Building parts of the number 5 using 10 frames and rekenreks:

Collecting leaves outside to celebrate the arrival of Fall:

Reading in our classroom:

Our new sight word wall to help us spell and read:

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• We had a great week together.  It was wonderful to be back in-person again.  We revisited “old” routines and norms and reviewed what our learning community represents.  Our classroom contract and self-portraits are hanging up in our kiva, proudly displaying what it means to be safe, kind and responsible on Harmony.

• We also completed our “Hopes & Dreams” project this week.  The students made paper bees and wrote about their hopes and dreams for this school year.  Our bees are currently hanging above our lockers along with bees made by Ms. Fisher’s class.  The children are so proud of their creations.

• We learned about “active listening” this week as well.  Active listening is when we listen with our whole bodies and when we can fully understand what is being said.  We listen actively by looking at the speaker, having calm bodies and quiet voices.  We practiced “re-voicing” what the speaker said after the speaker had finished.  Re-voicing is a powerful way to engage young learners in the learning process as it encourages engagement and accountability.  Students took turns sharing their “Me Bags” and their friends re-voiced what they learned from their friends.  It was so fun.  We discovered that we have so many things in common with our friends in class!  Listening to learn is important in first grade as we do a lot of listening to each other.  It is as important to listen to our friends when they share their thinking and understanding as it is to listen to adults and teachers.  We will continue work on this next week when we will learn about strategies to use when it is particularly hard to listen to learn.

• We continued our mini-unit “All About Me” this week as well.  We completed a collaborative activity to get to know each other based around the Olympic flag.  Each circle of the Olympic flag represented a different aspect of the students’ favorite things.  Ask your child to explain more and look for these flags in your child’s Home Folder.

• We filled our classroom buzzy jar again for being safe, kind and responsible.  This time, the students voted to have extra time to play different games in our classroom.

Literacy:

• We continued to build stamina in writer’s and reader’s workshop this week.  We set goals prior to working and tracked our level of active engagement as a class.  We are working effectively for longer periods of time every day!  I am so proud of this hard-working class!

• The students earned new and effective word study activities this week too.  We played games around rhyming and word endings, along with activities to promote the development of sight word automaticity and fluency.  More to come on this in the weeks to come as our Fundations classes start in full.

• We also began our reading assessments.  We use the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessments at ABS, which assesses reading comprehension, fluency and accuracy.  These assessments will be completed next week and shared with families during our conferences later this fall (see below for more information).

• Please continue to read with, and to, your child daily.  Continued and consistent exposure to print helps children develop the solid foundational skills required for reading success. Thank you.

Fundations:

• Fundations classes will start on Monday next week.  Fundations is the curricular program we use at ABS. It is a comprehensive program that encompasses phonics, phonological awareness and word-level skills and strategies as young students learn to read and write. It is multi-sensory and highly engaging.  You can learn more about it here

• I will teach first grade Fundations this year and thus stay with the children.  We will remain in our classroom together. This is a change from what was initially shared with you during our summer conferences.  We have made this change in an effort to reduce transitions and exposure to Covid. I am really excited to teach Fundations to this awesome group of kids!  

First Grade Math:

• First grade mathematicians focused on composing and decomposing numbers this week through a series of hands-on learning activities.  They used rekenreks and magnetic 10 frames to show different parts to numbers to 10, while also writing equations to match.  We learned how to accurately “count on” from the larger number to find the missing addend.

• Today was the 20th day of school.  We celebrated this special day by counting and grouping objects of 20. Instead of counting these objects by ones, the students were encouraged to group them into groups of 5s and 10s, which helps young mathematicians see larger numbers more accurately and efficiently.

• The students also counted larger groups of objects in class.  They were handed bags of small plastic sticks and were challenged to count how many sticks were in each bag.  They came up with many, creative ideas and they worked beautifully together as they shared strategies.  We discovered that grouping these sticks into smaller groups helped us reach a more accurate result and it also helped us remember better!  Perhaps your child wishes to do this at home as well?  Take a small ziplock bag filled to dry, uncooked macaroni, or cheerios, and see how your child will count the objects inside.  How can they do it without relying on counting by ones?  Is it easier to count/group into 5s or 10s and then count the number of groups?  How do we count by ones accurately?  Should we move each object over slightly to ensure the object is not counted twice by accident?

Science:

• We celebrated the first day of Fall this week. We went outside to collect leaves, which are now drying in our classroom for art projects next week.  We also read an interactive book about fall leaves, followed by a water color art project.  The results were beautiful.  Some students will take these home.  Some students chose to keep them in the classroom and will keep them in our scrapbooks.  These scrapbooks will be shared with families at the end of the school year when they come home.

Update from UVM and Ms. Emily:

• As part of Ms. Emily’s teacher licensing requirements for the state of Vermont, she must be observed by her professor several times during the semester while teaching different lessons.  Due to Covid, we are hoping to achieve this requirement without having the professor come in person to our school.  Instead, UVM has a video-recording option instead.  In your child’s Home Folder today is a permission slip for you to fill out to give permission to Ms. Emily to video-record her lessons.  These recordings will strictly be used for her own licensing portfolio requirements and only viewed by her and the professor.  Please sign and return these permission slips as soon as possible.  Thank you.

