Weekly update

Dear families,
We had another busy week in our classroom.
We filled our buzzy-jar again.  The students continues to demonstrate that they understand what it means to be safe, kind and responsible here at ABS.  This time, the students wanted to have lunch in the classroom.  We had so much fun eating together and sharing stories.  See the pictures below.
This week, we also had our first 4WInds class.  We learned about the sun.  We learned that we need the sun for heat and light.  We also learned that the earth rotates around the sun every day, every year. We used sidewalk chalk to draw our shadows and then watched how our shadows moved as the earth had rotated more.  We also used a sun-heated oven to melt chocolate chips.  Fun, yummy and informative.  Thank you parents for volunteering for these terrific classes.
In writing this week, the students continued working on creating different kinds of stories.  We started exploring small moment personal narratives.  The students writes about something that they have experienced and stretch it out. They learned to tell their stories over 3 fingers, with a clear beginning, middle and end.
In reading, the students continued work in their guided reading groups.  Thank you for reading with your child every week and for bringing back our book bags on time.  Other students at our school use these books as well, so we want to return them on time.  Thanks.
In math, first grade mathematicians explored chunking their numbers in groups of 10.  We used rekenreks, 10frames and unifix cubes to help us create number sentences of 10 and some more.  Please ask your child to use his/her math hands to show you a number between 10 and 20.  Ask your child to explain different strategies for solving addition problems, such as 4+5 or 12+3.

Have a great day tomorrow and a terrific weekend.

Maria

Friday workshops

As you might recall, we have Friday workshops on Team Harmony. This is a time for the students to engage in learning opportunities in mixed with friends from all four classrooms on our teams. The students sign up for these workshops every week.  This week, I offered a workshop on recycled art; finding creative ways to reuse old and discarded materials in art.  The students had access tools paper tubes, pipe cleaners and old computer parts among other things. Here are some pictures.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is hard to believe but another week is almost done!  Thank you to those of you who attended Curriculum Night last night.  I hope our information regarding our curricular programs was helpful and informative.  For those of you who could not attend, I assure you that my blog posts include information about our curriculum as I share the learning we do on our team.  If you are interested you can also visit our Family Resource Page on our team web-site to access online resources of the programs we use at ABS.  Thank you.
This week in reader's workshop, the students continued to read independently and in small guided reading groups. Books went home in our students book bags again on Monday.  We hope to have those back on Thursdays along with the red homework folder.  If your child wants an additional day to complete reading or math homework, that is fine too.  Please return the two items by Friday so we can get ready and pack up for the next week's book selection.  I hope your child feels more confident reading and writing at home.  I appreciate your thoughtful comments and observations.  They are very helpful to me.  Thank you.  Let's keep the conversation going!
In reading this week, the students also learned more about stamina.  This is a familiar topic to most students.  Stamina in reading means the ability and willingness to read independently for longer periods of time.  In our classroom, we discussed what we can do to help develop reading stamina.  Some of the things we explored were reading a variety of just right books, partner read, taking notes on post-it notes or index cards, doing word hunts/graphs and setting daily personal goals for reading.  The students do a fantastic job reading!  It is clear they love reader's workshop!
In writing this week, the students continued to create stories of different nature.  We read the book "Wemberly Worried" by Kevin Henkes and talked about how we can create stories about strong feeling we have had.  The students loved this idea.  Some students decided to write stories of the first time the rode a bike and felt very happy, while others choose stories about feelings of nervousness, such as the first day of school or losing a first tooth.  Next week, we will explore stories about people we admire and then learn about the publishing process.
Next week, we will begin sharing in our classroom.  I sent home a sharing schedule in your child's Thursday folder.  We rotate through the kids every two weeks.  This means that approximately two students share each day.  Next week will be week 1 and then the following week will be week 2 and so on.  If this sounds confusing, please do not worry.  We keep track of our schedule in class and the students know when they share.  Sharing is an opportunity for us to get to know each other better and it is not supposed to be a high stress situation for your child.  If he/she feels worried or anxious about sharing, let me know. We share in our morning meeting.  Some children like to bring in objects or pictures from home to share, and that is great, but it is equally fine to choose to read a book from your book box that you really like.  Last year, for example, the children loved to share their own written pieces from class.  I encourage this type of sharing as we emphasize the learning we do together rather than toys and video-games.  Thank you for encouraging your child to share stories and experiences rather than objects!

I hope you have a great day tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.
Regards,
Maria

School-wide celebration

We filled the bee-hive already at ABS! We celebrated with an assembly in the gym where we created a large school-wide dot in honor of International Dot Day and sand the song "Do the honey bee dance" together.  Let's continue being safe, kind and responsible!

