Español Aquí: Febrero Boletín
I hope everyone had a restful long weekend! This month our morning meetings have focused on things in the classroom that have been harder for us. Topics such as competitiveness inside and outside the class, frustrations during certain transitions, and struggles with specific academic times all came up. During our meetings we're practicing how we can have open and honest conversations so we can use them to make positive changes during our day. We've come up with different strategies (which all come from the students) to either make changes to our schedule, new ways we can approach each other on the yard, and so on. These conversations have really helped the students and myself work on how we can approach each other with questions, support each other during moments of struggle, and identifying how those moments we may not necessarily enjoy during the day are the ones where we feel the most stuck. Something a student said the other week was, "Your voice sounds like you're still pretty upset." This was such a beautiful moment because it modeled to everyone how we can respectfully express what we're thinking in a moment that validates everyone's thoughts and feelings. This moment is what we continue to mention in our meetings and I'm hoping throughout the rest of the year we continue to build this language that will support our relationships inside and outside of the classroom. One topic that came up amongst a majority of the students was when we feel stuck during writer's workshop. We took this and began an imagination unit where we focus on improving the creative parts of storytelling with a partner or multiple partners to help each other with ideas and adding greater detail to our stories. This led to reader's workshop where children brought up a new way to use our books bags where we can hold onto books we love and using them as mentor texts to support the writing process. In math we are focusing heavily on place value and reasoning through word problems. We begin with teen numbers and then extend up to 100. As the math problems become bigger, we're also sharing strategies used so that everyone can learn from each other. While at home I encourage you to practice counting by 10's, identify tens and ones place value in numbers around your home/community. The students have really enjoyed mixing ingredients together, whether it be glue, water colors, food coloring, and pretty much anything they find that they can mix with water, hah! So we're starting a chemical reaction journey next week, where we'll use the alphabet to bring in items to mix together and discover what will happen. Very excited to start this and see how the students can sort and identify reactors. Upcoming Dates: Thursday's- Library @ 11am Friday 2/25- Art class @ 1:30pm & Picture Day Monday 2/28- Garden Class @ 8:45am (this will be our last garden class) Tuesday's- Early Dismissal @ 1:28pm Note: Friday is picture day! I sent home a form today to return by Friday. You can choose to take and buy photos or choose to opt out. We have already taken a class photo so these are solely individual photos to purchase for home.
1 Comment
Español Aquí: Febrero Boletín
I hope your family had a restful weekend! Our class welcomed another new student last week and it's been wonderful introducing Indy to our Elysian Heights community! With new students entering our classroom, we're reviewing routines and spending our morning meetings discussing relationship building strategies and ways to solve problems we may encounter with others. This ongoing conversation will help us work together as a stronger community where we feel safe sharing those harder moments and we can begin supporting each other in finding solutions to them. Last week, we began our 6-week long gardening class where the children will get to learn about all the plants, vegetables, and herbs we can plant together. Every Monday at 8:45 am we will visit the garden where Ms. Maura will take the students on this fun and exciting journey! Tomorrow marks the start of Black History Month and the Lunar New Year where we'll focus on learning their true history and voices. We'll discuss different artists, scientists, authors, and more to showcase the significant impact their culture has contributed to our society. Our literacy workshop focus for the week will be on rhyming words, stories, and poems to support reading patterns and build vocabulary for our written stories. Math workshop is focusing on subtraction of multi digit numbers in word problems. At home, students can practice grouping tens and ones when using numbers to support place value skills. Important Dates: Monday- Art & Garden Class Tuesday- Dismissal @ 1:28 pm Wednesday- Theater @ 1:30 pm Thursday- Library @ 11 am Friday- Music @ 1:30 pm I've outlined all important new protocols from our Superintendent below: -Students are required to to wear a non-cloth mask, with a nose wire at all times, including while participating in athletic activities. The school will provide masks for any student who may need them. -Close contacts will no longer be sent home and the entire, all students and employees will be considered close contacts and can remain on campus as long as they are not showing symptoms and continue testing negative. Happy New Year!
