you of our current units of study and upcoming concepts.  Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you have specific concerns or a desire to meet to discuss your child’s progress or daily math instruction. Thank you.

I have also created a Wiki page with many educational and fun math games.  Please check it out with your child.  Hopefully, you will find some games that will not only reinforce important math skills, but also spark an interest in mathematics! This wiki site can be reached on our Harmony web-site but also directly at http://inspirefirstgrade.pbworks.com/w/page/19992542/Math

If you wish to print specific math games for home use, please go to my printables at http://inspirefirstgrade.pbworks.com/w/page/19992541/Math%20Printables

I am looking forward to being your child’s math teacher this year!  Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.  We are off to a fantastic year already!

Maria McCormack, mmccormack@cssu.org

4 Winds

We had another 4 Winds class today. We learned about soil, the components of soil and how we can observe different layers and parts of the soil by carefully digging in it and collecting samples.

Classroom celebration

Today, we celebrated with iPads that the kids filled the buzzy jar again for being safe, kind and responsible. Here are some pictures.

Reading buddies

We met with Ms Davidson's Kindergarten friends today. It is always fun to share our books with our friends.

Reading

We are so excited about reading in our classroom. We just started our new author study and we are reading books written by Kate DiCamillo now. We started with the Mercy Watson series. Since we are reading books in a series, we brought in some other good options for kids to read at school too. We have Frog and Road. Mr. Putter and Ming and Ling, to name a few. Ask your child what he/she likes to read.

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
We had another terrific week together on Harmony.  We would like to welcome our new friend Jonah to our class and team!  It is great to have you in our class.  The students are so excited to have a new friend. Thank you for being so kind and welcoming.

This will be a short update because I recently posted and will see you next week for our conferences, but I wanted to take this opportunity to inform you of the following things:

100 Mile Club:
Ms. Porter started her early morning open gym for walking and jogging.  The gym is open to any student who wishes to participate and earn points towards the 100 mile goal.  Please check in with her Monday-Friday between 7:30-7:50am. Sneakers are required.

Volunteers:
I am looking for volunteers to come and help us out in our classroom.  If you are interested, please email me. In the past, I have had parents help out in all different capacities.  Some parents prefer to help out with projects from home, while others can commit to a weekly visit into our classroom to support in reading, writing, or math.  Please let me know what you are interested in doing and we will make it work.  Thank you for considering.

Picture Re-takes:
School picture re-takes are scheduled for Wednesday, October 26th between 8-9am.  If you have specific questions, please contact the front office.

I hope you and your family will have a great weekend.  I look forward to seeing you next week for our parent-teacher conferences.  Remember, your child is more than welcome to attend.

Regards,
Maria

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
Last week certainly went by fast!  With an evacuation drill and a field-trip to Mt. Philo, the week just slipped by.  I hope you had a chance to check out the pictures I posted from our field-trip.  Simply scroll down to see them.  We had a great day together and the weather was beautiful.  Thank you parents for coming along.

Writing:
The students love to write!  We are finishing up our beginning unit in writer's workshop in which the students explore the different reasons writers write.  The students wrote about themselves, explored free choice stories and personal narratives and wrote about strong feelings.  They also wrote about our scientific explorations and investigations. Throughout this writing unit, we also used different mentor texts to guide our writing and to get ideas for how to express ourselves. Our next unit in writing will be on personal narratives, which we call "small moment stories." The students will learn to expand on their language and zoom in on a moment in time in an effort to add more details in their words and pictures.  We look forward to sharing our writing with you during the conferences next week.

Reading:
Guided reading groups are continuing in our classroom.  This is a time when the students meet in small groups to share a book on their instructional level.  Each group will work on various comprehension and vocabulary skills. We also talk about specific strategies to decode and understand the text on the word/sentence level.  We ended our initial unit on David McKee's Elmer books with a "Brown Bag Book Share" yesterday.  The student shared their understanding of the characters and problems/solutions in the books while eating popcorn and reading books together.  Our upcoming unit in reading will continue on the importance of active engagement in reading and how readers share their understanding of books in different ways.  We will  learn more about how readers share their books in writing and online.

Parent-Teacher Conferences:
If you and your family did not sign up for a conference for next week, please do so.  I sent out a link to the google doc we use.  Please let me know if you need assistance to sign up or if the times do not work for you and your family.  Your child is encouraged to attend.  We will share all the learning taking place here at school and you will have the opportunity to look at your child's writing and scrapbook.

Upcoming Events and Reminders:

• There is no school tomorrow, Wednesday October 12th.
• Parent teacher conferences are next week, October 17-21.  We have regular school Monday-Thursday.  There is no school for students on Friday, October 21st due to these conferences.
• Please remember to send your child to school with warm clothing each day!  It is getting chilly outside and we have outdoor recess every day!  Thank you.

Mt Philo trip

We had a great day together hiking Mt Philo. Thank you to all of our chaperones.

Pumpkin science

Today, we had a family donate pumpkins for our class. Thank you.
We acted like scientists, and carefully observed their individual characteristics. We asked ourselves the question "are all pumpkins the same?"
Ask your child to explain what we learned.

Art project with Ms Rodgers

Last week, Ms Rodgers joined our class. She read a book about an artist who decided to beautify his old neighborhood by painting large murals. Just like the character in the book, we also painted a mural. Our mural hangs in the ABS hallway. Please visit our school to see it.