Dear Families,
Here is our week in review:
Social-Emotional Learning:
This week, we focused on kindness at our school. The students were encouraged to use kind and polite words when interacting with each other and teachers. They started making a kindness chain in class with Ms. Emily, linking words and acts of kindness written on paper strips which were linked together. They also drew pictures and wrote kind words to each other in class.
Through a series of lessons, the students learned more about the different feelings people experience. They practiced identifying different feelings by carefully observing facial expressions, body language and making sense of the context. We listened to “The Feeling Song” again too. They love this song.
Please see the following message from Ms. Nicole:
PBiS at ABS News
Seeking Donations: Click here to learn about a service learning project some students have been working on at Allen Brook School!
Whole School Celebration: We Filled The Hive by being Safe, Kind and Responsible. We will celebrate on Monday with Stop, Drop and Play!
Special Visitor: Allen Brook School students and staff will get to meet “Salty” a State Plow Truck named by our students. We will have a special visit on November 17th!
Kindness Day: World Kindness Day is November 13th. Allen Brook will be celebrating with Kindness Week! See here for more information. Feel free to encourage some of these activities at home!
Have questions about PBiS at ABS or any of the above mentioned happenings? Contact Nicole at npfende@cvsdvt.org
Reading:
The students participated in partner reading this week using decodable books. They took turns reading out loud to each other. They did great using whisper voices.
The students continued reading “just right” books this week. We also continued working on improving our trick word automaticity. You might recall, these words occur often in books and many of them cannot be sounded out so it is important that young readers learn to recognize them so they can read them with automaticity.
This week, first grade readers were working on utilizing many different reading strategies at the same time when encountering an unfamiliar, or challenging word. They are encouraged to look at the first few letters of the word, rather than guessing based upon the supporting picture. They are encouraged to get their mouths ready to say the sounds of each letter, or letter combination. Finding parts of a word that they already know helps these young readers read more challenging words! Next week, we will look more deeply at the different vowel sounds, both the long sounds and the short sounds for each vowel.
Thank you for supporting razkids and daily reading with your child at home. We see steady growth in accuracy but also in the students’ confidence and love of reading! It is wonderful to see this development. We hope you see this at home too.
Writing:
First grade authors wrapped up their personal narratives this week. They created covers for their stories and made sure they could read their own writing. They also added thinking bubbles and speech bubbles to their stories.
First grade authors continued on improving their decoding skills in spelling. They practiced tapping out the sounds to independently write.
First Grade Math:
First grade mathematicians practiced fractions this week. They applied their understanding of equal parts while folding papers into two equal halves. I hope you saw them inside their Home Folders. Next week, we will explore other shapes and create two equal parts.
First grade mathematicians also improved their understanding of groups of ten while exploring our “Days in School” chart. This week, we passed the 50th day of school. The students were encouraged to show 50 in groups of tens using their math hands, writing equations and number bonds and visualizing 50 using our 100 chart. They discovered that 50 is half of 100!
The students also learned a new game and I think it quickly became a new favorite one. It is called “50 or Bust!”. The students were encouraged to anchor their sums to fives and tens to make their calculations more efficient and accurate. Ask your child to explain. Their game boards are inside their Home Folders.
Science:
First graders learned about famous structures in our world. These included Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Flatiron Building in New York. We discussed some characteristics of each structure and how we could use that to build our own structures. We learned about a famous architect that uses triangles to create his structures. His name is Buckminster Fuller and he built a geodesic dome. We learned about how architects make blueprints of what they want their structures to look like. We then created our own blueprints for our structures we want to build using toothpicks and marshmallows. They worked with a partner to come up with a sketch of what they both wanted their structure to look like. We also used our blueprints to actually build our structure out of marshmallows and toothpicks. They loved building their structures. It was so much fun!
We learned about how basketball was invented. We then became our own inventors and created our own board games. We hope your child will inspire you at home to play some board games together. Some students chose to take their board games home today; other students will bring them home sometime next week.
News and Reminders:
Ms. Emily finished her last solo week today! Thank you Ms. Emily for providing such engaging learning opportunities in our class. I will be back as the lead teacher on Monday. Ms. Emily will finish her internship with us on December 10th.
If your child has received his/her first Covid vaccine, please notify our school nurse. You can email her at slove@cvsdvt.org
We have no school between 11/22-11/26 due to our Thanksgiving Break.
Please unpack your child’s Home Folder before sending it back on Mondays. Looking through your child’s work from the school week is also an excellent way for your child to share his/her learning in different classrooms, review concepts and celebrate their hard work. Thank you for acknowledging their work.
Here's a link to this week's Bell
Have a great weekend,
Maria
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