Mrs. V's All Star Learners Classroom: 10/19/13 Newsletter

Dear Parents of First Grade All Stars,
     This 4-day week was just "chock full" of exciting events and much work, too. Despite my enthusiasm and best efforts for our lessons, I am sure I was not the highlight of this past week. That honor goes to the firefighters who so graciously gave of their time and efforts to work on fire-safety with our children yesterday. The morning assembly by the firefighters was full of great fire-safety rules. Judging by the reaction of the students, the biggest "hit" of the assembly was when Mrs. Bonacquist donned all the firefighter gear! Then in the afternoon, the class went outside to visit the firefighters and learn about the fire truck and equipment. Our class actually gave the firefighters a "first": they performed their fire-safety song "M-A-T-C-H" for the firefighters. (This was not planned, nor was it my idea. One of our kiddos suggested it, and I'm so glad she did because the firefighters clapped and loved it!) The children got to sit in the fire truck and ask any questions of the firefighters. The firefighters even gave the students firefighter hats and a cool punch-out firefighter gear sheet! Talk about excitement! Actually the whole day was a fire-safety day!   We read and discussed our "Scholastic News" issue entitled "Firefighters Long Ago and Today." (This "Scholastic News" should have made it home to you yesterday for rereads and discussion. Please let me know if it did not.) We also reviewed fire-safety tips such as "Stop, drop, and roll" and read about the first "Smokey the Bear". During our "Buddy Work" session at the end of our day, Mrs. Kourt's fourth graders helped the first graders write thank-you letters to the firefighters. (They are GREAT! I can't wait to send them to the firefighters. They will love them.) When they were finished with their thank-you letters, the buddies could choose a fun fire-safety activity to work on. What a great way to end our week!
   On Tuesday Ms. Stella, our Intern from The College of St. Rose, started her work in our classroom. I can already tell I will like Ms. Stella because she "hit the ground running" and was reading with and roaming to help the students on her very first day! Welcome, Ms. Stella!
   Then on Wednesday, a former student of mine and my high-school senior intern from last year, Ms. Marinello, came back to visit and to work with us for the day! Ms. Marinello is in college now studying to become a teacher and needed to do some observations and classroom work for one of her courses. We were so happy that Ms. Marinello chose us to work with! She loved the class, (No surprise there!), and said she hopes to come back more. You are welcome any time, Ms. Marinello!
     During our literacy work this week we reviewed the short a sound and the children continued practicing finding and reading their just-right books. As I finished checking sight-word knowledge with individuals, Ms. Stella and Ms. Marinello read with the children and also helped during writing times. Both Ms. Stella and Ms. Marinello were impressed with the reading focus and length of reading times during read-to-self sessions. The stamina and focus of the first-grade readers is truly growing!
     We continued our work on our October poems. As we were practicing our Columbus poem together again, many hands started shooting up. I couldn't imagine why since the students are now extremely comfortable with this poem. Well, it seems we have MANY poets in our midst! Creating new stanzas for Columbus poem has spread like wild fire. Aside from the creativity part, the other reason this is so exciting for me as a teacher is the fact that every single student who raised their hand to share their new stanza used great facts from our Columbus work! There were SO MANY kiddos wanting to share ideas for new stanzas that we actually ran out of time because we had to leave for our P.E. class!
      THANK YOU again for all the awesome at-home reading logs you've been sending in. The children are very proud to hand them in to me and to share what they are reading at home. Reading to, with, beside your child is not only a fun together time, but also a tremendous motivator that helps to build the love of reading as well as skills. I truly appreciate your at-home reading time with your child!
During our writers' workshops we continued our lessons on personal-narrative writing. We learned that our lives are full of stories to tell. We started to explore what "small-moment" writing is and began thinking of "small moments" to write about. We started to develop our "How To Write A Story" chart.   I shared a "small moment" story orally with the kiddos and then modeled how to "touch and tell" the story across pages. This way to plan what to write uses a finger instead of a pencil, as we touch and try to talk a beginning, a middle, and and end for our small-moment stories. The class sat in an oval on the rug and some brave students tried to "touch and tell" THEIR first ideas for a small-moment story. This is very challenging for beginning first graders, and there will be many more lessons and "try its" to come. The children also continued work on their own alphabet books. The picture dictionaries and personal dictionaries were out in force again as the kiddos "researched" ideas and words for their alphabet books! Hooray! The children also had a little time to work on personal narrative writing in their writers' journals trying to write "longer and stronger".
     We had our pretests on -an and -ap words to prepare for our word work and spelling work for this coming week. Any words your child missed on the pretest, any base words they missed on our first spelling test, missed priority words, and some supplemental challenge words if needed may be on your child's list for the week. We will be back to our normal routines, and the sheet with "Your Words This Week" with your child's words will be sent home on Monday. We do a spelling practice activity each day in class, but some practice at home, too, is needed to really "cement" the words in memories. Thanks so much for these practices.
     Our math work this week continued work on stories about missing parts, subtraction vocabulary, connecting models and symbols, problem solving: acting out with pictures, and connecting addition and subtraction. One VERY difficult concept we worked on was, for example: 9 - 6 = 3 is the same as 3 = 9 - 6. This is hard for first graders to grasp, so we used models and made pictures all over the place! Also, EVERY graphing question of the day this past week involved those types of equations. The first day EVERY SINGLE STUDENT got the graphing question wrong. Then as the week went on, more and more and more students placed their magnets on the correct answer! Yes! We will continue to practice with this challenging concept.
   During our science lessons we continued our seed work. We read and discussed The Tiny Seed. The students made their own seed model that opened up to reveal the seed coat, food inside the seed, and "baby plant" inside! The first time the students made a science diagram showing labels for parts of plants, we did it together. This week the students tried to make a diagram of plant parts on a sunflower on their own. Every child had 100%! Way to go, scientists!
***IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Monday, 10/21, the whole school will celebrate our "Peace Assembly" by forming our human peace symbol outside, using the peace flags created in art classes, and ways students will help promote peace at an assembly. I did not check my emails yesterday until the students were on their way home, but we've been asked FOR FIRST GRADERS TO WEAR AN ORANGE SHIRT (or a tie-dye shirt), IF POSSIBLE, ON MONDAY to "color code" our human peace symbol. I check my email before and after school only, so I apologize for sending this message just in this blog letter. However, NO WORRIES if you do not see this in time or if an orange shirt is not possible as ANY shirt will be fine and the students will still definitely feel like an important part of our "Peace Assembly" with their peace flags and active participation in the events.             Thank you again for all your fantastic support at home.
     Respectfully,
       Mrs. V.