Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

Ms. Clark finished her last solo week this week.  Congratulations, Ms. Clark!  We are so proud of you.  She will still be with us full-time for another few weeks.  We are grateful for that.

Social-Emotional Learning:

● This week, we continued our focus on community. Every day, we introduced a

new word of the day and tried to implement those words into our daily conversations. Some words this week were  “compromise” and “responsibility.”

● During Second Step, Ms. Clark led a lesson on managing worries. We read the book “Wemberly Worried” by Kevin Henkes and identified the worries that the main character experienced.  The students made personal connections and shared their own worries and ways to calm down.

● We continued to work on what it means to be respectful listeners when our friends are

presenting. We primarily focused upon the importance of having calm bodies and how our facial expressions signal to others how we feel and react.

Reading:

• First grade readers worked hard again this week on improving their independent

Reading stamina. They continued using their reading packets with several reading choices such

as reading to a stuffy or being a sentence detective (having to find a question,

exclamation, and statement in their books).

• First graders also rotated through guided reading groups throughout the week as well.

• We also started to read nonfiction books about the rainforest.  We will continue this work for the next few weeks as we attempt to bridge the gap between reading and writing and encourage the students to also read to gain new information.  The students will also learn more about the differences between fiction and nonfiction books and their respective characteristics.  Stay tuned for more information next week!

Writing:

• This week we began our rainforest unit. Students used pebblego to choose which rainforest animal they want to learn more about.  Pebblego is a fabulous online reading platform, which can also be used from home.  The url is pebblego.com. Please see my email for usernames and passwords to access this from home.  Have fun reading and learning about science at home!

• This week acted as an introduction to the rainforest. The students learned about the  different layers of the rainforest. In small groups, they drew pictures of each layer and its animals. Towards the end of the week students had a writing prompt on the following topic: “IfI went to the rainforest I would...”..  They did an amazing job!  They had great ideas about what to do there as well.  We can’t wait to share these with you.  Ask your child to share what he/she would like to do in the rainforest.

First Grade Math:

• First grade mathematicians continued practicing their clock skills this week. We began

each math class with having our student leader for the day state the date and what time

the clock on our clock calendar showed.  The students played “clock memory”, matching analog and digital clocks.  

• The students also continued their work on adding three digit numbers and anchoring to ten efficiently.

Science:

• Science this week was directly connected to our new learning about the rainforest. In addition to learning more about this specific habitat, the students also learned to locate these habitats on a map. 

• In a few weeks, the students will create their own rainforest animal diorama.  We are in need of shoe boxes and paper towel tubes for this project.  If you have any at home to share, please consider donating them to us for this special science project.  Thank you!

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

Here is our week in review:

This was Ms. Clark’s first solo week.  She did an outstanding job as our lead teacher.  We are so proud of her and grateful for her work, insights and positive energy in our classroom.  Ms. Clark will continue as our lead teacher again next week.  I will be supporting her and the students.

It has been great to connect with families online for our parent-teacher conferences.  Thank you for taking the time to chat and thank you for your continued support of ABS and our learning.  We could not do this without you all!

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week we began focusing on the idea of community. One of the walls in the classroom is now our “community wall” where we hang up our community word of the day, job chart, and student artwork which is becoming a class mural! When we all follow the group plan, our class community thrives. 

• We have also been focusing on “whole-body listening”. Whole body listening means that students show that they are listening when their eyes are looking, voices are quiet, and bodies are calm. The class has been responding quite well to demonstrating whole body listening when Ms. Clark says, “Show me what it looks like to have whole body listening…show me what is sounds like”.

• During second step, Ms. Clark led a lesson on diversity lesson on deafness. She read a book to the class about a deaf boy and how his life is different due to his inability to hear. The class then learned to say “hello” in sign language.

Reading:

• First grade readers worked hard this week on improving their independent reading. They received new independent reading packets with several reading choices such as reading to a stuffy or being a sentence detective (having to find a question, exclamation, and statement in their books). They seemed enthusiastic about these reading choices as the packets were something new and challenging. 

• First graders also rotated through guided reading groups throughout the week as well. 

Writing:

• This week in writing we focused on fiction versus nonfiction writing. The students were taught the difference between a fiction book and a nonfiction book. In the beginning of the week, we read a fiction book about a silly penguin named Tacky and later the students were asked to create their own fiction story about a penguin using their imagination. Because fiction is fake, we discussed how our characters could be fun-silly and creative. They were excited to share their fiction stories with the whole group once they were finished. 

• Later in the week we read a non-fiction book about penguins and the students were asked to use their good listening skills to pick out 4 facts about penguins that were read by Ms. Clark. They drew pictures or wrote words to represent those facts before putting those facts into a formal writing text.  Our next writing unit will start on Monday.  This time, the students will learn to write animal reports, reflecting information about their respective animals while also reflecting nonfiction text features, such as captions, glossaries and chapters.

• In our conferences, some parents asked me to share the trick words the students are learning to spell in first grade.  Here is the first grade trick word list. These words are different from “regular decodable words” for spelling.   Trick words cannot be “sounded out” but must be memorized.

