Mr. Young's Classroom

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

January 12, 2025

January 12, 2024

Good Sunny Sunday Afternoon! I hope you are all enjoying the day and getting some time outside. I had an early morning practice and was so pleased to see the bright sky when it was over. Here is a review of the week gone by.

The School District has developed a writing screener that all grades in the district were suppose to pilot last week. The screener simply consisted of the kids looking at a picture and then having to write 2 sentences about what they saw. The focus of the screener was to look at sentence structure and grammar, use and mechanic skills of writing. The good news is everyone did well on it. We will do another one in the spring.

The students used this past week to finish up some free writing and group writing activities that they had started. We will start our new writing unit this week. The new unit will focus on opinion writing. We will start the unit with a focus of writing letters about books and our favorite book characters. We will then move into other categories, including our favorite toys. I ask that each child pick out their three favorite toys and have you take a picture of each one. You will then put them into this drive folder. Please drop your child's pictures into the folder with their name. This will help with printing and organization. Please complete this by Friday.

We started a new science unit that focuses on energy with a specific focus on light and sound. Last week we explored the ideas of waves and vibrations. This week we will dive write in to a specific focus on sound and define specific vocabulary that will be used during the unit.

NOTES:

*Our first session of the school's Winter Sports Program will take place on Wednesday. The kids will undoubtedly have a lot of excitement with this. Sometimes a little nervousness may get mixed in too. Please assure your child that we will help them from start to finish. In order to have a smooth process (with getting ready and pick up time) I ask that your child have every piece of clothing, boots, goggles, and any other item labels with their name. This will save you frustration with lost items. Please take the time to do this prior to Wednesday morning.

*When the kids arrive in the morning, they don't bring their skis or snowboards to the classroom. Their clothing will be lined up in the hallway outside of our classroom. Right before we head to the mountain, we will bag up everything they aren't;t using for skiing and place it in the library. Our class' stuff will be placed near Eric's comfy chair in the library.

*There will not be any homework bags or books sent home on Wednesdays (of the winter program).

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

Peace,

Mr. Young

January 3, 2025

I hope you all had a wonderful end of December and found ways to connect and celebrate family, friends, and/or life in general. This may have been the 1st one day week that I have ever had in teaching. Today the kids created new goals for themselves. You can see their Hopes and Dreams in the picture with the yellow bordered art work. Students also worked on editing writing pieces and had their typical language arts rotations in the afternoon. Today's specials were PE and Wellness.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Peace,

Mr. Young

Their new Hopes and Dreams.

work from their study of December traditions and celebrations

I found their winter solstice pictures absolutely beautiful

Today's 1st grade math class

December 13, 2024

I hope this finds you all well and ready for the weekend. I am sure all of your schedules are quite full as this is such a busy time of the year. It is hard to believe that we only have one week left before the December break.

This week we drove into the celebrations of Kwanza and Winter Solstice. It has been so much fun watching the kids connect similar traditions and/or commonalities between the different celebrations. I think they were interested by how many of the Winter Solstice traditions are now part of so many other holiday celebrations.

I used the book Kwanza by Rachel Grack. This book contained relevant images that matched informative text in this introduction to Kwanzaa. The students learned that black, red, and green are the colors of Kwanzaa, the celebration of African-American culture. Black represents African heritage. And red and green stand for the hard times of the past and hope for the future. Next Monday each student will make a kinara and learn about the principles of Kwanza.

Today we looked at the Solstice celebration and used two different books to gain more information about the celebration. The first book was The Winter Solstice by Ellen Jackson. This book is the ultimate holiday book for readers of every persuasion. The kids got to see how the science and customs associated with the shortest day of the year have formed the traditions for every major winter holiday -- from Hanukkah to Kwanzaa and Christmas. The second book was The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper. This book "captures the magic behind the returning of seasonal light, the yearning for rituals that connect us with the generations that have gone before - and the hope for peace that we carry into the future." We will finish up a Winter Solstice activity on Tuesday morning.

First grade math (this week) continued to focus on doubles facts, seeing groups of 10 and some more, complements of 10 and for some complements of 20. All of these are working on fluency and the use for a math strategy. This month's Number Corner focus continued to look at clocks and telling time to the to hours, 1/2 hours and 1/4 hours and 3 dimensional shapes and terms. Second grade math has been focused on measuring with rulers and non standard units too.

NOTES:

*I wanted to thank everyone for your willingness to supply our class with some items for next week's Secret Pal celebration. As a reminder, you don't need to do anything for the Secret Pal part of this. I have this covered. The donated items should be sent in Thursday morning. Please don't tell them that I am their Secret Pal. I am looking forward to doing this with them.

*Next week is Test Week. Ms. Beattie and I will be doing a variety of math and language arts tests. Please do your absolute best to have your child in class all week. These assessments are part of our district's assessment plan and allows us to look at statistical growth since the fall. Most of these test are done 1:1 and in order to allow this to happen, I will use the reading group time to administer these assessments. Kids will also start their final narrative piece. I call these their Golden Stories (on yellow paper) and it allows them to show me their independence with their writing and what they have learned during this unit of study. Hopefully we will finish these before Friday. If not, the kids will finish them the 1st week back from break.

