September 24, 2021

Good Evening,

I hope you all have had a great week.  Hopefully the week had your children talking about science and writing and collaborating like scientist, writing books across several pages, reading groups, and some math to round out the work from the week.  The students also had music, guidance, library and PE this week.

Our first writing unit this year has the class focusing on writing narratives or small moment stories.  In order to help kids come up with an idea, they follow the steps of:

1.Think of an idea (something you have done or that has happened to you
2. Plan your story out by touching each page and telling what you will write about
3.  Sketch your story out
4.  Write across each page (write details)

To help students think about a story that doesn't get to big or to difficult to write about, we talk about stories being like a watermelon.  There are big moments like the first day of school and then a seed inside the watermelon would represent a small moment form that first day.  To gain a better understanding, you may want to watch the following video. It explain the language I am using with the kids fairly clearly.

This week each child worked on two different narrative stories that he/she is working on.  You will have a chance to see your child's writing during our 1st parent conference.

Science class has had us looking at how scientist collaborate, how and why they work with engineers, and how they record their findings.  Today the students were introduced to science notebooks.  We had a discussion about what an observation was and the purpose for making observations.  The students were then each given an apple and some time to observe it and record their findings.  I then gathered the class and kids shared out how they documented their learning.  There were great examples of diagrams, labels, use of senses to describe the apple (in writing) and the use of comparisons.  I finished the session by giving each student a magnifying glass and asked them to zoom in on specific parts or areas and record their findings.  We will share these out when we have science again next Thursday.  

First grade math had students continuing to use the counting on strategy and/or the known fact strategy to solve addition equations.  We continued to focus on writing numerals the correct way and practiced filling in missing numbers on a number line. Some of the students worked with sequences up to 30 while others were working on sequences between 90-140.  This proved to be a challenge as some of the kids tried to write the transition number from 109 to 110.  At this point you typically see attempts (for 110) looking like 10010 or 1010.  Ms. Figdor reports that "in second grade math they worked on becoming more fluent with our double, and double plus one facts (4+4= and 6+7=). The second graders made several mathematical conjectures about double facts. First, they found that when adding doubles (7 +7=), the sum will always be even. Students found that it didn’t matter if the factors were odd or even. The sum would always be even. Next, they determined that when adding two odd numbers the product is always even. Towards the end of the week students began solving problems involving finding the difference between two numbers."

This week we introduced the concept of "take a break."  This is the 1st of three logical consequences we will use when a classroom rule is broken.  This is not take a break like you may remember from your time in school or even the take a break you may use in parenting your own child.  "Take a Break in a Responsive Classroom is a positive, respectful, and supportive teaching strategy used to help a child who is just beginning to lose self-control to regain it so they can do their best learning. An equally important goal of Responsive Classroom time-out is to allow the group’s work to continue when a student is misbehaving or upset. Giving that child some space from the scene of action where they can regroup while still seeing and hearing what the class is doing accomplishes both of these goals."  The important thing to take a way from all of this is "take a break" is not a punishment or a "wrong."  Rather it is a chance for a kid to demonstrate their own ability to identify what they were doing, what they should be doing, and then rejoining the group when they are ready.  

NOTES:

*As I mentioned last week, the students had the story Not A Box read to them.  They then used their own imagination to turn a box into something spectacular.  Here is the picture I promised to post this week.

*Kids have been arriving, for the most part, right around 7:40.  Thank you all so much in your efforts to get your kids to school by 7:40.  I really appreciate and it makes everything so much easier for both your child and for what I am trying to accomplish with our morning routine.

*The PTA runs an annual ski and skate sale that generates revenue that funds so many things in and around our school.  The success of this sale is because of the generous volunteers.  I hope you can find time to donate a shift and help out with this year's sale. Please use this tool to register for your shift(s): https://signup.com/go/MFDtAbL. The sooner the better! Volunteers registered by Friday, September 24th will receive exclusive early access to register for Volunteer pre-sale shopping! Admission may be limited this year, so register early to ensure your access!

*Does your child want to play basketball this winter?  Please check out the brochure below and sign you child up or click here.  Please let me know if you have any questions. 

That is all for now.  I hope you all have a great weekend.  

Peace,

Mr. Young