International Dot Day

We celebrated International Dot Day on Monday with our school.  International Dot Day was created by the author and illustrator Peter Reynolds and based on his widely successful book "The Dot".  The book tells the story of Vashti, who gains the confidence to make her mark in the world and trust her own abilities.  It is a very inspiring book.  We went to the library smartboard and read the book together with our learning buddies in Ms. Davison's Kindergarten class.  We also solved many interactive and collaborative projects based upon the book together.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We have almost finished another week of learning in our classroom and we have so much to share with you this week.
Before I share, I want to remind all parents that our ABS Curriculum Night is scheduled for the 18th of September at 6:30pm.  We hope you can join the teachers in Team Harmony and learn about our year-long curricular goals, units of study and academic programs.  Thank you.
Picture Day is also coming up soon.  It is scheduled for the 17th of September.  Please return your child's picture order form if you are interested in individual portraits.  Thank you.
This week, the students continued learning about the writing process in our writer's workshop classes.  We learned that good authors always re-read their own writing before adding more details to the words or the pictures.  We also learned that good authors sometimes put an "old" piece aside and start a new one.  We continued adding topics and possible story-ideas to our lists inside our writing folders.  We explored various topics through our read alouds.  For example, we read a non-fiction book about kittens and and we also read several fictional stories that symbolized personal narratives and small moment stories.  In class, the students are still exploring various writing styles.  Next week, we will learn more about the editing/revision stages and finally the publishing stage.
In reading, the students continued working on finding "just right" books for their book boxes and for home in our library.  The students are encouraged to think about what makes a successful reading experience.  Sometimes, we might want to look at only the pictures, but sometimes we need to read the book so knowing hoe to select a "just right" book will help us feel successful as readers.  Please ask your child about the books he/she is taking home from the library.  Next week, I will ask the students to bring one "Just right" book and one choice book.  This week, many students brought two choice books.  It is a perfect opportunity to have this conversation with your child.  Thank you for supporting independence in reading!
We continued our scientific explorations this week.  We studied sunflowers this week.  We read a book about the stages of a sunflower's life cycle and then explored the flower and the seed.  We used our science journals and drew pictures and wrote words about what we discovered.  The students are encouraged to use their senses when writing/drawing about science.  We ended our science inquiry with planting a seed in soil.  The children planted a seed each, which they took home today.  I realize this is late in the season and I told the children that it is probably too late to plant these sunflower seeds outside, but we decided that perhaps we have enough sunlight to keep it inside and watch it grow.  Thank you for helping our scientists continue to watch this process.  We also collected seeds from a sunflower that was donated to the classroom by Jaden.  We filled 4 ziplock bags!!!  We will save these for the Spring, when we will pot them again and plant them outside.  We will also estimate and count how many seeds we found inside just one sunflower.  Thank you Jaden!

This week, the students and I also finished our Classroom Contract. We discussed what it means to be safe, kind and responsible at our school and we wrote our ideas down on a big contract for our year together.  We all signed it.  Here is a picture.

Lastly, we created our big murtal symbolizing our theme for the year, "Traveling around the world-join our Friend-SHIP."  We will learn about different cultures and languages all around the world through classroom visits, books, and technology. We started using twitter a few days ago, but will slowly start using it more.  If you wish to follow us, our name is @McCormackPals.  We will also continue to learn Spanish from Mrs. D and connect with classrooms around the world through other means.  If you wish to share something from another culture with us, please let us know.  We would love to have you visit us!  Thank you.

Have a great rest of the week and weekend.  Thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.

Best,
Maria

Learning Spanish from Mrs. D

We are so fortunate to have Mrs D on our team.  She helps us every day in math and literacy.  She also visits our class room to teach us Spanish.  She lived in South America for many years and she loves to share her knowledge and experiences with us.  Thank you,Mrs. D.  Today, the students learned how to say hello in Spanish and how to count to 10.  Her visits to our classroom are part of a broader theme entitled Traveling Around the World, when we connect with people and classrooms through various means and technological tools.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is hard to believe but we have almost finished our 2nd week of school.  It feels like fall now too with cooler temperatures outside.  Thank you for sending your child to school with long-sleeved jackets or sweatshirts.  We have recess every day and the cooler temperatures and winds chill.