Español Aquí: Enero Boletín I hope everyone's holiday break was restful and safe. It's been quite eventful over the last few weeks, but I'm glad to be back with everyone and see the kids just as happy to return to school. My priority in our return to campus during such an intense surge in the pandemic, is to ensure all the students in our classroom feel as safe as possible. So thank you for being so cooperative with the new guidelines for returning and I look forward to continue our learning this semester. Unfortunately, our classroom was one of many who had a positive case detected during the week, so I want to encourage all the students to bring proper masks. Cloth masks can be worn, but with 1 case in our classroom in the first week I'm hoping we can minimize the risks of others being infected by wearing medical masks, kn95, or N95. So far everyone in the classroom continues to feel well and the next COVID testing date will be tomorrow morning. I'd also like to highly encourage anyone who has a positive case in their household to keep their child home for the required quarantine days to minimize exposure to the rest of our students and their families. In our return last week, we welcomed a new student to our class and it's been a pleasure having Ona in our community! During the day, our class focused on setting goals for the year ahead of us in school, at home, and our personal hopes. We practiced sentence structure and mapping our ideas and we used this to create an art piece that shares our hopes for 2022. Below you can find a photo of the work some of the students created. This week we will focus on getting back into our Reader's Workshop routines of adding stories or novels that they are focusing on for the entire week or several weeks to their book bags. We will begin literature circles that focus on different strategies each group will practice that consist of phonics and/or comprehension skills based on their group's specific needs. In our small group and whole group instruction we will honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the teachings he promoted to dismantle white supremacy. We'll read stories, watch short clips, and discuss how we can continue to promote his teaching and legacy everyday. Math will being bridging into solving word problems with teen numbers and above with 2 or 3 addends. We introduced new math manipulatives that represent tens and ones place value. When practicing math at home, I recommend asking them problems that use the language "How many more?" or "How much less?" as we will see this in our words problems throughout the remainder of the year. Important Dates: Tuesday- Early Dismissal 1:28 pm Wednesday- Theater Class @ 8:20 am Thursday- Library @ 11:00 am Friday- Music @ 1:30 I hope to have a great week! Español Aqui: 12 de Diciembre Boletín
I hope everyone had a restful weekend before our last week of the first semester of 1st grade. I can't believe we're already half way through the year and I'm so excited to see what this next semester brings us! First I'd like to thank you all for supporting each student in our class with their return to school. It was every child's first time experiencing elementary school (with closer to normal experiences) and we really worked hard to build a collaborative community over the last 4 months. With it being new to all the students in our class we were confronted with so many new personalities and behaviors many of the children hadn't experienced before and every child has grown in their ability to communicate, collaborate, and be empathetic towards each other. We continue, every day, to remind ourselves to always look to understand each other's actions and feelings, so that we can build an even stronger community of love at our school. I've seen such tremendous growth in every child, and many of the bumps in the road we faced at the beginning of the year have smoothed out. I've seen so many new and beautiful friendships blossom, and I hope to continue to see more when we return from winter break. As we look towards our last week of school we have LOTS of fun events to close out the year. Tomorrow we will be mailing out the finished book the students created together and we're very excited to see it published into a hardcover book. For anyone who hasn't returned the signed paper stating yes or no to purchase a copy, please do so by tomorrow. Wednesday, 12/15 is the Winter Performance and there will be 2 showings you can choose to attend, 8:30 am OR 1:15 pm. ATTIRE: Please have the children dress in any of their favorite clothing items but they MUST be a solid color only. Please refrain from wearing anything with patterned colors or lettering on it. In class we will be making a crown to wear, so please do not put any headpieces on your child for the show. Friday, 12/17 is our last day of school! Our class will be celebrating by having a camp out reading experience. They can wear their pajamas, bring 1 blanket, 1 pillow, and 1 stuffed animal (they can choose not to, or to bring only a few of the items). I will be making a Mexican Hot Chocolate recipe, s'mores(but with no fire), and one of our classmates bought some delicious cookies! Everything is optional to eat, so if any child does not want any of the items, they are welcome to bring something yummy from home to munch on. School will be let out at 1:18pm and then they are free to enjoy their winter break! I wish everyone a joyful holiday season! Happy December!
