Lantern Parade

Dear Families,
Please see the message below from the Williston FAP:

Our students in grades K-2 will be participating in a lantern parade at ABS as part of an Artist in Residence event.  All students in grades K-2 will work with the visiting artist to create a lantern of their own, with an evening lantern parade as a culminating event. Volunteers are needed in your child's classroom in the days leading up to the event, as well as with organization and set-up of the parade. Below is sign-up information. 

Volunteer spots begin on February 1 (mostly for Kindergarten as they will need helpers during the lantern making sessions) and the final event is February 10th. During the parade we will need to be with our students so we are hopeful that we can find adults from within the school for many of those spots.  

We're using VolunteerSpot to organize the sign-ups:

1) Click HERE to see our Sign-up on VolunteerSpot: http://vols.pt/KEAnyL

2) Review the options listed and choose the spot(s) you like.

3) Sign up! It's Easy - you will NOT need to register an account or keep a password on VolunteerSpot.

Note: VolunteerSpot does not share your email address with anyone. If you prefer not to use your email address, please contact Shani Varricchione at shaniv@daletraining.com , and she can sign you up manually.

Thank You!!

Tacky the penguin birthday party

We celebrated the end to our author study with a "Tacky the Penguin Birdday Party" yesterday.  We enjoyed special treats and did some activities together.  Ask your child to tell you more about how we ate Tacky's favorite food and how we danced Tacky's special dance.

Friday workshops

Last week, some student's explored magnets, snap circuits and "robots" in our Friday workshops.  Here are some of their creations.

Science workshops

We are currently learning about sound and light waves in our science workshops on Harmony.  Here are some pictures from our classes on sound, when the children explore sound guitars and string telephones to investigate how sound waves travel.

Donors Choose Project

Dear Families,
Justine Benoit created a page on a web-site called "Donors Choose" for our science projects around nutrition and health.  If you would like to contribute, please visit the link here, or in the sidebar of this blog.  Please consider donating money to our project.  Thank you!

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
This week went by so fast.  Perhaps it felt fast because Monday was a holiday, or perhaps it went by so fast because we are busily learning so many new things in our classroom now.  We are in the midst of new science, reading and writing learning.Please keep reading to find out more, and don't forget to stop by to visit us us if you want to see first hand what we're up to!

Our Learning:
Science: We started our new science unit on Light and Sound Waves last week.  This is a unit which aligns fully with the new science standards and common core expectations for students in first and second grade. Through a series of workshops, the students will explore light and sound waves, while rotating between the classrooms on Harmony.  I will post some pictures of the workshops from my class shortly.  Ask your child to explain how sound travels and how our sound guitars helped us engineer a string telephone that allowed us to communicate over a fairly large distance.

Writing: The students started their "All About" writing pieces last week as well.  We carefully selected our topics and shared ideas with our thinking partners before starting our own writing.  As you might recall, "All About" writing reflects information about a topic that the author already knows well.  In other words, it is not a personal narrative, nor is it a researched piece.  Our students chose to write about soccer, baking, gardening and foorball, to name a few topics.  We learned how to "hook" the reader with interesting beginnings and we also learned how to carefully plan our table of contents.  Throughout this writing unit, the students will also learn about non-fiction elements in their reading.  We will bridge the gap between reading and writing.  My goal is that the students learn to "read as writers" and "write as readers" carefully noticing the connections between the two.  As the students discover non-fiction elements in their books, I hope they will try to represent those same aspects in their own writing.  Some of the things we will explore are table of contents, labels, diagrams, glossaries, and indexes.

Reading: As mentioned above, the students are slowly switching over to more non-fiction reading.  We will still encourage fictional reading, of course, but the students will participate in a series of lessons on non-fiction books, both in guided reading groups, but also as part of our whole class instruction.

Technology: Our class started using KidBlog today.  It is linked on the sidebar on this blog.  It is called McCormack 2015-2016.  The students will need to sign in and use a password to get in.  I will email you the directions for this. The students learned how to access the blog and how to sign in today.  Next week, we will practice commenting on my post.  I hope this will be a tool to use at home as well as a way to connect and stay in touch with your child's learning here at school.  More information will follow as we start using the blog as a communication tool.

Upcoming Events:
We filled the Bee-Hive again! Our next school-wide celebration is on February 29.  We will celebrate with Mis-Match Day!  Come to school in mis-matched clothes, or hair!  Mix plaid and stripes, orange and red, wear your T-shirt on top of your sweatshirt.  Keep it simple and fun.

Report Cards go out on February 29.  They will be inside your child's backpack.

Our 100th Day of school is February 5th.  more information will follow shortly.

Have a great weekend.
Best,

Maria

Keeping our lockers clean and neat

Today, we started a new system to help keep our lockers clean and neat.  As a class, we work together and earn stickers on our chart.  We make sure our belongings are hanging up inside our lockers, backpacks are zipped, and boots placed under our backpack.  We also moved some student's lockers so we use every other one.  Look how well the kids did today.  Let's keep this up.

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
Welcome back and Happy New Year!  We had a great first week together.  The children were so happy to see each other again and they were ready to learn together as well.  We had a busy week, with many new units starting.

Our Learning:
Reading:  Our mini-unit on fluency and reader's theater finished right before the holiday break, so we are back to more traditional guided reading groups, focusing on comprehension skills, vocabulary analysis and reading responses in different ways.  It is great to have Ms. Sullivan with us as the children have another adult to read to when they are not in group with me.  We are slowly switching over to read more non-fiction books as we're preparing for our upcoming non-fiction writing units.  We will start by studying penguins and learn about various non-fiction writing/reading elements, such as glossaries, charts, and labels, to name a few.  Through the study of penguins, we will compare fictional books and non-fictional books.  If you recall, we studied Helen Lester, the author of the Tacky books before the holidays, and now we will compare what we learned with the new information we will gather through our new penguin mini-unit.  This week, I also had a substitute teacher for a couple of days as I started our reading assessments already.  Our report cards will go out on January 29th, not the 22nd as indicated earlier.

Writing:  The students will begin their new "All About" writing pieces this upcoming week.  Last week, we explored the elements of such writing and talked to partners about possible topics.  "All About" writing is centered around things the students already know well.  It does not require research and the students know the topics well enough to finish several pages.  Stay tuned for more information as these writing pieces come together.

Science: Our new team-wide science unit will start next week.  The students on Harmony will study "Light and Sound Waves."  They will, as in the past, participate in a series of workshops between the classrooms on out team, while learning about light and sound waves.  We also started some additional scientific explorations last week relating to sound, in particular and those investigations will continue in the next few weeks as well.

Math: First grade mathematicians continued working on number sense and problem-solving strategies through various manipulatives and games.  We continued using our number line and exploring numbers through different expressions and equations.  Next week, the students will continue working on composing and de-composing numbers while thinking about the number sequence.  All first grade math students should have brought home a clock they made in class.  We learned how to tell time to the hour and half hour, and expressing that with an analogue clock and a digital clock.  Please practice at home too!

Upcoming Events and Reminders:
Our field-trip to the Flynn Theater has been cancelled.  We have been re-scheduled for May 16th.  I will send our reminders and more information as the date approaches.

There will be no school on January 18th (Martin Luther Kind Day)

Please make sure your child comes to school wearing a winter coat, hat, gloves/mittens and boots every day.  If the weather allows, we will go outside for recess every day.  If there is snow on the ground, your child also needs snow-pants in order to play on the hill/field.  Thank you!

Best,
Maria