In writer's workshop, the students started to decorate their writing folders. We keep our writing inside these folders until we are ready to publish our pieces.  We follow a workshop model at ABS and the students learn that writing is a process, a process that begins with an idea.  This idea is then carefully planned out and put into words and pictures.  After the initial stages of our writing, the students re-read their own writing pieces and make revisions and edits their pieces.  Sometimes we also consult with our editor partners who help us make our pieces even better.  After the students have completed these steps, they choose a piece to publish.  This process takes time to learn and we will explore this over the next few weeks.  This week, the students and I discussed how we come up with interesting ideas for writing.  We brainstormed writing topics together and the students also received a list of these topics that they keep inside their folders for future use.  We will add to this list as our topics as authors grow.  We read the book "Library Mouse" by D. Kirk.  We learned that we are all authors.  We also learned that good authors write about things they know.  So, this week we started writing stories about things we already know something about.  For example, some students are writing stories about their pets or a special trip they took this summer.  Other students are writing books about a sport they play or special hobbies they have.  We cannot wait to share these with you later.   
In reading, we started reading groups this week.  We call our guided reading groups Book Clubs.  On Monday, your child will bring home his/her Book Bag for the first time.  Your child will also bring home his/her Homework folder.  Team Harmony teachers are asking students to read and write every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  We also hope this will not take more than 20 minutes.  In reading this week, the students and I started discussing what a "Just Right" book is.  We explored different strategies for figuring this out, such as looking at the cover, looking at the words and reading some of the words.  We also learned that if we cannot read five or more words on a page, that book might not be a "just right" book for us.  We also discussed that our needs as readers are different.  Sometimes we might want to look at pictures to help us in another subject, and sometimes a "just right" book might be different because we already know about that particular topic. When you read with your child at home, please engage in this conversation.  Ask your child why the book he/she took home is a "just right" book, or not.  Learning how to pick good books help us make sense of reading; and after all, reading must make sense to us.  If you have any questions about homework, reading logs or books, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Today, your child brought home information about our school picture day.  Please read it carefully and return it to school if you are interested in having pictures taken.  Thank you.
Today, some children also brought home a crayon cupcake (our walkers and Part 2 students forgot to get theirs so they will get them tomorrow).  This cupcake is not for eating, of course, but rather for coloring.  We are doing a year-long project on recycling, entitled "Recycling build character".  We are collecting soda and water bottle caps in our classroom, old crayons and marker caps.  Some children have already brought in extras from home.  Thank you.  My daughter Emilie and I baked the old crayon pieces over the weekend and gave the students their crayon cupcakes today.  If you are interested in doing this at home, you can easily google it, but we broke the crayons into small pieces, took the papers off and put them into mini-cupcakes.  We baked the crayons for 10-15 minutes at 250 degrees.  Have fun and be creative with your shapes!!  I look forward to hearing about these projects at home!
We have filled our Buzzy Jar twice already!  The students are showing safe, kind and responsible behavior every day and I am so proud of them!  Last week, we had a dance party/sing-a-long in our classroom.  If you wish to listen to some of our favorite songs at home, I have listed the on our wiki, under "Songs".  It can also be accessed here.
Lastly, I wanted to share with you that we have already had a student reporter in the Bluie & Gold, our school newspaper.  The Blue & Gold is linked on the school web-site, but it can also be accessed in this blog's sidebar.  Click here if you wish to read what the students (and teachers) said about coming back to school. 
Have a great rest of the week and weekend.

Maria

Using ipads in writer's workshop

The students have learned about the importance of adding details to our pictures when we are writing a story.  Most of the time, the pictures match the words,but sometimes the pictures add details to the story and tell more about the events, the characters or the setting.  We read the books The crayonbox that talked by Shane DeRolf and My crayon talk by Patricia Hubbard.  Using iPads, the students explored drawing pictures using only one cool or before recreating the same picture using many different colors.  Guess which picture we liked better?  We will share some of our creations later, so stay tuned.

Guest reader

We had a very special guest reader join our class on Friday.  Mr. Nardelli, principal of WCS and ABS, joined our class and read a book about a little boy who discovers that he indeed has a very special talent; he is very good at remembering and listening.  At first he did not know that he had this talent, but with the help of his teacher and friends, he discovered that he is talented too.  The students were quick to make connections to our classroom because we have talked about our own unique skills and talents.  We have played games to get to know each other and we have read many other books about our own unique "selves".

Exloring math

We explored with pattern blocks and unifix cubes in our math class last week.  The students created patterns with our blocks.  Some students created repeating pattern, using the same colors or shapes several times. Other students discovered that larger shapes are made up by smaller shapes.  Using our unifix cubes, the students practiced counting by 5s and 10s. 
Every day we record how many days we have been in school and do various mathematical activities with that number, such as write it in tally marks and in a number sentence.  We also record the number of days on our 100 grid. 

Our Self-portraits

Here is a movie of our self-portraits.  We read the books I'm gonna like me by Jamie Lee Curtis and I like me by Nancy Carlson and discussed what it means to have confidence and self-esteem.  Then we worked on our own unique self-portraits.  We are also adding other smaller pictures describing who we are and what we like.  Please visit our classroom to learn more about us and see our completed pictures.