Happy Holidays

 Dear Families,

We had a terrific  week of school.  The students filled our ABS BeeHive so we celebrated by creating a mural with all the other classrooms at our school.  Ms. Nicole will hang paper representations of all the students in our lobby to greet us when we return from our holiday break.  The mural will represent all the similarities and differences we all have here at ABS, illustrating how we still belong to one learning community–together!

This week, we also had the pleasure to welcome some former students to ABS.  A group of 7th and 8th graders joined our classroom for reading time.  The students helped our second graders read books, practice their spelling and do different trick word stations.  Thank you Harbor House for visiting us!  We hope we will have many more opportunities like this in the near future.

Your child’s Home Folder is quite full today as the students cleaned out various learning spaces and folders.  Your child also packed a special Holiday Reading Log, which can be returned to school when school resumes again after the holidays.  We hope families will continue with daily reading practice at home even when school is not in session.  Your child also packed at-home access to computer coding.  Please keep this information accessible because it contains usernames and passwords.  If you run into technical problems or need these usernames/passwords again, please open an IT HelpDesk ticket (the link can be found on our school website portal).

I hope everyone will have a safe and relaxing holiday break.  See you in January!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Warm Regards,

Maria

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week, the students learned more about empathy.  They listened to the song “Empathy” by the Second Step curriculum and sang along beautifully.  We did a little game to go along with the song too.  Ask your child to explain.  The game helped them recognize other people’s feelings.

• We had another restorative circle with Ms. Nicole.  This week, the students learned about perspective taking.  They practiced listening attentively to others, while paying close attention to their emotional cues, while sharing “just enough” about a particular topic.  They did great. 

• We had a classroom celebration with Mr. Deyo’s Kindergarten friends too.  They visited our classroom for some explore time and friendship building.  Enjoy these pictures:

Reading:

• This week, our second grader readers continued to navigate different literacy stations during our independent reading blocks.  They worked on sight words, read “just right” books and showed their understanding through various visualization activities.

• We started a new graphic novel as our classroom read aloud this week.  We are reading the first book in the series about  “Pea, Bee and Jay”, written by Brian “Smitty” Smith.

Writing:

• The students are finishing up their personal narratives.  This week, they added sound words to their stories.  They also learned that authors often add “juicy words” to their stories to add more interest, detail and “sparkle”.  When we read together as a class, we often add “juicy words” to our classroom chart.  We have collected many interesting words, such as satchel, dwelling, dune and mound, to name just a few.  Ask your child to tell you more.  Ask your child to be a word detective at home too.  Encourage your child to hunt for “juicy words” during quiet reading time at home!  Perhaps your child wants to start a collection chart at home too?

Math:

• Second grade mathematicians continued to learn more efficient and simple strategies to solve 2-, or 3-digit numbers problems in our “Number Talks”.  Ms. Schaw visited our class several times this week to facilitate this work.  At this point in the school year, the students are encouraged to think about what they already know about the numbers before simply using a strategy-that might or might not work.  They are amazing math thinkers and they are always willing to share their solutions.  This week they practiced equations like 40+40+90 or 32+57+90 to give some examples.  They were also encouraged to think about problems such as this: “If you can solve 57+3, how can that help you solve 257+3, or 687+30?

• Second grade mathematicians also participated in a December math check-in about partners to 20, addressing both addition and subtraction strategies.

Technology:

• Ms. Scott visited our classroom to teach the students more about coding.  This week, the students accessed codable.  You will receive a separate email shortly about accessing this from home, if you choose to.

News and Reminders:

• On the last day of school before the holiday break (Thursday, 12/22), Harmony House will celebrate together with a pajama day.  Your child is welcome to wear pajamas to school that day.  No slippers or stuffed animals please.  We will have regular recess that day, so please make sure your child’s pajamas fit nicely inside winter boots and snow pants.  Harmony House will also offer two movies and one workshop.  The students will sign up at school with their teachers.  They will only attend one activity. Ms. Fisher will show the movie “Happy Feet” and Ms. Crowley will show the movie “Frozen”.  I will offer crafts, using sticks, pine cones, and other materials. Please let me know if you do not want your child to watch any of these movies.

• Please check your email for the class contact list, which was shared with you on Thursday.  We hope this list will encourage you and your family to find the time to play/meet with other students from class outside of school.  