News and Reminders:

• Please place the Technology letter with passwords/QR Codes etc in a safe place at home.  This is in the event of another possible remote learning situation.  Your child will need these codes in order to access our online learning then.  Thank you.

• Ms. Emily will be my substitute teacher when I administer the reading and math assessments next week.  Thank you Ms. Emily!

• ABS Curriculum Night: Administrators have cancelled in-person Curriculum Night. We will be sending out more information in coming weeks regarding a digital presentation the Harmony teachers will share via Google Slides.

• Arrival & Dismissal Procedures: Administrators seeing a few things that we need to fix up for our arrival and dismissal procedures to make them run safely and efficiently. 

• Please stay in your vehicle and avoid extended chats with the adults as we are trying to efficiently move people through the pick up line.  Please do not leave your car unattended in the lane at any time. We also prefer you NOT park your vehicle to come and retrieve your child.  Our way of ensuring your child gets to you safely is that exchange at your vehicle for the adult to see.

• Please pull all the way up to the curb for pick up as others are waiting to move up behind you.

• Avoid "double-parking"/parking diagonally 

• We appreciate all you can do to follow these guidelines to ensure a safe and smooth transition in and out of school!

• Changes in dismissal plans: If you ever have changes to the dismissal plans you shared with the school, please email absinformation@cvsdvt.org and me at mmccormack@cvsdvt.org.

• Ms. Emily will conduct her solo weeks (a time when she acts as the lead teacher and I am in a supporting role) the first two weeks of November.  I will host conferences during this time.  These conferences will be remote.  I will share links and more information as we approach this time.  Thank you.

• It is quite chilly in the mornings now.  Please make sure your child comes to school with layers as morning outside time sometimes feels cold.  Thank you.

• Please make sure your child has a water bottle every day.  Thank you.

• Please return the writing assignment by next Friday.  This will help your child write at school and know how to spell the names of different family members correctly.  Thank you.

• Here is this week’s School Bell.

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

I am hopeful our class will be able to return to in-person learning in full next week.  Thank you for your patience, flexibility and compassion during these last two weeks as we navigated the consequences of the covid virus and its effects on our learning community together.

As we welcome Fall next week, please send your child to school with weather appropriate clothing.  We will add additional times for outdoor activities and scheduled sessions, which means that your child will need to be prepared for significant fluctuations in the weather.  Layers always work best!  Please send in extra socks and clothing too for your child’s locker, if you did not already do so.

Next week, our weekly schedule will also change slightly as our class will start to have PE with Mrs. Benoit’s class.  We will therefore have PE on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This means other EA classes will have to be moved as well.  Our new weekly rotation will therefore be as follows:

Monday-Enrichment

Tuesday-PE

Wednesday-Art

Thursday-PE

Friday-Music

I will send home a new paper version of our weekly schedule in your child’s Home Folder next Friday.  Our library exchange time will remain on Tuesdays.

Letter from Ms. Beeken, our Art Teacher:

Dear Families,

I am looking forward to this year in art with your children. If you have not already sent a smock to school with your child, please consider a large (over-the-head) short sleeved t-shirt that can be kept at school throughout the year. Long sleeves hinder movement and may need to be cut. Your child’s name in permanent marker on the front of the shirt is very helpful and if your artist is so inclined, personalizing t-shirts with art can be fun. In class, we explore many creative ideas and often messy materials and it’s important that your artist feels free to do this without worrying about clothing. Thank you for your support.

Please feel free to call me with questions. I hope that your child has an enjoyable and creative year!

Sara Beeken, Art 

Allen Brook School, K-2 

WCS, Mosaic 3-4

871-6281

sbeeken@cvsdvt.org:

News and Reminders:

• We have ABS School Picture Day on September 22nd.  If you did not return your photo order form, please do so as soon as you are able.  If your child will be out on the 22nd, please contact the front office regarding other opportunities to have your child’s picture taken.  In the past, the photographer always offers a “re-take” day.

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Remote Learning Link

 Here is the link for the remote learning day.

Remote Learning Schedule

 Here is the link for this week's remote learning schedule. Let me know if you encounter any problems with the links.  Thank you.

Pictures from our week together

 Playing with our plastic animals outside.

Drawing habitats for our plastic animals:

Collecting objects in nature to count and do math:

Sharing our books with our reading partners:

Using math tools to show our math thinking:

Creating circles together to show our expanding friendship:

Filling up our class buzzy jar:

Reading together:

Read alouds together outside in nature:

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• We continued to build a positive learning community filled with trust, friendship and belonging this week.  We played games together in our classroom to get to know each other better and we also partnered up to share our thinking and ideas about a variety of topics and tasks, such as creating flags for our table groups, sharing books and math thinking.

•  We also participated in multiple team-building games with our buddies in Mrs. Benoit’s second grade class.  For example, we learned about flags and why countries have flags as part of our unit on the world and the Olympics.  The students worked with their second grade buddy to make a collaborative flag, reflecting themselves as part of our community-building and efforts to get to know each other better. 

