May 27. 2022

Good Evening,

Well we officially have 10 school days left.  In that time the class will finish their animal research projects, take end of the year math, spelling and reading assessments, participate in the presentation evening, participate in field days, and help clean up and organize everything we used this year.  It will certainly be a

blur but I am looking forward to many of the fun things that June brings.  I am sorry to have missed the concert last evening.  I had a coaches meeting to determine awards and scholarships for our high school seniors and I was hosting the event at my house.  It sounds like it was a fun concert and it was great to see us gathering as a school community again.

I want to thank all of you who reached out to me this week (after the devastating events that unfolded in yet another school).  I want you all to know that we do as much as we can to think about how to handle these scenarios and there are many precautions in place.  There was no mention of this week's event in the classroom.  If something was to come up, I would certainly let all of you know (much like I did with the Ukraine conversations that arose a few months back).  

This week the students continued working on their animal research projects.  On Wednesday, Game Warden Chad Barrett came in to present about black bears.  A fully equipped game warden, walking in with a 3/4 bear mount will quickly engage students every time.  Warden Barrett talked to the class about black bears, talked about how we can protect them by securing garbage and other food that might attract them, and fielded several questions from the students.  The next day, we used the information we collected from the presentation and started working on a slide show presentation with Mr. Mongeon.  The kids will now use their research to create presentations on the animals they researched.  

This week, in first grade math, the students have been working on a rather lengthy end of the year (Bridges Math program) written assessment.  This assessment has two parts.  The first is a written assessment and the second is a 1:1 math interview with each student.  We will continue these assessments next week.  We also reviewed telling time to hours, half hours, and quarter hours.  Some students were ready for 5 minute increments too.  Ms. Figdor had this to say about 2nd grade math: "This week in second grade math students compared unit fractions, explored probability, and solved a variety of word problems where they added and subtracted money. In the beginning of the week students took the Star 360 diagnostic assessment. I was impressed not only by the mathematical growth, but also the deep level of mathematical understanding that students displayed on this test. The main focus of this week was learning about probability. We discovered “likelihood” as the probability of something occurring under specific conditions. For example, the “likelihood” of pulling a red cube out of a bag when the number of red and blue cubes is equal is different from the probability of pulling a red cube out of a bag if ¾ of the cubes are red and ¼ is blue."

NOTES:

*Please mark you calendars for our gathering on Thursday, June 2nd @6:00 pm.  Please arrive a bit early so your child will be able to set up their stuff.  We will start promptly at 6:00.  

*The last day of school is often as special as the 1st day of school.  When a school year ends, its a celebration of 175 +/- days of working together to accomplish significant and at times very challenging goals.  It's celebrating your children's hard work and their ability to push themselves to things they may not have ever thought they could do. It's also time to celebrate friendships and bonds.  With that said, I don't like to end the year with a huge sugar loaded celebration and then send them home to you.  So, once again I will be having a "celebratory breakfast" on our last day.  I will be making pancakes for the kids and we will need other items as well. If you wish to contribute any items, please check out the sign up sheet by clicking here.

That is all for now.  I hope you all have a safe and relaxing Memorial Day weekend.

Peace,

Tommy

  

May 20, 2022

 Good Morning,

  It is hard to believe but we only have 14 days left of school.  The good news is the kids are steadily busy wrapping up three different projects, starting to take end of the year assessments and the regular day to day things.  I hope you all can attend the gathering we are doing on the evening of June 2nd.  It will go from 6:00-7:00 pm.  It will be set up that kids have their work at a "station" and parents can see their kids work and then check out a few other kids pieces of work too.  It will allow each student to use their presentation voices with their own family and with others that check in with them.  

  This past Wednesday marked the end of our "Inspiration Hour" series.  Over the last three Wednesdays, kids had a chance to take part in an activity that they wanted to explore and/or have interest in. From cooking, art, hitting the links, to playing board games with friends, the opportunities were enjoyed by most.  I love that our school does this and the excitement the kids have toward this is so great to see. I have included some pictures from the past three weeks.

