Family Newsletter

Happy Holidays everyone!
I hope you are enjoying your holiday break from school and have a chance to spend time together with friends and family.

We had a great last week of school.  The students were busy finishing holiday crafts and projects.  We hope you will like their gifts!

We also performed our reader's theater scripts to our friends in class.  The groups did a great job taking turns reading their lines and reading with expression.  We hope to do this again when school resumes again.  Here are some pictures:

Again, happy holidays!

Best,
Maria

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
We have a busy week before our holiday break.  We hope to wrap up our literacy units and our science unit on light and sound. When we return next year (!), we will start non-fiction reading and writing and a new science unit on earth structures and processes.

Friday, December 20th:
Friday, 12/20/19, is our last day before our holiday break.  We will celebrate with pajama day and a movie.  We will have regular recess on Friday, and children must wear shoes at school, so please make sure your child does not wear PJs with built-in socks as they tend to be uncomfortable in shoes and boots.  No slippers, blankets or stuffed animals either please.  Your child does not have to wear his/her pajamas to school.  Some kids choose to wear hoodies and athletic pants or sweatpants.  Regular clothing is fine too, of course!

This year, Harmony House will show the movie Frozen. The students at WCS will perform the play Frozen in the Spring so we are excited to be able to discuss the similarities and the differences between a movie and a play.

Literacy:
The students are in the midst of practicing their Reader's Theater scripts.  They are doing a great job taking turns reading out loud, with expression and fluency!  They are using props to indicate their different parts and they are all getting more and more comfortable reading out loud.

Our small moment stories are done and we are so excited to get them ready for Reading Restaurant now.  Our last instructional focus was upon sound words and how authors use different text features to show sounds.

We read the book "The Listening Walk" by Paul Showers.  As I read the book to the students, we looked at the pages on the smart board so we could all see how the author presented each sound by changing the font, the direction of the text or the size of the letters.

Then, the students worked in small groups as "Sound Detectives" using other books that also featured various sound words.  They collected words and we wrote them down on our anchor chart.  Look how many we found:

Lastly, the students used sound words in their own stories!  They did an amazing job throughout this process!  They are so kind to each other and show collaboration and patience every day.

We also finished our read aloud about Helen Keller.  The students learned about her incredible life and hardships, growing up blind and deaf.  We also learned that Helen did not give up.  She persevered and her passion for learning has inspired millions across the world.  We were inspired too.

Math:
First grade mathematicians explored more data collection.  The students learned about bra graphs and pictographs while finding ways to calculate "how many more/how many fewer" more efficiently.  They also continued developing a deeper understanding of greater than, less than and equal to, when comparing two numbers.  Lastly, we worked on counting forward and backward between a set of numbers, always crossing decades.  We learned a new math word too; decuple.  Ask your child to explain what this is. Lastly, we had a special buzzy celebration with Ms. Fisher's first grade mathematicians.  We played different math games together.  The students learned more about subitizing on the ipads, and the practiced their addition strategies of 2 or 3 addends playing egghead or bump.

Technology:
Last week was Hour of Code.  Hour of Code is a world-wide celebration of computer technology and coding for children.  We kicked off this celebration with Ms. Wilson, looking at a map to see how many students around the world participate.  Check this out:  It is amazing and we were part of it.  They were so excited to see us on that map too!

We used kodable and code.org
All passwords and usernames were sent home in your child's Friday folder.  I hope you will support this incredible online learning at home.  Coding teaches perseverance, problem-solving and patience.  The students did great and were also motivated by the various levels and stars/points earned.

Have a great day today!

Best,
Maria

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
Last week went by so fast!  I hope you all had a restful and nice Thanksgiving break with your friends and families.
As you saw inside your child's Friday folder this week, your child brought home information about online reading.  Your child got an account for raz-kids or Lexia.  I hope you will follow the instructions on the sheet and set up this online reading program at home.  Your child's online book portal is directly tied to his/her reading needs so all the books accessed can be read by your child successfully.  The children earn points as they read and move ahead.  It is a very engaging and motivating reading program.  We use it at school sometimes, but I also hope your child will read at home as well.  Let me know if you encounter technical problems or have questions about this.
Since we use this reading program at school too, I am asking that you please send in a set of head-phones for your child to use at school.  Thank you.

The week before Thanksgiving, we played Colonial School in our classroom.  The students sat in rows, we created quills, using feathers and tape, and instead of asking for a drink of water, we asked to go to the well!

Reading:
We are working on fluency in reading.  Last week, all the children received reader's theater scripts.  Throughout this unit, the students will learn how to attend to punctuation, read with expression and think about the story to make sense of their reading.  Stay tuned for more information about this. 

Writing:
We took a little break from our small moment stories to write some collaborative letters to our new pen-pals at Wake Robin. The students worked in small groups to compose a reply to the letters we received earlier.  We learned so much about letter writing and about our new friends' diverse backgrounds and experiences.  Ask your child to share with you.

