The Week of December 11

Upcoming Events

Winter Concert 

December  20, 2017 @ 6:00

Students are invited to come down to the classroom at 5:30 to hang up their coats and play until the concert begins.  We will walk down to the gymnasium together at 6:00.

Holiday Party and Pajama Day 
We are looking for elves to help out at the party. Please contact me if you are able to help out. Thank you! 

 Friday, December 22, 2017

9:00-11:00   

A notice will be in children's folders on Monday. Each child is being asked to bring  something to share at the party. Please make sure you check to see what your family has been assigned, and as always please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. 

Classroom News 

                                                    
This week was sure a busy week! Students were excited about the snow day and have been really getting excited for the upcoming holidays. We talked a lot about using our Habits of Mind in the coming weeks to maintain our classroom expectations during this time of year. We set some specific goals which include: managing our impulses, thinking flexibly when solving problems with friends, being responsible for doing our classroom jobs and striving for accuracy during our work here at school. We posted our goals above Wise Bear's path. We revisit our goals throughout the day and this has been very helpful.
There will be spelling and reading homework for the week of December 18th, but no homework on Wednesday night due to the concert. I can't wait to see the awesome performances at the concert! 

Science/Social Studies Mini- Unit
Winter Solstice

Here is our classroom tree and what it looks like now! 

On Friday we visited our classroom tree... and boy has it changed!  We had a discussion about the changes we noticed and then did a science notebook jot. Students commented that the only green trees left were evergreen trees. We talked about the changes in the weather and how it gets darker earlier these days. On Friday we visited Chandler's Tree farm and cut down our own Christmas tree! We began making some awesome ornaments to hang on the tree. A HUGE thank you goes out to Wade Chivington for helping on Friday and for cutting all of our birch wood which we are using to make our ornaments! 

Here we are at the tree farm! It was cold, but it turned out to be a
beautiful trip! I was so proud of the children, they were very well behaved
and really used their PAWS!!




Enjoying some warm cider!




The gift shop is such a wonderful place!!

          Reading and Writing Workshop 
 In readers' workshop we continued our work with fiction books. We read the book A Winter's Day by M. Christina Butler. We worked on retelling the story from beginning to end, making sure to include details about the characters, setting, problem and solution. Students wrote and drew pictures to retell the story. We have also been reading some poetry! We have explored shape poems, sensory poems and acrostic poems. The first and second graders wrote their own poems about the beautiful snow outside! Each child has their own poetry anthology and have been reading and practicing their favorites in class. In writer's workshop, we have also been working on an inquiry into punctuation. We read the book Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee. We marked and identified periods, question marks and ellipses in different books. Then we practiced using these different punctuation marks by writing sentences of our own. The kids' final drafts of their small moments books are finally completed and are ready for our Publishing Celebration on Thursday. They will be sent home on Friday in your child's home-folder. 

Fundations/Spelling
We continue to practice our different spelling patterns ( bonus letters and long i) throughout the week and continue to work on our trick words as well. We are also learning about proper nouns, nouns and adjectives. This week we took a mentor sentence from the book A Winter's Day and spent time reading and noticing everything we could about that one sentence. Students identified nouns, proper nouns and adjectives, but also noticed action words too! On Friday we will have our post assessment, and will begin a new unit of study when we return from winter break! 














Working on our mentor sentence!


Math Workshop
In math we have been working on addition and subtraction strategies. We have also been working on solving addition and subtraction word problems. We used our SMARTboard to read, and solve word problems about students in our class! This made the problems fun and engaging. We worked on solving subtraction stories by identifying the difference between two quantities, which is new this year. We also played some really fun games that helped us identify odd and even numbers. We learned some fun addition card games that helped us become more fluent with our facts of 7, 8, 9 and 10. We continue to use our number racks in class to help anchor on 5 and 10 while solving addition problems. Students are working on solving equations up to 17 on their number racks! It is amazing to hear how clear and precise they explain their thinking. This class engages in some great discussions. 





















Buddy Time
We met with our Big Buddies from Ms. Vargo's room on Friday and finished up our giant snowflakes! We began the project last week and spent time taping, stapling and hanging them up in our room on Friday! I just love how beautiful the snowflakes turned out. Here are some  photos from our project time. Please make sure you get a chance to come and check out the snowflakes at some point...they are so pretty!

    

The Week of November 27

Upcoming Events
Please remember to help your child pack their library books for Tuesday!

Early Release Day 11:30 Teacher In-Service
December 5, 2017

First Trimester Report Cards 

December 8, 2017

Students will have a yellow manila envelope that contains their first trimester report card. Please read over your child's report card together with your child. If you have any questions or comments regarding your child's report card, please contact me here at school. The report card is yours to keep. Please sign and return the first trimester comment form and envelope to school. 

Winter Concert 

December  20, 2017 @ 6:00

Students are invited to come down to the classroom at 5:30 to hang up their coats and play until the concert begins.  We will walk down to the gymnasium together at 6:00.



Classroom News

We had a great week here in first and second grade!  We were busy finishing up lots of work as we ended our first trimester. I finished up some last minute assessments with many children which helped me to see all of the AMAZING progress these students have made. Next week, we will put the finishing touches on our final draft small moment stories. The first and second graders did an amazing job on these books. In the month of December, we will explore poetry writing, and will do an inquiry into punctuation. 
We did have a school wide "lock-down" drill on Tuesday. These drills are becoming more frequent as we continue to plan and think of ways to keep our children safe each day. The kids did a great job. They were quiet, safe and ready. Ms. Epstien came to talk with our group after the drill and processed through many different feelings students had. Please remember that our goal in having these drills is to be ready for any emergency that could happen. It is hard for us all to see this shift in our society, but our number one goal is always the safety of our children and staff.  
We are in week 3 of our Farm to School grant! On Wednesdays, Ms. Stephanie makes a healthy snack from fruits or veggies. Students are learning to take responsible risks by trying out these different snacks. We have tried kale chips, grapes, and sweet potatoes! I can't wait to see what's up for this week! 






Trying out some sweet potatoes!! Whether students liked or disliked the snack, it was great to see them try new foods that are healthy! 

Scholastic Book Orders 

All orders will be due by December 8th. You can access our account online and enter the user code below. Books make great gifts for the holidays… so if you are ordering books for your children as gifts, please let me know and I’ll keep them a secret! 

CLASS CODE
LDRGD

New Sharing Topic

I have really learned a lot about the first and second graders by listening and observing the special things they have brought to share. In the month of December we will move on to another topic for morning meeting shares… special family traditions. Please help your child to bring items that have to do with special family traditions you celebrate. Traditions could be special vacations, birthday rituals, Christmas celebrations etc.  Thanks! 

Gift Making Workshops

We will be doing a secret Santa gift making workshop again this year.  Students will be drawing names from the students in our class and making a special gift for that friend. On Wednesday, December 20^th, students will be working at one of several different workshops. Teachers and para-educators will be leading a craft activity. Students will wrap their gift, and make a card for the friend they selected. We will exchange gifts at our holiday party on Friday, December 22nd (I am not sure about the time of our party yet, but I will pass that along as soon as I can!) The students love working together in multi-age groups, and they also learn to appreciate the time spent making gifts for others!