March 7, 2025

Good Afternoon,

The good news is we had consecutive days of school.  The downside is it was only 3 days.  I am looking forward to a full week next week. This week in writing (Wednesday) the students started working on their opinion writings about their favorite toy. Wednesday's focus had kids writing their "hooks," giving context, and then stating their opinion. We will pick up on this work on Monday. 

Our science focus had the students testing different ways to make sounds louder or less loud. The students worked in teams of two and tested out different tools and then wrote about their findings. They also worked on posters that demonstrated knowledge for how to protect their ears. Next week, the students will work with a decibel meter and learn about sounds in different environments.  

Our reading groups met on Thursday and Friday.  Three of the four groups continue to work on phonetic skills that are then practiced in phonetic based readers.  Two of the four groups are also working with chapter books and sharpening their comprehension skills. A third group will be starting Henry and Mudge chapter books next week.  I am really happy with the reading progress and love this time a year.  The kids really start to gain confidence with their own abilities.  

First grade math has us looking at the fractions 1/2 & 1/4 again.  The students are looking at how to label each part of a fractional piece. They took part in a mid until assessment (geometry focus) to see how their progress was coming with identifying shapes by their names, and listing characteristics of shapes.  We also have gotten into 3-D shapes and their names.  The second graders have been working on telling time to the minute.

NOTES:

*We will have the winter sports program this coming week. Please make sure your child has all of their equipment.

*Please make sure your children continue to bring the appropriate clothing for recess time.  Boots continue to be a must, even during the mud season.  

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

Peace,

Mr. Young

February 21, 2025

Happy Friday All! I hope you all enjoy the time with your children over the next week and a half.  For those of you who are traveling, I wish you all a safe trip. For those who are here, I hope you can get outside and enjoy the epic snow and some warmer temperatures.  

Here are a few pictures from the week.

I will see you all in March.  

PLEASE VOTE!

Peace, 

Mr. Young

February 14, 2025

Well another 4 day week has come and gone. This week the kids have been part of a residency involving African drumming and dancing. We shared a culminating showcase of the dances we learned this afternoon in the gym. The performance was recorded, and information will be posted on how to view it (from Kaiya). A big shout out to the WES PTA for funding this opportunity.

This week's read-a-louds were Guess Again by Mac Barnett, Once Upon a Time by Niki Daly, and the Jolly Pirate by Brett Helquist. All three of these books are new to our classroom library. Guess Again, is a fun book that tries to trick kids in what they think will happen on the next page. Once Upon a Time is a book that focuses on a student who is nervous to read. "When Sarie's teacher says, "Children, take out your reading books," a sick feeling grips Sarie. The words trip up her tongue and she stutters and stammers, making the children in the back row giggle. But there are two people who her schoolfriend Emile, and Ou Missus, the old lady living over the veld. One Sunday, Sarie comes across an old copy of Cinderella and begs Ou Missus to read it to her, Ou Missus says, "No - we will read it together." Sarie's confidence grows, until the day comes when the school principal says to Sarie, "You read beautifully!"

This was a great book to read with the message of persevering with ones ability to read. 

Our writing this week had the kids finishing their writing from the reading of Brave Irene. On Monday, the students brainstormed ways in which Irene demonstrated her braveness. They did this by citing specific examples from the story. The class then used this list to write a new letter to me in the form of another opinion piece. Next week we will start writing about each student's favorite toy. 

I still need the three pictures from Hewitt, Finn, and Luke.  They can be placed in this folder.

The kids had another glorious winter sports day on Wednesday. It is so great to see how this group helps each other get ready. I want to give a specific shout-out to Finn and Landen.  They are able to get ready fairly quickly and then kindly help others buckle up their boots too. A big kudos to them for their kindness and teamwork.  

NOTES:

*Please make sure to label any winter clothing your child brings in. It is amazing how large our lost and found (with unlabeled items) gets during the winter months.  