Math:
First grade mathematicians continued working on 10-partners and partners to 20 while developing fluency and confidence. We also continued our work on story problems, a time when mathematicians show their thinking using representations, labels, equations and keys.  Last week, we primarily solved math problems relating to "how many more".  Here is an example:

Mrs McCormack baked 9 muffins.

Ms. Fisher baked 7 muffins.

How many more muffins did Mrs. McCormack bake?

Science:
We continued our scientific investigations into sound this past week too.  We went on a listening walk around the school and explored sound effects in movies.  We learned that sound is sometimes made by vibrations and that it has volume and pitch.  We even learned a new song about sound!

Before our Thanksgiving break, we also learned about pine needles and pine cones in our 4 Winds class. The students looked for attributes and sorted them accordingly.

Ms. Cristina and Ms. Cece's last days:
Ms. Cristina taught us about China and how to write Chinese on her last day.  It was very intersting and fun!  She is applying to graduate school now and she hope to earn her masters/PhD in education.  We wish all the best!

Ms. Cece ended her intership with us as well. We will miss her so much next semester but we learned that she will do her full-time student-teaching with Peter Lake on Synergy so she will remain at ABS! 
In January, we will welcome another student intern.  Her name is Ms. Z and she is currently a student at St. Michael's College.  She will be with us full-time, starting on January 2nd.

Another snow day...

...or should I say, ice day?

Check out the ice at my house!  Ryan and I wanted to share with everyone.  Hope you are all staying safe and warm.  Hopefully you could spend some time outside!

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,
WOW; time flies!  We have only one more week of school before our Thanksgiving break.  I will send home a special "vacation reading log" and some math games for everyone to take home on Friday in case you wish to do some additional learning over the break.  As always, these packets/games are voluntary but we hope your child will at least attempt a few learning activities over vacation.  In case second grade families did not get the updated information last week, I have updated the math wiki with lots of extr math games for you to print and play at home.  They can all be accessed from the wiki (which is linked on the school/team web-site), or here and here for your convenience.

Don't forget our annual Thanksgiving Family Breakfast is on Friday, November 22nd between 7:45-8:30am.  We hope you can come and enjoy some early morning treats and catch up with friends and families before vacation.  Hope to see you then:)

Reading:
Last week, the students continued both independent reading and guided reading work.  We explored character traits more deeply and learned that there is a difference between describing characters "on the outside" (ie what they look like) and what they are like "on the inside".  The students learned that we have to infer meaning to describe the characters by paying attention to, and understanding, what the characters say, do and feel.  We read some books out loud in class to practice finding character traits; then, the students partnered up and worked together to find character traits on their own.  Here is an example of an anchor chart we used in class to help guide us in this work:

Math:
First grade mathematicians were busy last week!  First, they all completed a check-in on number sense, partners to 20, number before and after a number to 20.  Then, they learned some new games relating to comparing numbers using the words "greater than", "less than" or "equal to".  They also learned how to draw these mathematical symbols (>, <, =).  They did a great job!

Technology:
We made another post to SeeSaw.  We shared some work from our Gratitude Journals and the students chose to record or video-tape their writing online.  I will share our published work in a separate email since I will need to share a password/QR code to get access.  We hope you will take the time to log in and comment on your child's or any other students' work in our class.  They are truly digital learners and we are so excited to share this with you all.  Stay tuned....more information will come soon.

Thank you also to those of you who came to our school-wide Harmony-led morning meeting on Friday.  We had a few student representatives sharing their gratitude cards, which we hung on a special Gratitude Tree.  Please stop by the ABS lobby to see this amazing work.  We hope all the classes from ABS will join Harmony in celebrating all the things we have and all the things we should be thankful for every day!

Enjoy this beautiful,sunny winter weather we're having today.  I will go sledding with Ryan soon.  I hope you can enjoy the outdoors as well!

Best,
Maria

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,

It seems like winter is coming early this year!  It is already very cold and it looks like we're getting more snow early this week.  Please remember to send your child to school with hats, gloves, winter boots, snow pants and a warm jacket.  They get cold out there for recess!  Thank you.

Reading and Writing:
Our author study is in full swing!  The children love reading the books by Mo Willems and they learn to use his "author tricks" in their own small moment writing to make their own stories more engaging and interesting.  They are doing a fantastic job!  On Friday, your child brought home a class book containing various reading responses to the books by Mo Willems.  I hope this book will inspire your child to read many more books and share them at home with you.

Math:
First grade mathematicians continued working on number bonds, ten and some more and number sense.  They continued adding decades to their numeral rolls as well as exploring the 100 rekenrek to build numbers as we dig deeper into place value.  As efficient mathematicians, we are trying to group 5s and 10s together as often as possible.

Classroom Celebration:
We filled the classroom buzzy jar again!  We celebrated with a special Friday workshop with boardgames and a special visit from Ms. Pius, our Technology Integration Teacher last year.