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

Peace,

Mr. Young

December 9, 2024

Good Morning! I am sorry I am just getting to last week's blog now but there are a few things I wanted to make sure you were all aware of. As I have mentioned several times this year, our social studies curriculum has us looking at traditions and celebrations and how they can be the same or look different based on culture, family, etc. The month of December certainly provides for a chance to dive deeply into this. I have decided to look at the holidays and traditions that the students might see in our community. The focus will be on Hanukkah (last week), Kwanza and Winter Solstice (this week) and Christmas and New Years (next week). This will give the students a chance to talk about what they do, to learn from how others may do it differently and to learn new information as well.

Last week I used the book Hanukkah by Molly Aloian. This book gives a very simple explanation of the holiday from its roots to the present-day celebrations. We used the book to have a discussion about Hanukkah and why it last for 8 nights and 8 days. The students learned to play the dreidel game and should have brought some chocolate coins home (on Friday) to talk to you about their learning.

Over the years I have done variations of secret pals in our classroom. This year I am going to try a different version of it. This version has you having to not worry about any of it. Instead of the kids each creating items for their secret pals, I am going to do things for all of the kids 12/17, 12/18. and 12/19. We will have a little celebration on 12/19 (in the afternoon), if you would like to donate something for the party, please sign up here. On 12/17 I will have a holiday card for each kid, on 12/18 I will have a snack for each kid, and on 12/19 I will have a small present for each kid. This will make the final week fun, allow us to tie it in to our social studies curriculum and will also connect as a class.

NOTES:

*Please remember to have your child bring sneakers for wearing inside the classroom. They can't wear their boots all day long. Also, hats and gloves are a must each day. If you want your child to just leave a pair of shoes at school, please send them in and let me know.

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

Peace,

Mr. Young

November 22, 2024

When you look out the door and you see the brightest of double rainbows shining down on our school (area) you remember to take a breath and remind yourself that there are so many positive and beautiful events and people around us. I hope many of you got a chance to see the rainbow for yourself.

This week in writing, the kids focused on writing powerful endings. We worked on a couple of collaborative endings (to stories) and the students also had the chance to go back and change some of their own endings. This allowed them to try and implement taught strategies. It was great to see that so many of the kids wanted to share their work with the class. I love the confidence that so many are feeling.

Wednesday had us looking at the final Minh Le book, The Perfect Seat. "This book has a child and their parent embark on a playful search for the "perfect seat" to read a story, exploring various options that are too rough, too slippery, too high, or too low, ultimately discovering that the best spot is right in the parent's lap, highlighting the comfort and closeness of laptime storytelling." After the students read the book, they each created their ultimate chair. They had an unlimited budget and could go wild with their ideas and designs. These will be completed next week and hung in the hallway outside our room.

Last week we had finished our science unit on Moon phases, the sun, and shadows. After the Thanksgiving break we will focus on the stars in the sky. This week I used the "between units" time to have the kids take part in a STEM Challenge. They worked in teams of three to each design and then build their own catapults. The goal is to be able to have their catapult launch a candy corn 10 feet. As you can imagine, when ever kids can fling things the engagement and excitement rises considerably. Next week we will have our challenge of hitting the target at 10 feet, learning how to make changes, and then documenting their learning in their science notebooks.

TRADITIONS AND CELEBRATIONS: As I have mentioned many times, this year's social studies curriculum focus is traditions and culture. We will use next Tuesday afternoon to learn from each other and write about how families in our classroom celebrate Thanksgiving. The kids will share their family traditions. In order to help with this, I ask that you please fill this Google Sheet out. It will help me guide the discussion and help them write too. If you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, now worries. We will always talk about why people choose that too. That way we learn from each other and gain an understanding of differences within our classroom community. This form will need to be completed by 11/25/24.

NOTES:

*I will be sending out a December book order. In order to receive them by 12/19/24, the due date is 12/3/24. Please see the information below to order:

Family Order Due Date: 12/03/2024

Shop Our Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/K3277

Shop Flyers: https://clubs.scholastic.com/all-flyers

*There will be no homework bags sent next week. Please remember that Tuesday is our last day of school.

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

Peace,

Mr. Young

November 15, 2024

Good Afternoon,

It was great chatting with so many of you during our conferences this week. I always appreciate the opportunity to do so and the conversations that they allow for. Again, if you have any other questions please reach out anytime.

I am collecting any empty tissue or cereal box that you may have between now and next Thursday. If you, your friends, or neighbors have any, could you collect them and send them in. We will be working on a STEM Challenge on Thursday and Friday of next week. After 11/21, please don't send any more of the items in. I appreciate your help with this.

Being that it has been a lot of late evenings this week and the fact that I have chatted with you at conferences, I am going to post some pictures from the week and just write some captions for each one. This will allow you to connect with your child and also allow me to finish this post before the kids get back from Wellness class.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Peace,

Mr. Young