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

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