*Please make sure your child's homework bags is sent back to school on Wednesday mornings. With some kids bringing a different bag to school on ski days, it is hard for them to remember to grab it from their backpack.

*Each year I run a basketball camp at Harwood. If your child would like to attend, please email me for an application.

Peace,

Mr. Young

February 7, 2025

The kids have a snowball fight during morning meeting 

I am writing this on Thursday evening (instead of Friday) in order to use my Friday prep time to plan for next week. So it is only based on two and a half days of school and a Winter Program afternoon.  I hope yesterday's school cancellation didn't cause too much of a problem for your work schedules. I know I had to spend a good amount of time snow blowing and cleaning up the snow we did get. 

I had ordered a variety of new read a loud books over the past few weeks. I have been spending some time finding new and interesting book options. This week I read the book Claude, A True Story of a White Alligator by Emma Bland Smith and Once Upon A Cool Motorcycle Dude by Kevin O' Malley. Claude is the story of the California Academy of Sciences' beloved albino alligator, from his birth in Louisiana to his present day life in his swamp at the Academy. Claude is a celebrity alligator and the mascot for San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. The 2nd book begins with a boy and a girl who were supposed to tell their favorite fairy tale to their class. They couldn’t agree on which story was best, so they made one up. The girl begins. She introduces the beautiful Princess Tenderheart, who had eight beautiful ponies named Jasmie, Nimble, Sophie, Polly, Penny, Sunny, Monica, and Buttercup. When a giant begins stealing her ponies, Princess Tenderheart cries all day. The boy doesn’t like the way the story is going, so he brings in a cool motorcycle dude to fight the giant and earn the gold thread that the princess spins from straw. The girl says "wait a minute, the girl can fight for her needs too!" The girl doesn’t like the way the story is going, so they end up making an ending together that both of them can enjoy—sort of.

Reading with our Classroom Buddies

NOTES:

*As some of you know first hand, there are lots of colds, stomach bugs and a variety of other illnesses in our school community. Please reinforce the idea of hand washing and trying to use tissues to clear out our noses. 

*This is the final time I will post the class list (for Valentine's) before 2/14/25. Please use this if your child needs this list.  

Wiley, Olen, Jayden, Hewitt, River, Paxton, Emma, Hazel, Elowyn, Ava, Annabelle, Amelie, Luke, Nora, Edie, Landen, and Finne

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

Peace,

Mr. Young

February 2, 2025

I hope everyone had a good weekend and found a way to stay warm but still enjoy the outdoors. Last week we continued working on identifying character traits in stories and then writing letters that used evidence from the books we used to support the identified traits. We will continue these this week and spend some time on Tuesday/Wednesday editing them.

In science, we continued looking at sound vibrations and conducted an experiment that got the students a bit excited. They were proposed with he question, could we make salt dance?  They each wrote their own hypothesis and then we set out to test them.  The kids got to see what happens to a plate of salt when a song like Pump Up the Jam is played (next to it). The kids thought this was hilarious. We then looked at what happened when loud base noises were played compared to lower ones and what they noticed. 

It was nice for the kids to get back on the mountain this past Wednesday. The kids all seem to have a great time and enjoyed the opportunity to be outside and with their friends.  I was on bus duty on Wednesday and was so impressed with the attitudes and the behavior on the bus. I mentioned to Kaiya how impressed I was.  It looks like we will get another chance this week.

VALENTINES: Valentine's Day falls on a Friday this year. We will pass out Valentines at 2:00 that day. Your child is welcome to bring in Valentines for the class but it is not required. Here is a list of the names of the members of our class:

Olen, Jayden, Hewitt, River, Paxton, Emma, Hazel, Elowyn, Ava, Annabelle, Amelie, Luke, Nora, Edie, Landen, and Finne

NOTES:

*Please make sure your child has sneakers for our PE days on Thursdays and Fridays.

*We will have the winter program on Wednesday.  Please make sure your child has all of the appropriate gear. Also, please make sure  your child brings their homework bag back on Wednesday (especially if they don;t bring their regular back pack to school on ski days).  