• We also continued practicing daily mindfulness in our class. The students are learning the importance of calming themselves down to be ready to learn and take academic risks.  Throughout the school year, we will explore various strategies together.  As of now, the students are practicing mindfulness by listening to calming music, resting by their desks, drawing or using playdough.  They have also learned the belly breathing technique. We had the opportunity to go outside to practice some yoga as well.  We did the tree pose and something called eagle arms!  The kids love animals and nature.  We also took many deep breaths and simply listened attentively to the sounds of nature.  I am sure your child would be happy to teach you some of these new strategies at home too!

Reading:

• First grade readers practiced independent reading this week.  We learned what the reader's workshop “looks like” and “sounds like” when the students read independently by their desks.  The students participate in many different aspects of our balanced literacy program daily.  Independent reading is one of those components.  The students practiced improving their own reading stamina every day.  They did an amazing job!   The students also learned that readers set goals before they start to read.  We used post-it notes to select individualized reading goals.  At the end of the reader's workshop, we reflected on these goals and shared noticings. As a class, the students discovered that having a calm and quiet classroom helps them read for longer periods of time. 

• Next week, I will start the beginning of the year reading assessments and we will start our small guided reading groups, a time when the students receive explicit and individualized reading instruction.  (More information will follow as these groups form in the next few weeks)

Writing:

• This week, we finished writing our classroom contract.  Our classroom contract reflects the school motto “Be Safe, Be Kind and Be Responsible”.  We agreed on a series of norms and rules for our classroom and then we all signed it. The students feel very proud of the norms we agreed upon and they wanted to add glitter to it.  We will do that next week and then share a picture of it.

• We met with our buddies in second grade and did a collaborative science writing project outside.  The students were encouraged to “think like scientists” and use some of their senses to write/draw about different objects from nature.

• We also finished a special “Hopes & Dreams” project with Ms. Fisher’s class this week.  The students created bees out of papers and shared their own hopes and dreams for this school year.  We will hang these special bees in our locker area for them to see as they arrive at school in the morning, reminding them that we all “bee-long” together!

First Grade Math:

• First grade mathematicians learned about perseverance and having a growth mindset this week.  We learned that we can work together as a learning community to support each other when the learning feels challenging.  We learned about “the most powerful addition”.  “The most powerful addition is adding the word “yet” to a negative statement, such as “I can’t do it”.  If we add “yet'' to it, the statement becomes “I can’t do it yet”. We have a large mural in our classroom that we refer to as we learn together. Here it is:

• First grade mathematicians also practiced showing the days in school using visual representations, math tools (the rekenrek) and their math hands.  They are learning that numbers are composed of smaller parts, which we can show in many different ways.  On the fifth day of school, we all went outside to collect objects from nature in groups of five.  They did an outstanding job, working with their math partner, collaborating and collecting leaves, rocks, flowers and sticks in groups of five.  As the days in school increase, perhaps your child wants to show this counting and grouping at home as well?

• First grade mathematicians also started learning about how to care for their math materials and folders in class.  They also started their number writing practice.  By the end of first grade, we hope all mathematicians can write their numbers without reversals.  This week, they also learned that all number writing starts from the top!

Classroom Celebrations:

 

• The students are demonstrating safe, kind and responsible choices every day. For those not familiar with our system at ABS, the students earn buzzies (small pompoms in black and yellow) for our classroom buzzy jar for being safe, kind and responsible. When we fill the classroom jar, we have a classroom celebration.  We also empty our classroom jar in the school-wide jar (The BeeHive).  When the BeeHive is filled,the entire school has a celebration.  I think this class is heading towards a new school record--they filled our buzzy jar twice already!

A note from the administration: 

As we conclude our second week of school we are seeing a few things that we need to fix up for our arrival and dismissal procedures to make them run safely and efficiently. 

• Please stay in your vehicle and avoid extended chats with the adults as we are trying to efficiently move people through the pick up line.  Please do not leave your car unattended in the lane at any time. We also prefer you NOT park your vehicle to come and retrieve your child.  Our way of ensuring your child gets to you safely is that exchange at your vehicle for the adult to see.

• Please pull all the way up to the curb for pick up as others are waiting to move up behind you.

• Avoid "double-parking"/parking diagonally 

We appreciate all you can do to follow these guidelines to ensure a safe and smooth transition in and out of school!

News and Reminders:

• There is no school on Monday, September 6th (Labor Day)

• Thank you all for your incredibly generous donations to our school supplies on Harmony!  We appreciate your generosity and thoughtful donations.

• Please check your child’s Home Folder today for school picture day and photo order forms. Picture Day is scheduled for September 22nd at ABS.

• Our “Me Bags” were due today.  Thank you for sending them in on time.  If you and your family didn’t get a chance yet, please send your child’s bag in on Tuesday.  We will start sharing the contents next week and learn more about each other.  Thank you.

• Click here for information about our fabulous FAP organization and how you can support and help out this school year.  Thank you for considering.

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

Have a great weekend,

Maria