Traducción al español aquí: Diciembre Boletín It's been quite a while since our last newsletter, but we've been working hard in the classroom! Over the last few months we focused on literature through the arts. Our first project culminated with the students creating their own folktales using story boards. We read folktales from Latin cultures such as Mexico, El Salvador, Cuba, and more. The students loved learning about how the different cultures represented their daily lives or made sense of their surroundings. We broke into 4 small groups and each child created a part of their group's stories and their incredible artwork and stories written are displayed in our main hallway. This last month we read stories about Indigenous cultures and how they told stories through the art of clay pottery. We read the story "When Clay Sings" and learned how cultures all over the world used the arts to tell stories of their lives. This allowed us to reintroduce clay into our art area and the students are using a variety of designs to create artifacts that represent aspects of their own lives. The students are also working on engineering design concepts and using different materials in the classroom to think about our essential question: How can we design a moving object? Some students created a moving object with new lego materials and discovered how weighted objects can push or pull their design, allowing it to move forward and backward, which led to newer ideas for other children to use with their objects. Each morning we discuss our question and we will continue sharing new ideas during our morning meetings. Our most recent finished writing project is our class book, where we discussed how we can be and show love to others, not only in our classroom but the outside world too. Each child wrote and illustrated 2 pages in our class book and they worked so incredibly hard to create a published piece to share and keep in our classroom for years to come. Exciting news!! You also have the opportunity to purchase the book to keep at home! Today, I sent home 2 items for you to return in order to publish our book: 1) Please mark "Yes" if you will be purchasing a book to keep home OR mark "No" if you will not purchase a book. Every child MUST return the form signed whether you choose to purchase or not. 2) If you choose to purchase a book please fill out BOTH the form and the envelope with the necessary information. All forms and envelopes MUST be returned by Friday, 12/10 Upcoming Events: Thursday's: Library Day-please be sure to return any checked out library books Friday's: Music Class Wednesday 12/15: Winter Music Performance- 8:30am & 1:15 pm (More info on what the attire will be in the next few days) Friday 12/17: Last Day of School! Minimum Day Dismissal @ 1:18 pm(No Lego Club) Last week we began celebrating Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month, which also marked Mexican Independence Day. We watched videos about music and food from different cultures and we began this week by reading The Heart of Mi Familia, a story that takes us into the life of a young boy who comes from multiple cultures.
As we continue to build our community in the classroom, we're shifting from our own identities to our families. We'll be creating family portraits, sharing our favorite family stories, and learning about each other's cultures and traditions. We'll take this theme into writing and story workshop, where the students will begin telling and making books about their families. Last week we shifted from story telling to book making, where the students now bring their stories onto paper and create any type of genre book. Today we finished making our first shared writing piece about our families, where we created a class book that introduces new sight words and vocabulary. As we continue this topic, I'd like to ask everyone to please email me a family photo that I can print out and place in a frame to keep in our classroom this year. Our art classes started and the students have had so much fun with our teachers. In art we've done color mixing and collage pieces that are displayed in the main entrance, theater class with Ms. K happens every other Wednesday, and Music class is every Friday with Ms. Tuthill. On Monday, I will be sending home a grammar and spelling workbook and grade level decodables to use for everyday practice at home. If there is anything more I can do to support your child at home, please don't hesitate to reach out. THANK YOU to those who have donated supplies and books to our classroom! The speaker, math games, pencils, geometric shapes, and books will be so useful to use this year! I can't thank you enough for your kindness and support. I hope you have a great rest of the week! I hope you had a restful long weekend!