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Today was Ms. Bassett’s last day with us.  We are sad to see her leave our classroom but we are very excited that she now has an opportunity to continue her teacher training elsewhere.  Ms. Bassett will be missed!  The students wrote postcards to her, which we bound together with matching photographs of the students.  

Thank you for joining our classroom this semester, Ms. Bassett!  Thank you for helping the students learn more deeply and for being patient, flexible and all-around awesome!  

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week, the students learned more about how to identify their own feelings and those of others.  They learned that if we can identify feelings effectively, we can more easily navigate different situations with other people.  The students worked on their feelings cubes and started to play a game with their partners, identifying the feelings represented on their cubes.

• We had another restorative circle with Ms. Nicole.  This week, we focused on perspective taking and how we can understand how other people are thinking and feeling.  

• Ms. Nicole also visited our classroom with her dog Ziggy, who is now a Therapy Dog.  Ziggy will be at ABS a few days a week, helping students learn and regulate emotions.  We all got to meet Ziggy this week.  Thank you, Ms. Nicole for visiting our classroom!

Reading:

• We started a new mini-unit on visualization in reading.  In this unit, the students will learn how to effectively visualize different aspects of the books they read to reach a deeper understanding of the story. We added two more stations to our reading classes to reflect this focus.  The students are doing a great job showing active engagement during our independent reading times.

• We continued to read graphic novels in our read aloud times.  This week, we read the first book about Shelby and Watts by Ashlyn Anstee, a series that revolves around the characters Shelby and Watt, who together solve mysteries, while sharing scientific facts and tangible ways we can help keep our earth safe and clean.

Writing:

• The students continued adding more words to their personal narratives this week.  They stretched out their stories over many pages by adding transition words to show the passage of time and adding describing words.

• The students started a new hand-writing booklet this week too.  While focusing on penmanship and letter formation, they are also challenged to correct errors in these booklets to reflect proper capitalization, punctuation and finger-spacing.  They are amazing word detectives!

Math:

• In math, we focused on story problems, showing our understanding in numbers and drawings using models and diagrams.  This week, the students solved problems involving two two-digit numbers.  

• This week, the students participated in many Number Talks, a time when they share their mental math strategies with each other.  They are encouraged to make sense of the problems by always asking themselves “What do I already know about….”.  For example, adding 62+27 is easier when you anchor 62 to 60 (as it is closer to 60). Second grade mathematicians are encouraged to find larger friendlier groups of numbers and disciples.

• This week, the students played a number of games practicing these skills and basic number sense.  Ms. Schaw, our fabulous ABS Math Interventionist also joined our class to teach us about number paths and number lines.  Thank you, Ms. Schaw.

Technology:

• Our class participated in the world-wide “Hour of Code” lessons encouraging young students to get interested in computer programming and coding.  This week, Ms. Scott joined our classroom and taught the students about how they could program our BeeBots.  We learned so much and had so much fun.  We will continue next week.  Here are some pictures.  Ask your child to explain what we did.

News and Reminders:

• Please see this letter excerpt from our school:

How does ABS celebrate and acknowledge student birthdays?

At a recent faculty meeting we discussed all the ways we celebrate student birthdays and discovered that this varies from class to class, and student to student.  As we all know, not everyone celebrates the same and may not even choose to celebrate at all…and that is ok.  

We decided as a faculty/staff that it would be important to keep the acknowledgement and celebration just at school.  This means we are asking that families NOT send in any treats, gifts, invitations/thank you notes to give out to the children. Each child (who chooses to be acknowledged) hears their birthday on the announcements and gets to come and get a birthday pencil/bookmark from the Principal.  We appreciate your support and understanding moving forward. 

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Family Newsletter

Dear Families,

I hope everyone had a fun and relaxing Thanksgiving break with your loved ones.  It was great to see the students again and listen to their stories about their adventures over break.

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week, we reviewed some of the strategies we have learned at school to stay engaged as a learner.  We also started our unit on empathy.  In this unit, the students will participate in many different activities to explore how we can show empathy to people around us.  This week, we started making a “feelings cube” which we will use to play some various games with.  Ask your child to explain more.

• We had a restorative circle with Ms. Nicole.  This week, we reviewed some of the expectations when we meet in circle.  The students also had the opportunity to share something new and exciting about themselves.  They did a great job.

