September 26, 2025

I wanted to start this week's post with a shout out to this week's Student of the Week. This amazing young child will be leaving our class and heading to a new school on Wednesday. His favorite food is hamburgers. Although Cheez-Its may be a close 2nd. His favorite color is yellow. His favorite activity is swimming and he loves being with his friends. Today we celebrated this person with a small going away tribute. I want to thank all of the students for making wonderful pictures and cards for him.

A couple of weeks back we created our classroom rules.  These rules were created by the class and were guided by the goals that each kid set for themselves. The rules are now posted and the kids have all signed the rules poster. Now that we have our rules set, I have introduced the concept of Logical Consequences. Logical Consequences help students understand the connection between their actions and the outcomes. These consequences are respectful and relevant to the situation.Logical consequences are not punishments. Instead, they are direct, reasonable, and respectful responses to a child's misbehavior that teach self-control and responsibility. They help children learn from their mistakes and fix problems they've created.

In our classroom, this approach focuses on three main types of consequences:

1. "You Broke it, You Fix it" (Reparation) 

This consequence is used when a child has physically or emotionally damaged something or someone. The focus is on repairing the harm done.

• Example: If your child draws on a desk, the logical consequence is for them to clean the desk.

• Example: If your child hurts a classmate's feelings, the logical consequence might be for them to apologize and ask what they can do to help the classmate feel better.

2. Loss of Privilege 

If a student misuses a privilege, they temporarily lose access to that privilege. This consequence is only effective when the lost privilege is directly related to the misbehavior.

• Example: If your child races dangerously on the playground equipment, they may have to sit out from the playground for a short period to observe the rules before returning.

• Example: If a child misuses a classroom supply (like scissors), they may temporarily have to use an alternative tool or complete the activity without that specific supply.

3. Time-Out or Take a Break (Positive Time-Out) 

This is a time for the child to calm down and regain self-control. It is not used as isolation or a threat. In our classroom, the student is often given the option to take a break when they notice they are getting upset or when the teacher sees them struggling to follow directions.

• How it Works: The child moves to a designated, comfortable, and safe area in the classroom (called the Take-a-Break spot). They are encouraged to take a moment to breathe or use a calm-down tool before rejoining the class ready to learn.

Key Takeaways for Parents 

• Focus is on Learning: The goal isn't to make your child feel bad, but to teach responsibility and self-management.

• Consistency is Crucial: Consequences work best when they are applied predictably and fairly.

• Respectful Language: Teachers deliver consequences calmly and firmly, focusing on the behavior, not the child's character ("I see you are having trouble keeping your hands to yourself. Please take a break.").

This method helps students develop the understanding that they are in charge of their own actions and must be responsible for the effects of those actions. Please let me know if you have any questions about the Logical Consequence approach.

The students have been learning how to write like scientists. They each have their own science notebook and have used their observation skills to complete entries in their notebooks. They have been observing flowers and leaves and then drawing, labeling, and coloring them in their notebooks. Today they will work on "I noticed" statements. They are really excited about this work.

This week's 1st grade math focused on the strategy of counting on. The counting on strategy is crucial in first-grade math because it develops essential number sense and fluency, transitioning students from concrete counting to more efficient mental math and laying the foundation for advanced mathematical concepts. It allows students to quickly solve addition problems by starting with the larger number and counting up, which strengthens their ability to conceptualize numbers and understand the relationship between them. This strategy supports the concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) learning progression and helps students become more confident and independent problem-solvers.

This week's 2nd grade math focused on solving addition and subtraction story problems using 2 digit numbers. Addition and subtraction word problems are important in 2nd grade because they connect abstract math concepts to real-world situations, helping students build deeper conceptual understanding rather than just memorizing procedures. These problems foster essential skills like critical thinking, logic, and step-by-step problem-solving, which are crucial life skills. By using stories, students can activate their prior knowledge, see how math applies to everyday life, and develop a strong foundation for future mathematical learning, including understanding operations and problem structure.

This week's read-a-louds (all but 1) continued to focus on our fall theme. We have been talking about how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful area. Next week's read-a-louds will focus on social emotional themes. I have linked them all so you can listen to them with your child.

• The Magical Yet
• There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves
• Goodbye Summer Hello Autumn
• How to Make an Apple Pie
• Windows

Sticking with the fall theme, the students all created their own fall leaves and they are hung above their cubbies. They look great and allows them to feel like the leaves are raining down on them.

NOTES:

*The Scholastic book orders should be in by Monday.

