Family Newsletter

Dear Families,

It was great to see you all for our parent-teacher conferences.  Thanks for taking the time to come in and thank you all for your continued support.  It truly takes a village.  These kids are amazing and we're creating a very strong learning community together, built on trust, friendship and perseverance. 

Reading and Writing:
We started our new author study last week.  We will read many books by the author and illustrator Mo Willems in the next few weeks.  We will use his books as mentor texts in both reading and writing.  We started by exploring the setting in his books.  The students discovered that the Piggie and Gerald books lack setting, so we created our own setting.  Look at some of this work!  Can you figure out the setting from these pictures?

Next week, we will explore how Mo Willems is using dialogue in his books.  As writers, we will try some of his ideas and use speech bubbles in our own stories.  We will also look at character traits and study the character Pigeon together.

Science:
We did a lot of science last week.  First, we learned more about leaves with Mystery Science and Ms. Fisher's class.  We went outside and collected leaves.  We partnered up and used our science thinking to describe our leaves.  Here are some pictures:

We also continued our work on light and sound.  We follow the NGSS science standards at ABS.  Throughout all of our science units, the students are encouraged to derive understanding through experimentation, scientific inquiries and data collection by adhering to reason and data.  We watched a short video about rainbows and learned about light.  We sorted different materials in groups based on their respective attributes.  The students learned that materials can be opaque, transparent or translucent.

Math:
First grade mathematicians continued working on partners to 10 and 10 and some more.  We also continued math problem-solving, using representations, labels and equations to show our understanding.  The students learned new domino games as well.  As the students are becoming more familiar with their math facts, we are encouraging them to count on as they figure out their calculations.  For example, it is more efficient to count on from 5 if you are adding 5+3 than starting at zero and counting five and then another three.

Flynn Theater:
We had a wonderful trip to the Flynn.  We saw "The Magic Flute".  It was performed by a theater company from South Africa, with incredible singing and dancing.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. 
Best,

Maria