• Your child has a new Second Step Home Link assignment inside the Home Folders this week.  As always these assignments are optional but we hope parents and their children engage in these conversations at home.  Thank you.

Reading:

• The students listened to the book “Chicken in Space'' by Adam Lehrhaupt and learned about perseverance and how having a growth mindset can help us tackle problems.  They also learned that good readers think deeply about the books they read.  They also make personal connections and write about the books they read.

• We started a new read aloud again too.  In the next few weeks we will explore graphic novels .  We read the first couple of books in the series Noodleheads together and the students were immersed in several graphic novels to read during independent reading time.  They also received graphic novel paper/booklet pages to create their own!  Please look for those coming home!

Writing:

• We will continue our writing unit on personal narratives/small moments until our upcoming holiday break in late December.  The students started a new piece for possible publication this week.  Our amazing authors started new writing pieces this week by reflecting the 5 Ws, setting the stage for the reader by including who was there, where the story took place, when it happened, while addressing why this particular event occurred and describing what happened.  Personal narratives are true stories that already took place and the writers write stories about themselves.  Many students chose to write about a special event that took place over Thanksgiving break.  In the weeks to come, the students will add new text features to this type of writing.  For example, they will learn how to add sound words and effective transition words, indicating time change.  Stay tuned.

Math:

• Second grade mathematicians reviewed and caught up on our telling time calendar pieces from our number corner math calendar.  As discussed in previous newsletters, second grade mathematicians are expected to learn how to tell time to the nearest five minutes, using both an analog and a digital clock.

• Second grade mathematicians also reviewed place value concepts and relative magnitude, using our number paths.  Through number talks, they were encouraged to think about what they already know about numbers before procedurally solving equations.  For example, 48+24 can be solved by anchoring 48 to 50.  48 is only 2 away from 50 and that strategy might help us as mathematicians.  Mathematicians might also want to anchor to larger groups of tens, starting with 40 and twenty.  Mathematicians rely on flexible strategies for different situations.

Science:

• Harmony House had another 4 Winds class this week.  We were treated to another puppet show in our kiva, followed by hands-on activities, learning about birds and migration.

• The students on Harmony House also participated in our first science rotation on earth structures, landforms and changes.  For the next few weeks, the students will rotate between our classrooms to learn more about slow and fast landform changes during these science classes.

News and Reminders:

• It is getting cold outside.  Please make sure your child comes fully dressed for outdoor play every day.  Hats, mittens/gloves, boots and snow pants are best for outdoor recess.

• Please remember that we have snack every day as well.  Please talk to your child about packing healthy snacks that your child will eat to help with sustained active learning engagement throughout the day.  Water bottles are needed as well.  Thank you.

• ABS school gear forms are due Monday. We are unable to take any late orders as we need to have time for the order to be processed and completed before December break. Here is the order form should you need another copy. Here is the link for what the shirts look like this year!

Have a great weekend,

Maria

 

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week, the students continued to practice and model positive self-talk as a powerful strategy to stay calm and focused on school work.  The students created smaller speech bubbles and thinking bubbles which will be taped to their desks.  The speech bubbles reflected a positive statement that resonated with the particular student, such as “I can try again”, or “I am strong”.  The thinking bubbles reflected similar statements, but the students had the choice to draw a picture of something that calm them and make them happy.  Some of these thinking bubbles contained pictures of outdoor spaces and puppies.  They did an outstanding job reflecting individual needs and goals.

• The students in our class not only filled our classroom buzzy jar again for being safe, kind and responsible, they also helped fill the school-wide Hive!  For our classroom celebration, we celebrated with “Choose your own adventure”.  The students had multiple choices to choose from, such as accessing platforms online, playing games, or drawing.  For our school-wide celebration, the students were encouraged to wear their favorite colors to school.  We certainly had a range of colors represented!  What fun!

Reading:

• This week, the students continued to work hard in our guided reading groups, applying various reading strategies to build a stronger repertoire for improved reading accuracy and fluency.  They are hard-working and absorb instruction.  I hope you are noticing their enthusiasm for literature at home too.  If you want to continue this work over vacation, please consider giving your child access to Lexia and read the many library books your child took home this week!

• We finished our chapter book too.  This week, we read the first book in the series about the Kingdom of Wrenly, written by Jordan Quinn.  This series is about a prince and his friend, who live in a magical kingdom and go on adventures.  The books are filled with maps and sketches, which support the story.  They are also filled with new interesting words.  We started charting these words to make sure the students fully understand their meaning.  We call them “juicy words”.  Ask your child to explain. More on this in the weeks to come.