*The All School Hike will be this coming Wednesday. We will leave the school around 8:00 and will return around noon time. I will sign up each kid for a school lunch that day. If they decide to bring their own home lunch, it will not be a big deal at all. I do ask that the students wear sneakers and dress for the weather. I also ask that they come to school with very little in their backpacks. That way they are nice and light. Please, please have your child bring a water bottle with their name on it.

*We will have a fire safety assembly and a chance to visit the fire people on Friday, October 3rd. This will happen after lunch on Friday.

I hope you all have a great weekend.  GO STEELERS!

Peace,

Mr. Young

September 19, 2025

It has been said that "the secret to your future is your daily routine." I feel this quote sums up this week's work. The students have taken what they have learned about our classroom routines and have put them into action in a very impressive way. 

Thursday marked the first day where we implemented all five rotations in our language arts block. This happens from 9:55-11:10. I moved it up 5 minutes (from the original schedule) to allow us 5 minutes to clean up and get to recess on time. This is the 1st year I am having 5 rotations but it will allow me to have very small, student focused reading groups. It also allows for very specific differentiation that will be catered to each student's specific needs. This year the 5 rotations will include reading groups with me, Lexia/Core 5, Word Work, Writing Time, and Read to Self. We have this time everyday with the exception of Wednesdays and each station lasts for 15 minutes. Here is a brief description of each station.

Reading Groups: This time will have kids getting small, flexible, and targeted instruction based on students' specific needs in foundational reading skills. The instruction is rooted in the "Science of Reading," which emphasizes five core components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Lexia/Core 5:  This is an online, computer-based reading program that provides personalized, adaptive learning in key literacy skills like phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Grounded in the Science of Reading and Structured Literacy principles, the program uses interactive activities and games to target specific skill gaps and accelerate reading growth.

Word Work: This is a literacy station where students engage in hands-on activities to develop their understanding of spelling sight words.  Each student spends three weeks working on their individualized list. You will hear your kids talk about using smelly markers, Magna-Doodles, and a variety of other tools to proactive these words. 

Read to Self: This is a structured time where students practice independent reading for extended periods, focusing on building reading stamina and confidence. During this component, students independently select "good-fit" books from their book bags, find a spot in the classroom, and read quietly by themselves, applying strategies like reading the words and retelling the story. This activity aims to develop lifelong readers by providing consistent, focused time for engaging with texts at their own reading level.

Writing Time:  This is a station that allows kids to continue their writing work from our writing lessons. Students will also use this time to fill out their Weekly News Journals. Those journals will come home on Fridays (starting next week). By adding this rotation to the schedule, it gives kids an extra 60 minutes of writing a week and helps off set the writing time we lose during the Winter Sports Program. 

On Wednesday I read the story, The Most Magnificent Team by Ashley Spires. This book is about a girl and her dog who discover their neighbor and her cat are using their usual workspace, leading them to decide to work together to build something. Their differing approaches to creativity and teamwork cause conflict and frustration. The story highlights the challenges of collaboration, emphasizing the importance of patience, compromise, and learning to appreciate different working styles to achieve a common goal. 

After reading the book, the students spent some time creating their own name card using paint sticks. This was the 1st time many of them have used this tool and they really seemed to enjoy them. While they were at PE, on Thursday, I took the pieces and created our "class sculpture." I explained to them that individually we have 20 pieces of well decorated name tags. However, when we put them all together we create a beautiful sculpture. I will refer to this "team dynamic" euphemism throughout the year and talk about how our team can be "beautiful" when we use each of our talents to work together. 

This week's writing prompt had kids writing about their favorite desert and a writing prompt about the previous weekend. The goal continues to be to get kids to draw a picture and then write about it. The students also focused on doing their best with spelling and pushing their efforts to add more detail and elaboration.

1st Grade Math: This week the students spent a significant amount of time playing a game called 10 and Some More. This is a math game from the Bridges' curriculum that helps students understand and build teen numbers (11–19) by recognizing they consist of a group of ten and some additional ones. The game can be played individually and is designed to build number sense and place value understanding. The students also used number racks to build number combinations and build representations of 10 frame dot cards that were quickly flashed at them.

2nd Grade Math:  Mr. Hubbard's 2nd graders continued their work with Venn Diagrams and attribute blocks. The students use Venn diagrams to visually compare and contrast, fostering critical thinking, while attribute blocks provide a hands-on way to sort and classify objects based on properties like color, shape, and size, laying the groundwork for mathematical and logical skills. Together, these tools help children organize information, recognize patterns, and develop reasoning abilities by classifying concrete examples before moving to more abstract concepts.