First Grade Math:

• First grade mathematicians continued practicing their clock skills this week. We began each math class with having our student leader for the day state the date and what time the clock on our clock calendar said along with writing the digital time for it. The students had different clock activities throughout the week such as “time bump” which challenged students to match analog times on one game board to digital times on the other. Students also were given clock packets with different time telling tasks. 

• First grade mathematicians also continued working on strategies to add 3 one-digit numbers together.  We started a new anchor chart in our classroom, illustrating the different strategies we can use as we solve these math problems efficiently.  The students are encouraged to “anchor” to 10 first and then add some more.  The students are also encouraged to “use what they already know” or find double facts too.  The list we have is quite innovative since they all have different ways of solving these three digit math problems.  What a terrific group of mathematicians!

Science:

• Science this week was tied in with writing as the students were exposed to non-fiction books specifically about penguins. 

• We also participated in several Mystery Science guided videos, which the students are enthusiastic about. This week we did a guided video and lesson on “Why do birds make nests” and “Why do some animals migrate?” 

News and Reminders:

• It is very muddy outside on our fields and playground.  Please make sure your child comes to school with mud pants, or snow pants, boots and a warmer jacket.  It is also a good idea to pack extra socks and pants inside your child’s backpack as it is very uncomfortable to sit in soggy clothes after recess.  Thank you.

•  I have been impressed by your child’s resilience as we switched to “mask optional” at school.  There will most likely be changes to guidance on testing, isolation, and response to illness symptoms in the future. I will provide updates as soon as I have new information and I will keep sharing newsletters from our school nurses as these guidelines change.  Thank you for reading them and for your continued support in keeping your child home when necessary.

Have a great weekend,

Maria and Zoe

Family Newsletter

 Dear Families,

I hope you all had a relaxing and fun Winter Break from school.  It was great to see the students again and hear about all the fun activities and adventures they had.

Here is our week in review:

Social-Emotional Learning:

• This week, the students continued to learn more about, and practice positive self-talk to calm down and continue productive learning.  Through a series of classroom activities and discussions, they completed a classroom poster with speech bubbles reflecting the different positive statements students can practice in times of frustration.  It is hanging in our locker area for all to see.  They are very proud of it!

Reading:

• We continued our focus on fluency in our guided reading groups this week.  As you may recall, fluency in first grade primarily emphasizes pace, expression and phrasing.  In other words, the students are encouraged to make their reading sound like spoken language and to reflect the plot and punctuation in the text.  In order to learn this efficiently, the students practice reading the same text many times.  They are also encouraged to to practice their trick words to build word recognition and speed.  The students also used our classroom “read-a-phones” to hear themselves more clearly when reading in a whisper voice.  Our read-a-phones are small tools used for reading that resemble little telephone receivers.  They did an amazing job reading with fluency!

• We continued our new author study and listened to a few more read alouds.  This time, we are enjoying the books written by Helen Lester.  This week, we learned more about “Tacky, the Penguin”, a very interesting character, filled with silliness and creativity.  Ask your child to explain more.

Writing:

• First grade authors continued building their understanding of how to craft an opinion writing piece with less scaffolds and teacher support.  Their growing independence and confidence as writers show! This week, they learned how to plan their writing piece using a graphic organizer, which later served as a guide as their writing pieces were crafted.

• We started a new unit again in Fundations.  This time, the students will learn about glued sounds and word endings such as -an, -am, and -all.  Try rhyming at home with these endings and see how many words your child can write down!  We call it “BOGO spelling”-Buy one, get one free–If you know one word/word family, you automatically know another one!

First Grade Math:

• We have a new March Number Corner Calendar.  It introduces the students to clocks.  In first grade, mathematicians learn how to tell time to the whole hour and the half hour.  They also learn the differences between telling time using an analog clock and a digital clock.  The students will play many new interactive games learning about clocks.

• First grade mathematicians also continued to build a deeper understanding of equality this week. They continued to use math tools and representations/drawings to justify and reason why the two expressions are equal (or not). 

• First grade mathematicians also used SeeSaw, an online classroom tool, to show their understanding of mathematical equality.

• Ms. Bianchi also visited our room again this week and helped us in our small group work.  Thank you!

Science:

• This week, the students planned and built their musical instruments as part of our ongoing science unit on light and sound.  The students met in small groups with Ms. Clark to choose materials needed for this engineering task.  They did a terrific job planning and building their instruments. Thank you Ms. Clark for providing this wonderful opportunity!

News and Reminders:

• Here is the link for the upcoming parent-teacher conferences. I have added the google meet link for all of these meetings. If your family needs to find another time slot, please let me know and we will try our best to find another time.

• There is no school on 3/18/22 due to parent teacher conferences.

• Our fabulous intern, Ms. Clark, will do her solo weeks, starting on 3/14/22.  She will be the lead teacher for two weeks.  I will be in the classroom, but in a supporting role.  We wish her luck but we know she will do great!  We are so lucky to have her in our classroom.

Have a great weekend,

Maria