Writing:

• The students finished their personal narratives this week.  Their writing pieces reflect a story that is true, is about them and have a clear beginning, middle and end.  The students also learned to make their writing more interesting by adding words to describe people, places and events.  They learned to anchor this writing around our senses.  Lastly, in this writing unit, the students learned to add dialogue and lots of detail to their accompanying pictures.  They met with their editing partners to check on all of these components as well as their grammar, making revisions and editing when necessary.  When we come back from our Thanksgiving break, the students will have the opportunity to write another personal narrative and choose one story to publish.

Math:

• Second grade mathematicians continued to build a deeper and more flexible understanding of number paths/number lines and how to add two 2-digit numbers together.  

• Second grade mathematicians also practiced telling time to the nearest five minutes, using our Number Corner Calendar as a guide and playing various games to support this understanding.

• The students also participated in a November Math Assessment, which reflected our current learning standards and progress.

Technology:

• The students continued to work on our digital google classroom, reflecting their understanding of what it means to be a digital citizen, showing kindness and respect while making safe choices.

• Your child brought home usernames and passwords for accessing Typing Club at home today.  Thank you for your patience as the school navigated technical difficulties.  Have fun typing at home!

News and Reminders:

• ABS Bee Shirt  order forms are inside your child’s Home Folder this week.  Please consider supporting our school and order some school shirts!

I hope you will enjoy a restful and joyous holiday break with your family and friends next week.  I am going to see my sister who lives in London, England, and I am very excited to see her again.  Talk to you soon.

Warm Regards,

Maria

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• We enjoyed going outside with our reading buddies in Mr. Deyo’s class.  The students brought books to a special place called “Tree Island” next to our school where they read books and played together.  Here are some pictures:

• The students continued to practice mindfulness with positive self-talk this week.  Your child has another HomeLink from Second Step inside the Home Folder this week.  While we encourage families to complete this assignment at home, it is completely voluntary.  Thank you.

Reading:

• We finished reading the first book in the series called Mouse Scouts.  As you may recall, the students had requested that we create our own woodland habitats to reflect the setting in the book.  Thank you for donating the materials we needed for this project!  We had more than enough.  In fact, we received so many pine cones, sticks, rocks and pieces of bark that we decided to save them for another project.  Thank you.  Here are some pictures from our classroom when the students created their habitats.  I hope they shared them with you at home.

            

Writing:

• The students continued to add more pages to their personal narratives this week.  They created interesting starting sentences to set the stage and added details about who was there, what they did and where the story took place.  They also worked in small groups with me and Ms. Bassett to add adjectives to make their writing more detailed.  They did a great job!  Ask your child to explain how we used our senses to help us frame this type of writing.

• This week, the students also shared their writing with their peers in class.  They learned different techniques from each other and were encouraged to try new approaches.  For example, they learned that writers sometimes embed questions into their writing to engage the reader.  What a great idea!

• Lastly, the students created detailed pictures to match their words.  They also added labels as a way to add even more clarity.

Math:

• Second grade mathematicians continued to build a deeper understanding of number paths and number lines this week.  They were encouraged to show their thinking in different ways.  They were also encouraged to anchor their calculations to friendlier numbers to simplify their solutions.  They were solving equations that involved adding two 2-digit numbers together, such as 34+29.  Some students feel most comfortable adding the tens together first and then the ones.  They add the two groups together at the end.  We call this strategy partial sums.  There are many other strategies to use as well, but counting all, or counting on will not provide efficient and accurate strategies in second grade math.  We have practiced looking at the addends and thinking about what we already know about these numbers.  Hence, 29 will help us because it is just one away from 30.  Adding 30 to 34 is efficient and fast.  Mathematicians choosing this strategy will simply subtract one at the very end.  Ask your child how they would solve the following equations: 57+19, 38+65 and 29+47.

• Second grade mathematicians also continued to build a deeper understanding of telling time to the nearest five minutes.  Since second graders are expected to understand digital and analog clocks, we strongly encourage parents to engage in this conversation at home.  It can be difficult for young learners to see the difference between the long hand and the short hand, thus leading to misconceptions about what time it is.

