Dear Room 2 Families,
February 2, 2015
We’ve been so busy in the classroom during
the past month! The children have been working hard and are very invested in
the many topics we’ve been exploring. It’s been wonderful watching them as
their reading skills have strengthened, thus helping them to learn more about
the world around them. It’s such an exciting time in their learning!
Science
I hope you had a chance to hear all about
our penguin studies these past several weeks! The children learned so much
about these funny little creatures by reading a variety of books, including Penguins
by Gail Gibbons and Seven Weeks on an Iceberg, by Keith Potter. Our
penguin unit offers such rich selections of nonfiction literature to first
graders. We also learned two new poems called, “Peter Penguin” and
“Regurgitate.” Ask your child to sing our “Seven Continents” song to you;
they’ve reinforced their knowledge about these land masses by coloring in maps
where penguins live. Your child illustrated copies of the poems and song for
his/her poetry and song notebook. Some of our other favorite books include,
“and Tango Makes Three…” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, Lost and
Found, by Oliver Jeffers and If You Were A Penguin, by Wendell and
Florence Minor. We spent a portion of each day reflecting on what we learned
about these birds. Here are a few questions that you may want to ask your child
during a car ride or a dinner conversation:
- What is the biggest penguin called? (Emperor Penguin)
- How tall is
it? (4 feet tall)
- What is the name of the smallest penguin and how tall is
it? (Little Blue or Fairy Penguin; 1 foot tall)
- How many different types of penguins are there? (18)
- What do penguins eat?
(fish, krill, squid)
- What are some of the penguin’s predators? (killer whales,
leopard seals, fur seals, sharks, sea lions)
- Where do penguins live?
(All penguins in the wild live south of the equator. Penguins can
be found in Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, Africa, and the Galapagos
Islands)
- What kinds of
animals are penguins? (They are birds. They have feathers, wings, and a
beak, and they hatch from eggs.)
- Can penguins fly?
(Penguins lost their ability to fly millions of years ago; they use their
wings when they swim as sturdy paddles or flippers.)
- How do baby
penguins get their food? (I’ll let your child reveal this one to you!)
We’ve learned about the penguin’s body, its predators, nest building
(though not all penguins build nests), the brood pouches of the King and
Emperor penguins, and the penguin’s eating habits. We’ve talked about the
similarities and differences in some of the 18 species. Some highlights during
activity time have included:
- 4-square
posters titled, “What We Know About Penguins”
- world
maps, showing where penguins live
·
Penguin
mini-books
Many thanks to our parent chaperones who
helped to make our field trip to the New England Aquarium a HUGE success: Jen
Altreuter, Jackie Crawford, Sarthak Das, Jen DeGrenier, Stephanie Leong, Danielle
Meade and Jill Zukerman. We saw a wonderful variety of sea creatures including
rockhopper penguins, African penguins, lionfish, sea dragons, jellies, sharks
and rays in the shark and ray touch tank, an octopus, sea turtles, eels,
leopard seals, sea lions and much, much more. The children did a wonderful job
sharing their knowledge of penguins in our penguin workshop; the aquarium class
instructor was quite impressed! I was so proud of the first graders! The field
trip was a wonderful way to enrich our studies of these amazing creatures.
Social Studies:
We’ve had many conversations about Martin
Luther King, Jr. and his continued importance in our world today. I wish you
could have been present for the discussion we had about this important leader
and famous American who truly made a difference in the world. The children put
so much heart and soul into their comments and gave thoughtful insight as to
what they wished their future would hold for them. We created posters representing
these dreams and wishes as an extension activity after reading the book, We
Dream Of A World. They’re consistent
reminders of how we’d like to be treated, what is fair and just, and how we can
work together to make a better, safer place to live and grow.
Reader’s Workshop:
During Reader’s Workshop, we’ve been exploring 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, the glossary and more. 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.
Math
Our
work with addition and subtraction has continued. We’ve been working on
automaticity of math facts through 10 and solving addition and subtraction
equations through 20. We’ve also been focusing on solving story problems,
showing our work using words, pictures, number labels, and number models or
equations. We’ve practiced solving equations with missing addends. We’ve even
been working on equations with 3 addends! I hope you’ve had a chance to see
some of the practice packets that your child has worked on in class; they’ve
had a nice description of each addition and subtraction strategy. Some of the
addition strategies have included plus zero, plus 1, tens partners, turn-around
facts, doubles and plus ten.
Author Illustrator David Biedrzycki:
Last week, we had the pleasure of having
author/illustrator David Biedrzycki share his craft with us here at Happy
Hollow! He told us about her experiences of becoming a writer and how a book
goes from idea to printed product. It was fascinating to listen to her talk
about what/who inspires her to write. He read his book, Dory Story to us
during his presentation. Other books children have enjoyed include The
Beetle Alphabet Book and Ace I encourage you to visit his website for other
titles and further information: davidbiedrzycki.com.
Progress Reports and Conferences
We hope you received your child’s progress
report that was sent home last week. Conferences begin in early March and will
run for 4 weeks. We’re scheduling
conferences through a Volunteer Spot Sign-Up set up by Jill Zukerman. Many
thanks to Jill for organizing the sign-up online. Please let us know if you did
not receive an email from Jill about the conference sign up. We are very eager
to share your child’s progress with you and we look forward to chatting more in
person during our spring conference. Please let us know if you have any
questions about your child’s progress report in the meantime.
Please let
us know if you have any questions about the information in this
newsletter. We hope you all enjoy the
vacation ahead!
Take care,
Lise
Weig and Mary
Ann O’Loughlin
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