THIS WEEK'S READ-A-LOUDS:

Here are the titles to this week's read-a-louds and the links if you want to hear them read. The books continue to have a fall theme as we celebrate a season that is celebrated so well in our state. Sometimes it is fun to do this with your child and get their feedback about the book. 

Monday: Mouse's First Fall

Tuesday: We're Going on a Leaf Hunt

Wednesday: The Leaf Thief

Thursday: Wonderfall

Friday:  Apples A-Z

This week's Student of the Week is pictured below. She is a wonderful 2nd grader who loves strawberry pie. Her favorite activity is to bake cakes. Her favorite place to go is the ocean and she wants to go back to Bonaire with her family. She has three pets and her favorite color is turquoise. When she grows up, she wants to be a dress designer. Her favorite thing to do in school is to read!

NOTES:

*The book orders are due today (Friday). I will submit them this evening. 

*Please help your child develop a daily routine on taking care of their homework bag. Overall, I have been very impressed with how well the class is doing with this.

*The All School Hike is scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, September 24th, We will leave the school around 8:00 and will return around noon time. I will sign up each kid for a school lunch that day. If they decide to bring their own home lunch, it will not be a big deal at all. I do ask that the students wear sneakers and dress for the weather. I also ask that they come to school with very little in their backpacks. That way they are nice and light. Please, please have your child bring a water bottle with their name on it.

*This year's Open House Night will be on Tuesday, September 30th at 5:30 pm.

*The homework bags will not be sent home this weekend.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Peace,

Mr. Young

September 12, 2025

I hope you have all had a great week. It was quite a busy week, so I will jump right in. This week in math, the 1st graders learned how our math stations will run (each day). The students focused on writing numerals and eliminating reversals, comparing numbers and continued lessons in Zearn. Yesterday, each student completed the Stars Math Assessment (a district required assessment). Ms. Beattie also screened each student's current abilities with rote counting (within 50), writing and identifying 2 digit numbers, and identifying groups of dots within a ten frame structure. All of this information will be used to guide my math instruction during the month of September and into October. The 2nd grader math students have been working on attributes of shapes and learning how to sort and graph them.

This week I read a book to the students called A Beautiful Oops, by Barney Saltsburg. "This book is an interactive children's book that encourages a growth mindset by showing how mistakes like tears, spills, and smudges can be transformed into something beautiful and creative with imagination. The book uses pop-ups, lift-the-flaps, and unique art to demonstrate that accidents are not failures, but rather opportunities for new ideas and artistic discoveries." After we read the book, the students each created their own "mistake" on their paper and turned it into a "beautiful oops." This work can be seen on the bulletin board at the end of the hall (near our classroom). 

Our Hopes and Dreams are completed! This week each student illustrated their first Hope and Dream (goal) for the year.  Each student identified something that they want to get better at or learn to do in our classroom.  This afternoon, the students used these illustrations to come up with possible rules we would need in our room to allow for success (toward the goals).  We will refine this list next week.

My hope and dream this year is for the class to work together as a team and to think about others in their actions and words. The idea of thinking about others can be challenging and not always modeled in the best of ways. This concept will also be a sort of theme for our class this year. I have talked about simple things like holding the door for the next person to examples of cleaning up our space so others can use it. I challenge all of you to take this theme on with them. It would be great to connect this across their everyday lives. The students will be encouraged to share how they are doing this during our Morning Meetings and other times of the day.

Over the next 16 blog posts, I will introduce a student from our class. I am going alphabetically according to their last names.  I am starting with Z and working my way toward A. I will post a picture but will not post their name. Please ask you child who each kid is. Here is this week's Student of the Week.

This person is playing soccer this year and is very excited about joining a soccer team. His favorite food is spaghetti and meatballs. He is in 2nd grade and celebrates his birthday in March. His favorite color is blue and he loves to swim at night in the water. He wants to travel to the beach. 

This Week's Read-A-Louds Were (They are linked so you can listen with your child):

*Gilbert Goldfish Wants a Pet

*Guess Again

*You're Going to Love This Book

*17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore!

Thank you to all of those who are able to volunteer this year. Here is the most recent version of the schedule. There are still two spots open, if anyone wants them, just let me know. There is also a link on the right side of this blog page that allows you to view this schedule whenever needed.  

We also finished our All About Me posters this week. As you can see from the posters, quite a bit of detail and work goes into them. It allowed me to have the kids work on a meaningful project while introducing tools that we use and getting them use to pushing themselves  with their work. They are hanging up in our classroom library. 

NOTES:

*The Scholastic book orders are due by September 19th.  