• Second grade mathematicians also used Dreambox, our online math platform.  Thank you for supporting this at home too.

Science:

This week, Harmony House started our new science unit.  We launched into earth landform changes by having a pretend flight over the Grand Canyon. Next week, we will start our science workshop rotations.

News and Reminders:

• There is no school 11/21-11/25 (Thanksgiving Break)

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week, the students continued to learn and practice positive self-talk as a calming strategy.  They learned how to use short, targeted statements along with different yoga moves.  For example, the statement “I am kind” was matched up with a yoga pose of a tree, stretching the arms up high to “spread” kindness around our classroom and the world.  The statement “I am strong” was matched up with a yoga pose called the warrior pose.  We practiced whispering positive self-talk and breathing techniques as a class and with partners.  You can find some flower breathing techniques in your child’s backpack today if you want to learn more or try this at home too.

• We had another restorative circle with Ms. Nicole. This week we explored the different strong emotions we all experience.  The students shared what makes them  feel happy and what makes them feel angry.  Thank you Ms. Nicole for joining our class again.

• The students at ABS filled the Hive again for being safe, kind and responsible.  This time, we celebrated with a stuffed animal day.  The students had so much fun learning with their stuffed animals.  Some students even chose their stuffed animals as their partners in math and reading!

Reading:

• This week, we continued to read independently, with partners and in small groups.  The students are gaining more independence navigating our different stations every day.  I am so proud of them all.  They work hard!  This week, we added two new stations to our trick word practice.  The first station includes Fundations magnetic letter tiles and the other station is a writing station with special markers used on large easel paper.

• We are in the midst of reading the series “Mouse Scouts” by Sarah Dillard.  This series is about some adorable mice who have different adventures together while also giving the reader lots of follow-up activities and ideas for how we can all help keep our communities and the environment clean.  The students made a strong connection to the extension activities in these books and asked if we could build our own representation of the setting, or our own little woodland habitats for fanciful characters.  As a result, we need your help!  If you choose to, please gather a small amount of the following items that we would need by Tuesday the latest next week: pinecones, acorns, pine needles/branches, small sticks, small rocks, bark and any other woodland materials that are small enough to fit inside a small grocery bag (for carrying purposes).  Please have your child bring these materials into our classroom by Monday or Tuesday next week.  Thank you.

• 

Writing:

• The students on Harmony continued Fundations classes this week, learning about decoding/sounding out and how tapping can be used to help them spell words.  They are encouraged to transfer this knowledge to their writing classes in order to represent blends, vowels and digraphs in their own best spelling.

• We started our small moment writing unit as well.  Small moment writing is a personal narrative and it is a sequential story; a story with a clear beginning, middle and end.  It is a story about something that has already happened. Since this type of story is about the writer, the writer will use the following words a lot: me, I, mine, my, etc (throughout this unit, the students will be encouraged to learn how to spell these high frequency words as well).  This week, the students planned their stories using a graphic organizer, which will provide an overarching structure and guide their writing in the weeks to come.  Stay tuned for more as this writing unit progresses in the weeks to come.

Math:

• November’s calendar in math reflects clocks and telling time.  Throughout this month, the students will review telling time to the hour and half-hour.  They will also learn how to tell time to the nearest five minutes with an understanding of the different hands and the difference between am and pm time.

• The month of November will also introduce the students to number lines and how number lines can be used to add and subtract.  This is a new skill and expectation, specific to second grade.  This week, we learned from Ms. Schaw.  She joined our class to teach us about number paths, a tool that helps young mathematicians visualize the number sequence before using a number line.  The students did an outstanding job decomposing their numbers as the equations got more challenging.

Technology:

• The students continued to learn more about our google classroom and how to be a digital citizen online while creating a digital project on Book Creator.

News and Reminders:

• There is no school 11/21-11/25 (Thanksgiving Break)

• A note from our school counselor, Ms. Heather:

Lake Champlain Waldorf School presents Mindful Parenting at the Holidays. Friday, November 4, 6:30-8:00. This is a free event and registration is required. Here is a small blurb about it:

Re-imagine the holidays as an experiment in mindful parenting with this Friday evening presentation followed by a Workshop on Saturday. Take away simple tools to make small, doable changes to your family life and practical ideas to make the upcoming holidays more peaceful and joyful.

Pre-Register at: Mindful Parenting

Have a great weekend,

Maria