Pictures from our week together

 Celebrating the 100th day of school, Friendship and our Penpals:

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week, Ms. Nicole and Ms. Saylor joined our class for some specific work around strategies when we experience strong emotions and are no longer available for active learning.  We brainstormed strategies to help us match our emotions to the size of the problem.  We acted out different scenarios when we can use them.  We also practiced how we can help our friends in situations when small problems are perceived as bigger problems.  The students did a great job showing empathy and compassion to each other.  What a terrific group of kids we have!

• We also revisited our “Active Listening Norms” for our classroom.  We practiced using eyes on the speaker, ears listening, bodies still and voices off.  We practiced this when our friends/peers speak too.

Reading:

• We continued meeting in our new guided reading groups this week.  All students have new “just right” books.  They are encouraged to pack new books every Tuesday to take home to read.  I hope you read them together at home.

• We also continued reading on iReady this week.  All students accessed their personalized reading platforms online.  This is another great tool for at-home reading.

• We continued reading biographies in class.  This week, we learned about Katherine Johnson, a mathematician whose work helped with spaceflights.  We also learned about George Washington Carver, an American inventor who created over 300 uses for peanuts.  We also learned about Mae C. Jemison, the first black woman in space.  All of these individuals are important to our history, and all of them showed tremendous grit, determination, perseverance, and creativity in all that they did.  We can all learn so much from them.

   

Writing:

• The students finished their opinion pieces this week.  I am so proud of their hard work throughout this writing unit.  We will share these writing pieces with you all at a later date.  When we return from our Winter Break, we will start our animal research unit.  More information will follow.

• We started writing letters to our new penpals in Mrs. Benoit’s class.  Each student has been matched up with a buddy from Mrs. Benoit’s class.  We will periodically write letters to each other.  This week, the students wrote their first letter, introducing themselves and shared something unique about themselves.  They also asked their new friend a question.  We decorated the letters to reflect Valentine’s Day colors and themes.  We are so excited to have new friends to connect with!  We exchanged these letters during our Friday Workshop time, a time when we also did “Friendship Booklets” based upon a read aloud by Ms. Nicole.  Ask your child to explain what we wrote inside these “Friendship Booklets”.

First Grade Math:

• We continued our work on balancing equations and practicing concepts of equality.  We used unifix cubes and ten-frames to help us understand our expressions and, as always, making sense of the numbers shown.  We played multiple partner games to apply our knowledge and understanding.  

• We also continued practicing counting forward and backwards from any number.  We also practiced counting forward from any number while adding ten each time.  This is called “off-decade counting”.  We used rekenreks to help us see the increase in the groups of ten as we counted together.

News and Reminders:

• We have noticed that many children experience problems with the microphone and the volume during our google meets on Wednesdays.  They have un-muted themselves but we cannot hear them online.  This can most likely be fixed by completely shutting down the chromebook and updating it.  A student suggested that this could be something you do on a weekly basis on our remote learning days!  What a great idea.  I hope you get into the habit of updating your child’s chromebook too since it is very disappointing to your child when he/she cannot share online!  Thank you.

• There is no school next week due to our February Winter Break.  School resumes on Monday, March 1st.

• Here's a link to this week's School Bell 

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Pictures from this week

 Another amazing read aloud in the library with Mrs. Clopton.  We are in the midst of reading all the Red Clover Nominated Books:

Valentine's Day workshops and celebration:

Authors' Cafe: Sharing our writing pieces and celebrating our combined efforts and progress as authors!

Math Games with partners: Ordering Numerals and Comparing Mathematical Expressions

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• We focused our work on identifying emotions this week.  We practiced labeling them, while recognizing that we can experience conflicting emotions at the same time.  Students were encouraged to practice active mindfulness, independently choosing between the different strategies we have practiced since the beginning of the school year.  The students choose between desk rests, mindful breathing or using our calming corner to name a few strategies.

• We also started discussing the differences between small and big problems.  We also discussed how we can help ourselves (and each other) match our reactions to the size of the problem.  Small problems have small reactions.  Big problems sometimes have bigger reactions.  Learning how to anticipate other people’s reactions, by carefully paying attention to their facial expressions, tone of voice and body language help us deal with these situations.

Reading:

• We continued reading many different books about interesting and important people in history as part of our Black History Month focus and mini-unit on biographies.  We learned more about Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, George Washington, the Wright Brothers and Ruby Bridges.  We also read the Red Clover nominated book “The Undefeated” by Kwame Alexander with Cara Clopton. This book is an illustrated poem, which celebrates courageous and sometimes forgotten leaders, athletes, authors and artists from Black History.

Writing:

• The students continued writing their opinion pieces this week.  They chose their own topics.  Some students chose to write about their favorite singers or activities, while others chose to write about why we need longer recess or lunch!  We started celebrating our progress as writers together in an “Authors’ cafe”.  An “Authors’ cafe” is a time when the students take turns sharing their written pieces, even if they are not done.  The audience carefully listens and provides kind and thoughtful feedback and compliments afterwards.  We also clap for each other!   What a fantastic group of authors!

First Grade Math:

• We continued exploring the concept of equality this week, looking at different equations and expressions.  We even used body movements to help us understand equality.  We used the language “the same as” and “the same amount” to help reinforce our mathematical understanding.

• We used math partners in class.  We took turns playing games with our new ordering cards.  We compared numbers drawn by using “greater than”, “less than” and “equal to” to share our understanding with each other.

• We also played a game called “Is it Equal?” with our new math partners.  Ask your child to explain this engaging game.