I hope you all have a great week.

Peace,

Mr. Young

Happy Friday everyone! I am sitting in my classroom as I write this.  School is done for the day, the classroom is ready for Monday and I am playing some Reggae as I finish up the work of the week. As I write this, I find myself smiling about the work of the students from this past week as well as the evidence of seeing the students applying their learning to accomplish new things.  I listened to an emergent reader read to me today.  The sense of pride he felt and the smile I had may not seem like much but the feeling is one I hope everyone gets to experience within their workspace.  It's these moments that make this job so rewarding.

This week the students continued working on their character trait writings by focusing on writing letters to me.  The genre of writing continues to be persuasive and the work continues to be done in collaboration with each other. Next week the students will start to craft their own individual piece that has a similar focus.

In science we learned how sound travels through the ear and started to discuss the concept of vibrations and how they travel to the ear. This continues to be foundational concept work that will lead to them using their learned knowledge to conduct science investigations around the sound concept. 

I hope you all had a chance to read through the report cards that were sent home. These should give you a good idea on how your child is doing and also goals that we will be working on in the core academic areas. If you have any questions about your child's report card, please reach out.

I used a part of Tuesday, to talk about Martin Luther King Day and why they had a day off. A few of the kid knew who he was and one student was able to talk clearly about him. Elaina Fox was volunteering and helped read a book that we used for the discussion. The kids learned about his values, why there was a need to march. protest, and speak up. The kids then completed a writing task about what they learned from the readings and discussions. 

NOTES:

*We should have our Winter Program this Wednesday. Please make sure to have your child prepare the night before and be ready with all of their clothing needs. 

*Please, please help your child develop a homework bag routine. There is still consistently 3-4 kids who come back empty handed. This limits their ability to take books from the classroom and also means a book is missing from our classroom library.  Your help is greatly appreciated. I can always replace a lost Ziploc bag but hate seeing my books getting misplaced. 

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

Peace,

Mr. Young

January 17, 2025

The 2nd full week of January has come and gone.  It is amazing how fast the time goes by but the good news is we still have just under 95 days left to get so much done. This week marked a very successful start to the Winter Sports Program. I have to say this group is amazing! They were able to get ready efficiently, and so many students offered to help their peers to make it a very stress free event. I polled the kids the next day on how their 1st day at the mountain was.  Overall the group had a great time. The only complaint was that two kids felt their group leader stopped too much.  This made me chuckle but also showed the positive energy of the students loving the opportunity and wanting more.  As a reminder, we will go again on Wednesday, January 22nd.

We started our opinion writing unit this week.  I led a discussion about character traits and I read them a Mercy Watson book. Mercy Watson is a pig who is spoiled, special, and silly!. We then learned how to write an opinion letter (as a group) to express our feelings about Mercy being so silly. The kids learned to use evidence from the text to support their opinions. They then broke into teams and found a book that they liked. The groups are now working on defining a characteristic of a character from their book and will write me a letter telling me why they feel the character represents the identified trait. Speaking of persuasive writing; Last week I asked that each parent take a photo of three toys, bikes, etc. that are your child's favorite and dump them into this Google Drive folder. The due date is was today.  If you haven't done so, please do this over the weekend.  There are still several students who have nothing in their folder.

We continued our study of energy with a specific focus on sound energy.  We are using our knowledge of sound waves to learn how the ear works and sends a signal to our brains. We will continue to build our base knowledge of sound and then dive into some experiments before moving on to light energy.  

NOTES:

*There are no homework bags sent home on the Winter Sports Program days.  However, your child does being them home Tuesday nights. If you can make sure that comes back Wednesday morning you will be on my favorites list.

*Please make sure your child has a pair of sneakers or shoes for wearing inside of school. This is important but it has been a challenge for some.

That is all for now.  I hope you have a great weekend. We will be talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Tuesday. 

Peace,

Mr. Young