This week we're shifting our focus to our identities. We've gotten to know what lives in each of our hearts, and now we're working on getting to know each other better. We shared a few stories about our names, and this week we'll work on self portraits to create our own class identity book. We read stories such as Alma and How She Got Her Name and The Best Part of Me which has sparked conversation about the parts of ourselves we love the most and want to share with the world. If there is a story you can share with your child about their name please do, so we can learn even more about each other! In math we're beginning to solve picture and word problems and representing our answers in a variety of ways, such as number bonds, number sentences, and using manipulatives. I sent home a math workbook that includes homework pages from units (modules) 1-3, which should last them until the end of this semester. This can be used as a math practice resource at home for each day of the week. We've been writing every day, whether it's through journal writing about our weekends and feelings or story telling in writer's workshop. Our current focus is helping the students identify and use phonetic sounds when writing words they haven't memorized yet. This will help us in the future when working with new spelling patterns, so that they can practice phonemic awareness skills everyday and take them into both their reading and writing practice. This week I'll begin administering the district reading assessment that in done at the beginning, middle, and end of the year. This assessment includes phonemic awareness, letter recognition, nonsense word fluency (reading words such as "lat" "lum" "mon"), sight word recognition, and a fluency reading passage. If you are interested in seeing your child's results you are welcome to email me and I can send them over once the assessment is finished. Reminders: -Picture Day: Friday 9/10- If you'd like to purchase any photos please be sure to send back the form OR you can purchase online here. -NO SCHOOL: Thursday 9/16 -Please be sure to return the white folder back to our class each day so I can send home more notices, information, and practice work. -If your child would like to sign up for any clubs, all forms can be found in the office. Hope you enjoy the rest of this short week! P.S. Some parents asked how they can support our classroom this year. Below are links to our amazon wishlists for books and supplies, and my donors choose account where I fundraise for materials that might be outside of amazon. We love books!! Our last week in 1st grade is here! What a ride it's been, but I'm glad we survived together. Distance learning is not something any of us would like to experience again, but it had so many great moments to remember. We welcomed each other into our homes, found ways to build relationships virtually, made new friends, and most importantly supported one another through some difficult moments. These children are so special to me and I wish I had more time with them in the classroom.
I'd like to thank each one of you for making this craziness of a year a little less crazy. Not only are the children incredible, but so are you! Thank you for sticking through all the internet issues, the lack of materials, and the constant changes throughout the year. Each one of you was so amazingly flexible and kind this year and I really can't say how thankful I am for you all enough. This week is our celebration! Wednesday June 9th @ 10am, each child will read a poem we've worked on in class over the last few weeks and then we'll all sing a song to end our celebration. I've asked them to practice the song while at home on Monday & Tuesday and I've sent lyrics home with them. Day of Event: Please enter through the garden gate (located on Valentine St.) Mr. Garza and I will be there to let you into the garden. AM Group: Please bring your child to school at the regular time- 8am PM Group: Please be sure to bring your child by 10 am Families will be spaced approx. 6ft apart on each bench and your child will be sitting with you. Don't forget to wear your masks, and your temperature will be taken at the gate. I can't wait to see you Wednesday and I hope everyone enjoys summer break!! Thank you all for being so wonderful and I'll miss you so much next year! Over the last few weeks the students have been intrigued by mythical stories and we've been reading some myths & folktales from Asia and the Pacific Islands. It's been beautiful to hear and learn about these stories and bring a bit of their culture into our classroom this month. We head into our final week of the month and we'll continue sharing folktales, virtually exploring more countries, and so much more.
The children were inspired to create their own mythical creatures during this process, and they've been hard at work building and creating a story for them. We've incorporated this project into our opinion writing unit and they have been writing about their creature and it's significance to them. This has helped me support their writing in the last few weeks, but also gives them space to be creative. During our last 3 weeks, math will consist of problem solving with double digit and tripe digit numbers to get them ready for 2nd grade. In class we will work through word problems together, and at home they can review some of the strategies in their workbooks. Reminders: COVID Testing will be tomorrow, Monday 5/25. Early dismissal tomorrow: AM Cohort @ 10:30am & PM Cohort @ 2:00pm There are only 3 weeks left of first grade and I wish we could've spent so much more time together in the class! I'm hoping these last few weeks don't go too fast! 4 weeks down and 4 more to go!
The last 2 weeks have been busy! We let our butterflies out, began art classes in the garden, practiced some really amazing writing, and began using our wind tunnel! It's been a blast, and I've really enjoyed watching all the things the children have made throughout the day. We started opinion writing with lots of different ways for them to share their thinking with each other and we'll continue working on expanding our writing to create books that share their opinions of things they are passionate about. We've been exploring with the wind tunnel this week, and discovered what objects and structures can be blown through, and learned how wind forms in our own atmosphere. Over the next 4 weeks we're going to practice lots of writing skills and start working towards math skills that will be practiced in second grade. Asynchronous Work: I totally dropped the ball on homework over the last 2 weeks but will send the sheet home with them on Monday! All homework is optional and does not need to be turned in. Covid Testing: The testing team will be here on Monday again, so hopefully everyone is present Monday, if not then please plan on getting a test done outside the school. Excited for another great week....a little sad it's all going by so fast!! |
Room 14 EventsA review of what we have worked on in the classroom each week and important announcements! |