Wednesday, April 13, 2016

April Newsletter: Whales

Dear Room 2 Parent(s),                                          Wednesday, April 13, 2016



     Spring has sprung!! Well, a snow-laced, chilly weather spring! That hasn’t stopped these amazing writers in Room 2 from creating some wonderful books about the season. I hope you saw your child’s book, “That’s What Happens When It’s Spring!” The kids did such lovely writing. We’ve also enjoyed singing our new spring song, “This Morning In My Garden” filling in the blanks in the song with many different signs of spring. Ask your child to sing it to you!!
       I hope you’ll have a chance to enjoy some of the lovely weather that’s forecasted in the coming week. Maybe those snow pants will get packed away once and for all!!



Save The Date!
Please mark your calendar!

Room 2’s First Grade Celebration 
Monday, June 13, 2016
8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

     I hope you’ll be able to attend! Calendars fill up quickly this time of year so I hope this helps to give you some advance notice.  We will have an Open House and a short presentation to celebrate our year together in Room 2. I’ll be in touch with further details in the weeks to come.




We Love Whales In Room 2!

    Big whales, small whales, you name it! We’ve been learning about these graceful, gentle creatures for several weeks in class. We’ve read a wonderful array of fiction and nonfiction books, as well as some new poems and songs. Our favorites include “Blue Whale”, “Baby Beluga”  and “A Whale Is Not A Fish!” We also really enjoyed The Snail and the Whale, Ibis, Humphrey: The Lost Whale, and I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean. We’ve had our hands on some artifacts from the New England Aquarium, including real whale teeth and baleen. We also played an echolocation game that helped us to learn how several types of whales find their food. We measured the lengths of a number of whales and recorded each length with masking tape on the floor in the cafeteria hallway. We’ve learned about common traits of all whales and have focused on a few specific whales, such as the humpback whale, the blue whale, the beluga whale, the narwhal, the orca, and the sperm whale. Some are known for singing songs and frequent breaching (humpbacks), some are known for being deep divers (sperm whales), some are fierce predators (orcas), and some are playful and smart (bottlenose dolphins). We also discovered that many whales migrate hundreds of miles each year to find food and have their young. Children found it interesting that toothed whales have one blowhole while baleen whales have two blowholes. Tomorrow, we’ll create 4-square posters with interesting facts about these gentle giants!




Literacy

    I encourage everyone to continue the valuable practice of reading with your child for at least 15 minutes every day. It’s so wonderful to curl up and  enjoy a good book together! I hope you are as proud of the progress your child is making as I am. All of the students in our class are making important gains this year, and encouraging your child to read both independently and with you shows him/her that you know how hard he/she has been working.             
     During Reader’s Workshop, we’ve continued our exploration of nonfiction text. We’ve looked closely at the conventions, or features, of nonfiction literature, including captions, maps, photographs, labels, types of print, comparisons, cut-aways, the table of contents, and the glossary. Children have worked independently and with partners to peruse nonfiction texts on a variety of topics. The interest level is quite high when studying nonfiction. Children are always eager to share their books and newfound knowledge with the group! Children have learned that nonfiction books don’t have to be read cover to cover like fiction. A reader can look through the book by reading the table of contents or the index and then find the sections of text they are interested in or focused on. He/she can also look through the pictures and read the captions to learn about the topic.
     We’ve also been enjoying the “Piggie and Elephant” books by Mo Willems, using them to practice attending to print and punctuation while we read aloud. Children worked with partners to read several different books in the series; the smiles and giggles were endless as they flipped through the pages and experimented with tone, fluency, and pausing.
        

Math

    As their work in mathematics progresses, children are beginning to use larger numbers in their daily work. We have explored the system we use for writing larger numbers by focusing on the concept of place value.  For example, in the number 72, 7 is in the tens place, so there are “7 groups of 10” and 2 is in the ones place so there are “2 groups of one” or “two extras.” Children have used Unifix Cubes to represent numbers and to find the sums of two numbers. They also used place value to determine “greater than” and “less than” relationships. We have also continued our work with addition and subtraction facts. Knowing basic math facts (with the sum of up to 10, or with 10 as the greatest minuend, i.e. 10-7=3) is as important to mathematics as knowing words by sight is to reading. Your child should begin to master many of the addition and subtraction facts by the end of the school year. Learning the facts takes practice. It’s not necessary to practice for a long time, but it is important to practice often as we do in class.

                                                                  



The Life Cycle Of The Chicken 
                                               
  Our chicken eggs will arrive from Drumlin Farm after vacation! I’m sure you’ll hear a great deal about the life cycle of the chicken over the next several weeks. Former first graders have been asking since October WHEN will the eggs arrive???, so you can imagine how exciting this unit of study has been for others and will be for these first graders as well!


     Many, many thanks to all of our volunteers during the past month! We all appreciate having Paul Migdalen, Marchella Lee, and Ilana Wyner in to help with math and writing!  We are also very grateful to our Sugar Shack Field Trip chaperones, Nate Buffum, Susan O’Neill, and Audrey’s grandfather, Poppy, as well as our pancake breakfast volunteers~Lauren Alongi and Kate Ozpeynirci. Please let me know if you’d like to join our class for math or writing after vacation!



     Enjoy the vacation week ahead! If you have travel plans, I hope the road ahead is safe and wonderful. For those of you enjoying time at home over the next week, may your days be filled with family, fun, and sunny skies! I’ll be spending part of my vacation at home in Framingham and then my family and I will head to upstate New York to see my mom. I can’t wait to see her!  She is 90 years old so my kids, husband, and I treasure our visits with her. I look forward to sharing my adventures with all of my Room 2 friends when we return to school!

     As always, please let me know if you have any questions about your child’s day or about our curriculum.


Take care,
   Lise Weig J