Week of October 16th-20th

Hi Families,

We had a busy and productive week. We enjoyed a delightful visit from Diane D’Angleo (Emma’s mom) who shared her love of gardening with the class and encouraged students to pursue hobbies. She even brought in a hands-on flower exploration for students to enjoy. We wrapped up a number of study areas: we finished our short study of poetry and poetic techniques; we finished Unit 1 in Math; we completed our Science exploration on erosion; and we got through our phonics lessons on the vowel-consonant-e spelling pattern. We’ll add on to these topics and revisit the concepts throughout the school year.

A packet of student work from late September to early October went home in students’ home/school folders. Please review your child’s work and reach out with any questions or concerns!

Important Dates

• Wednesday, October 25th: All School Assembly. Show your school spirit and wear blue and yellow!
• Monday, October 30th: Elizabeth McManus (Caroline’s mom) will be our special guest to share about data and communication!
• Tuesday, October 31st: Fall Party in our classroom! Thank you parents for volunteering! We have Diane D’Angelo (Emma’s mom), Laurie Wasta (Reilly’s mom), Kristin Szopa (Charlotte’s mom), and Lauren Howland (Audrey’s mom) leading games and crafts. We have Jess Fernandes (Zev’s mom), Kristen Costa (Calvin’s mom), Jason Hall (Charlie’s dad), and Lisa Parsons (Abe’s mom) supporting. 

Important Notes

• Special Guest Mondays: Consider signing up to be a special guest and share something (about your profession, about a hobby, a story, etc) with the class. See the Special Guest Mondays sign up document for more details. If there isn’t a time there that works for you, please reach out to me!

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Here are some highlights from this week:

Community Building
We learned about focusing attention and listening during our Second Step lesson this week. This was an important lesson for many students who struggle to concentrate and avoid distractions.


Literacy
Our poetry mini-unit came to a close this week. We read a variety of poems such as haikus, small poems, and free verse, as well as playful rhyming ones. We looked for poetic techniques such as alliteration, repeated lines, and onomatopoeia. We also analyzed the deeper meaning of poems, discussing literal versus figurative meaning.

Phonics and Foundational Skills
Vowel-consonant-e was our focus for this week. We read and spelled words with the long vowel sound caused by a silent “e” at the end. We also looked at exceptions to this pattern, such as “-ve” and “scribal o,” which can be found in words such as “give” and “some” respectively. Students took a phonics progress check to demonstrate their spelling skills with these patterns.

Writing
We wrote more poems this week and compiled them into a little anthology for each student. Students wrote rhyming poems, color poems using their 5 senses, and poems about any topic they wanted. We also did more practice with fixing run-on sentences. Most students in class need more explicit practice to write complete sentences using correct punctuation and capitalization. Many students write the way they speak… on and on and on! 

Math
We wrapped up Unit 1 in Math on Adding and Subtracting within 50 and Working with Data. We tackled challenging problems where we needed to compare 2 amounts. We wrote equations and drew diagrams to model this. We compared the language, equations, and models used when you need to find the difference between 2 amounts versus when you need to find the total of 2 amounts. We took our End of Unit Assessment, and then started Unit 2 on Adding and Subtracting within 100.

Science
We conducted an exploration about the effects of wind and water on landforms. I demonstrated how wind and water can move a mountain of sand downhill, changing the shape of the mountain and landscape below. We then watched videos about weathering and erosion to see those forces in action.

​​Thank you for taking the time to read the update! Please reach out with any questions.​