  This week in first grade math, we reviewed several concepts as we prepare to take the end of the year assessment. We spent our time adding two, two digit numbers, comparing equalities, subtraction practice, and place value concepts. Ms. Figdor reports the following: It has been another busy week in second grade math. In the beginning of the week we explored some early division concepts by dividing multiples of ten into groups. For example, we split 120 into 6 equal groups using the base ten blocks and then wrote equations to match the models we created. Then we continued to explore factions. This week the second graders have been exploring how fractional understanding is related to division. We have continued to explore fractions of both area models as well as set models. In addition, we learned that the top of the fraction is called the numerator and the bottom of the fraction is called the denominator. Students learned that the greater the number in the denominator the smaller the fractional piece. For example ⅓ is greater than ⅛ because the whole would be split into smaller pieces. The greatest take away for many students is that they cannot use whole number reasoning to understand fractions.

NOTES:

*Please mark you calendars for our gathering on Thursday, June 2nd @6:00 pm.  Please arrive a bit early so your child will be able to set up their stuff.  We wills tart promptly at 6:00.  

*Yesterday, I informed the kids that they are no longer allowed to bring their Pokemon cards to school.  We have had several problems with them (not our class) as a whole school community and we need to take action to end some of the issues.  The kids were disappointed but are happy we can still make our own cards.  By the way, they are looking AWESOME!  Please help your child with this request and go through their bags and take out any cards.

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

Peace, Mr. Young

 

Good Morning,

  To sum up the week, we were a few fries short of a Happy Meal or wow COVID hit our class hard this week.  We have most of our friends back today and I will use this afternoon to try and get everyone back on the same page with their work.  

  I was trying to think of something fun to help the kids stay cool today.  I tried renting a snow cone machine but no one sells block ice anymore.  So, I brought in some lemonade, ice, and a blender.  We will be making lemonade slushies at 2:00 today.  Needless to say, they are a little excited.

The last two days have had us focused on our animal research projects.  I am teaching them how to research something and how to use their resources efficiently.  Yesterday they focused on finding what (if anything) their animal preys on.  Today they will be researching what animals prey on their animal.  

2nd Grade Math Update:  This week we wrapped up our geometry unit with an end of unit assessment. Students easily identified various polygons by their attributes as well as found the area of various shapes.When exploring fractions this week students learned that half of the fraction ½ is the the ¼. We also discovered that it is important to consider the size of the whole when comparing fractions. If the whole are the same size then ½ will always be equal to ½, even if the whole is split in half differently (see model to the left). It's hard to believe that we only have four weeks left of second grade math. For the remainder of the year in math we will continue to explore fractional reasoning and develop efficient strategies for solving 3 digit-by 3 digit addition and subtraction that will prepare us for third grade math.

In first grade math, the students were looking at what happens to numbers when you only take away form the tens column.  We played a variety of games that focused on this concpet.

Please keep the evening of June 2nd free. Our class will have an evening to show off the three projects we are currently working on.  This will go from 6:00-7:00 pm that day.  

That is all for now.  Have a great weekend.

Peace,

Tommy

May 6, 2022

 Good Afternoon,

This kid hit a home run during baseball

  We are in the midst of three different projects that all involve some form of reading and writing.  The students continued to work on their Pokemon cards and have been really excited about them.  We work on these on Wednesday mornings and the students keep asking to have more time to work on them.  Most of the kids are now working on writing the opinion piece for the back of the card.  We started thinking about our next science unit that looks at animals, their habitats, and other important information.  The students spent the last two days looking through different animal books to help them decide which one he/she will focus on.  Today they made their decision and started reading more in depth about their animals.  We will start with a look at the black bear and I have asked a game warden to come in and speak about their needs, habitat, and other information.  The warden will be here 5/19/22 during our science time.  The third project will start up on Monday as students start applying what they have learned about writing non-fiction books and create a book about the sugaring process and include their learning about the states of matter.  

My hope is that we will have a gathering, in June, where all of this work can be presented.  I am working on finding a date and will keep you in the loop.

This week in math, the 1st graders completed their unit 6 assessment.  We have also been spending a lot of time on subtraction tasks and problems.  The new unit will focus on place value and continue to develop a deep understanding of numbers to 120.  Yesterday the students developed the best strategies for estimating a bag of Popsicle sticks.  

Ms Figdor had this to say about 2nd grade math: During second grade math we have been continuing to explore concepts in geometry. We learned about tessellation and created our own tesselating shapes by combining triangles, rectangles, and squares. In addition, the second graders have continued to develop their understanding of how to find the area of shapes. We have explored how multiplication can be used to find the area of rectangles. Students explored how identifying the dimension (rows and columns) of a rectangle can help them find the area of rectangular shapes. Then students learned how to use repeated addition, skip counting, or multiplication to find the area. Next week we will wrap up our unit on Geometry.

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

Peace,

Tommy