*Photo day is this Wednesday.

*Great job with the homework bags and getting all of the books returned today. This is such a huge help for me and makes things so easy.  I appreciate your efforts.

*Your child is bringing home a form for the Everyone Wins program.  Please look for it in your child's bag and help them fill it out (if they are interested in applying). If your child did it last year, they don;t have to apply again. You can find more information about it here.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Peace,

Mr. Young

September 5, 2025

What a great 2nd week of school! The class has been enjoying some funny read-a-louds, sharing at Morning Meeting, and interacting through games and conversations. The overall theme continues to be getting to know our routines, our expectations, and how we function as a community of learners. 

The kids have been working diligently on posters that go into quite a bit of detail about themselves. These posters allow me to work on following multi-step directions and pushing the students to do their best with their work. It's great to see the students taking time to look at their own work but also that of their classmates. These posters will be displayed in the hallway right outside our classroom door.

Today we added each kid's name to our word wall. The word wall has 100 of the most common spelled sight words and adding student names will help when they are writing stories that involve their friends. It also helps achieve the goal of kids getting to know each kids name. This week the kids finished a "stained glass"  project. This project allowed me to teach the kids about detail, using different art tools and following multi step directions. You can see these on the bulletin board outside our classroom door or check out the picture.

Yesterday we talked about why they come to school. The kids identified reason like "to learn," "to see our friends," and other reasons along the same lines. The one that made me laugh was when a child said, "to get us out of the house." Today we used that conversation to identify students strengths in school and each child told us about something that they did well last year. I then turned the focus to asking them to think of something they wanted to get better at or learn to do in our classroom this year. I wanted them to think of a goal that each of them would want to accomplish. These goals will be known as their Hopes and Dreams as we start the academic year. We will revisit these goals periodically and students will create new ones as needed. Next week, the students will use these goals to create classroom rules that they feel are needed to allow them to focus and accomplish their Hopes and Dreams.

You may hear  child talk about "shopping for books" and the term read to self. This week I introduced the students to the concepts of finding good fit books for times when they need to read books to themselves. There are three ways that kids can read books:

• Read the Words: This is where kids who are already reading can go page by page and read the words in the stories they have chosen.
• Read the Pictures: This is where the kids can use the pictures and "read them" to gain an understanding of what is going on in the story.
• Retell from Memory: This is where kids can look at the pages and tell you the story from hearing it so many times.

The kids use the grocery bags that you sent in to collect 7 books each week for this activity. Thank you for those who were able to send in a bag. I had a few extra so everyone is now set.

NOTES:
*Parent volunteers will start in October. If you would like to volunteer this year, please use this link to sign up for a slot. You don't have to sign up if you wish to visit the classroom. That can happen anytime (after October). This is more for people who can commit to a weekly or bi-weekly time slot. If you sign up for the math time, that is for 1st grade math. Any 1st or 2nd grade parent can sign up but it will be for my 1st grade math class. To sign up, just type your name into the spot you wish to do (you can do as many as you want).

*I will do three book orders this year. A September one, a December one, and one in May. The September order forms and information will be sent home on Monday. The deadline for orders will be September 20th. All orders will be done online. If that doesn't work for you, please let me know and I will work something else out. I use Scholastic because it allows students to access interesting books at a fairly cheap price and it also allows me to use reward points to get free books for the classroom.

Here’s how it works: I’ll send home flyers like these throughout the year. If you decide to place an order, you can do that through our class ordering page. Your books will arrive at school about 10 days after I submit our classroom order.

Order due date: 09/19/25
Shop our class page: https://orders.scholastic.com/K3277
Class code: K3277

*Homework bags will start coming home next week. These are a gallon Ziploc bag that will have your child's name on it. I explained these in my introduction letter too. Any forms, notes, or information that you need to see, will be in this bag. Please look for it each night, take care of the items and then send the bag back. Eventually kids will be able to take home a book (each night) from our classroom library. The books must stay in this bag when it is not being read. Please take the time to work with your child on this routine and how to take care of the books they bring home. Books will start coming home at the start of next week. These books are ones that the kid should like read to them and/or can read themselves. It is optional each night. 

HOWEVER, I need the books to be returned (in the plastic Ziploc bag) each day.  Even if you don't get to finish a book or have a chance to read it, I need them sent back daily.  Homework bags won't come home on Fridays. 

That is all for now. I hope you all have a great weekend. My wife celebrates the anniversary of her 29th birthday this weekend. Along with that, I hope to get out and enjoy some time kayaking. I can't wait for week three and all that it has in store.

Peace,

Mr. Young