Dear Families,
Here is our week in review:
Social-Emotional Learning:
This week in Second Step, we learned more about how we can show empathy and compassion to our classmates when conflicts arise. The students reviewed the various problem-solving steps they have learned, such as using an assertive, but polite, voice to advocate for themselves, ignoring the problem behavior, moving to a better spot or asking for help. Sometimes, however, wrongs must be made right again between the individual students. Apologizing and forgiving are two powerful ways in which young learners can show empathy towards each other. This week, we added “acts of kindness” as a new technique for solving problems. The students learned how to create cards and pictures of apologies to friends in class. They did an amazing job adding beautiful and thoughtful pictures and words to their cards. They also learned that putting a little extra time into an apology through the act of drawing, or making a card for a friend, makes you feel better too.
Reading:
This week, the students continued to read in small groups with guided reading instruction. It is wonderful to have Mr. Matt with us. He meets with small groups too.
Next week we will start our non-fiction reading unit. We will switch gears and learn more about nonfiction text features through books, magazines and online reading platforms.
Elementary school-age children around Vermont are currently reading the nominated books for the “Red Clover Awards”. Every year, ten books are nominated and the children of Vermont vote for the winner. This year, you can access these books at home too. They are all linked as digital books on our school library page, student portal and here on Sora, an online reading site with a huge collection of ebooks. Perhaps you want to try it at home too? As always, any technical problems arising from this site should be addressed to our fabulous IT HelpDesk staff. They can be contacted from the school website portal too. Thank you.
Writing:
We are wrapping up our unit on opinion writing pieces. This week, the students learned about how writers can create effective conclusions to end their writing pieces by using transition words and restating their original statements. Next week, the students will participate in the district-wide post-assessment for this writing genre. They are amazing authors!
Math:
This week, we continued our small group/workplace explorations of various math concepts. The students worked in small groups to develop a greater understanding of place value, subtraction and measuring. The students were encouraged to make sense of the equations before attempting a calculation strategy. They were also encouraged to build the starting numbers using unifix cubes as a way to make sense. This is particularly important for young mathematicians when using subtraction since numbers sometimes get confused and reversed. The students also discovered that when you do math with large numbers, you can no longer rely on counting by ones, since that strategy is too laborious and inefficient, often leading to errors as well. The students learned that objects and mathematical drawings can represent larger groups of things.
Science:
Harmony House had another 4 Winds class this week. Thank you parent volunteers for making this possible. This week, we learned about how animals survive cold climates, with particular focus on how animals in Vermont survive the winters. The students enjoyed a puppet show and then participated in an experiment and played a matching game.
News and Reminders:
Report cards will go out next Friday, February 3rd. They will be packed inside your child’s backpack. Please read these with your child and celebrate their hard work at school. They are all amazing, kind learners!
Have a great weekend,
Maria
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