Good Evening,
Since the students don;t have school tomorrow, I figured I would get this week's blog post out tonight. Although it was a short week, we seemed to pack a lot into this week. Let's start with Morning meeting. For several weeks now, the students can sign up to share during our meeting. After a share, students have been taking two comments from other students. This week, I introduced the idea of asking questions instead of making comments. I focus on this skill because it teaches kids the difference between comments and questions, and it allows students to inquire into a share and learn more about it. Shares happen everyday and kids sign up upon arrival to class.
In writing, we focused on bringing the students written stories alive by having their characters move and/or talk. I introduced the concept by writing about the 1st kid who arrived to school on Wednesday. I wrote a quick three page story with one sentence on each page. Immediately a student shouted out, that isn't enough writing. They then gave me suggestions on how to make my characters move and talk. The class really got into it and, as a whole, were pretty excited to get to work on their own writings. It is always rewarding when your class is excited to get to work and are disappointed when writing time ends for the day.
Today during science, we finished our last introductory observation in our science notebooks. Today's focus was using "science vocabulary" in their observations. I took the students outside to find three different colored leaves. They then used pencils, colored pencils, hand lenses, and crayons to complete observations of each leaf they found. The students used the specific words of stem, vein, and leaf in sentences and as labels for their diagrams.
Our 1st grade math focus this week continued to work with the concept of identifying groups of ten with in arrays of strings of beads. So if a kid saw 5 red beads and 2 white ones on the top row and 5 red beads and 1 white one on the bottom row, they would see it as a group of 10 and 3 more. This is just one example and there are a variety of ways to adapt this to challenge kids or to help kids gain a more sound understanding of the concept. Since I published this post early this week, Ms. Figdor didn't have a chance to send a blurb about 2nd grade math.
NOTES:
*I didn't send your child's homework bag home today. Being that it is a four day weekend, I just wanted the kids to spend time with family and enjoy the beauties of fall in Vermont.
*Please remember that your child can always pack extra food to have an extra snack (if needed). Water bottles are also a great idea. Please make sure your child's name is on it.
*With colder weather on the horizon, I wanted to remind everyone of a few things. Please label every hat, mitten, glove and scarf with your child's name. You spend a lot of money to cloth your children and it's the easiest way to make sure each kid has all of their items. Kids will also start wearing boots more. Your child is more than welcome to leave a pair of shoes in their "cubbie" area for the season. This way they don;t have to bring them back and forth each day. Just send me a note to let me know so I can have your child leave them at school.
That is all for now. I hope you have a great long weekend.
Peace,
Mr. Young