News and Reminders:

• We have a new intern from college in our classroom.  Mr. Alex joined our room this week.  He will be with us on Tuesdays and Thursdays full-time.  Welcome Mr. Alex!  We are so excited to have you in our room with us.

• For the month of February, your child is encouraged to choose between three reading responses for his/her weekly reading.  Your child can choose to write about different story elements, sequence the events in a favorite book, or share interesting facts learned.  I look forward to reading these responses on Thursdays.  Thank you for sending them in!

• Please remember that our google meet links have changed.  This a school-wide change to ensure online safety of all students.  Please access our online morning meetings from the remote learning schedules.  This remote learning schedule is updated and shared weekly.  Since we now use a Google Meet Nickname Code, your child needs to type in absmccormack  It is a good idea to write this down on a piece of paper and tape it on to your child’s chromebook to help with the spelling.  Otherwise, it is also entered in the weekly remote learning schedule.

• Our Essential Arts has changed.  For the next few weeks, we will have PE on Mondays and Tuesdays and Enrichment on Thursdays and Fridays.  Please make sure your child comes to school with weather-appropriate gear as Ms. Porter sometimes will take the children outside for PE.  Thank you! Don’t forget to pack hats and mittens.  It is cold outside!

• Please make sure your child’s chromebook is fully charged for our weekly in-person school days.  For the month of February, we will use it almost daily while at school.  Thank you for supporting your child’s learning at school.

• Here's a link to this week's Bell

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Pictures from our week at school

 

Word of the Week with Ms. Patti:  Transportation

Close Gap: Learning about emotions together:

Friday Workshops: Creating Valentine's Day Bags

Recess Fun in the snow:

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• We started using a program called “Close Gap” at ABS this week.  This is a child-centered program that attempts to create opportunities to effectively capture and respond to children’s emotional well-being.  It is concrete and easily accessible to children because it provides visual examples of one’s emotions.  Close Gap allows children to learn how to identify emotions and validates the various ranges of feelings that we all go through as humans every day.  We discovered, among other things, that we have many similarities and that we experience many conflicting emotions at the same time.  This approach will align nicely with the previous work we have done this year around mindfulness and the strategies we can do to help ourselves be attentive learners.

Reading:

• This week, the students accessed the personalized learning programs on iReady.  We will continue next week, and I highly recommend this as another option for at-home reading.  Each reading lesson on iReady is carefully catered towards your child’s reading profile as assessed recently.  Please see separate email for usernames and passwords.

• This week the students also accessed an online reading platform called Pebblego    Pebblego has numerous books in different genres online.  Students can listen to the books, or choose to read them.  Pebblego also has quizzes and activities to go along with the books.  This week, we listened to, and read, biographies.  We learned about interesting people in history and in current events to better understand our world while also practicing reading skills and perseverance.  Please see previous email about usernames and passwords to access this from home.  Thank you.

• Our guided reading groups shifted this week.  Periodically, our groups change to optimize learning outcomes and allow for new friendships and connections.  We are excited to read and learn with new peers from our class!

• For the month of February, your child is encouraged to choose between three reading responses for his/her weekly reading.  Your child can choose to write about different story elements, sequence the events in a favorite book, or share interesting facts learned.  I look forward to reading these responses on Thursdays.  Thank you for sending them in!

Writing:

• We are still in the midst of our opinion writing unit.  This week, we continued practicing using transition words.  We also practiced writing a catchy conclusion to wrap up our entire writing piece.
  
  

First Grade Math:

• In math, we are learning about equality. This week, the students began working on equations focusing on the meaning of the equal sign.  We learned that the equal sign means “the same amount as”.  Equality in first grade can be explained as looking at two different mathematical expressions and deciding if they are equal in terms of quantity.  In other words, the equation 8=6+2 is equal, but the equation 5+2=9-4 is not.  We use unifix cubes and rekenreks to visualize these concepts.  We also rely on sense-making, asking ourselves “Does this make sense?”  Mathematicians are always curious and ask themselves if a particular concept/idea makes sense. In the next few weeks, the students will learn how to determine if an equation is true or false.  We will also explore how we can make it true, if it is false and use our mathematical reasoning to explain why.

• We also learned about decuples this week.  Decuples are ten times the number of something.  We played a game called Ski Race practicing this using a decuple spinner; then, we had to find the number just before to move along the ski race.  This will be our next week’s math game for Wednesday’s remote learning day.  

• First grade mathematicians also started working on building their conceptual understanding of counting by 10s off decade.  We started asking questions such as “What is 10 more than 24?” or “What is 10 less than 89?”  We will use a 100 rekenrek to do this work as well as popsicle sticks to show the groups of 10s and 1s.

   

Technology:

• Please remember that our google meet links have changed.  This a school-wide change request to ensure the online safety of all students.  Please access our online morning meetings from the remote learning schedules.  This remote learning schedule is updated and shared weekly.  Since we now use a Google Meet Nickname Code, your child needs to type in absmccormack

• It is a good idea to write this down on a piece of paper and tape it on to your child’s chromebook to help with the spelling.  Otherwise, it is also entered in the weekly remote learning schedule.

News and Reminders:

• Our Essential Arts changed again.  For the next few weeks, we will have PE on Mondays and Tuesdays and Enrichment on Thursdays and Fridays.  Please make sure your child comes to school with weather-appropriate gear as Ms. Porter sometimes will take the children outside for PE.  Thank you!

• Please make sure your child’s chromebook is fully charged for our weekly in-person school days.  For the month of February, we will use it almost daily while at school.  Thank you for supporting your child’s learning at school.

• Here is the link to this week's School Bell.

Have a great weekend,

Maria