Our first graders are growing right in front of our eyes! We have now finished all of our winter benchmarking tests and can see how each child is growing. Based on this information we have created new small groups for both reading and math instruction.
Every student will be part of a small group with me for both reading and math. The frequency and content that is covered is based on student needs. Some of my groups are receiving enrichment activities , some groups are practicing skills , while others are reteaching concepts.
In addition to meeting with me, some students will also attend small group instruction with another teacher here at Brookdale. If this is the case, your child received letters to bring home. (Yikes, Some students did forget to grab their mail on Friday.)
Hopefully you get a sense of WOW, Brookdale has coordinated a plan for my child. So what does this mean for 1B, it means its time to really buckle down and get to work. Our recent reading story, The Ant and the Grasshopper taught us the lesson, there is a time to work and a time to play.
On a similar note, I want to THANK you for all the support you are giving your child this month of school. I know there has been an uptick in homework with projects being assigned. As we mentioned above, work expectations have increased. I truly appreciate your support and please know that if you every need supplies or items to help complete projects I am here to help. Throughout the newsletters I give examples of what families can be doing at home besides the nightly reading (15-20 minutes) students should be doing. We are a team and I could not do it without you. THANK YOU!
The entire month of February we will focus on friendship, what it is and looks like. We will also be heart hunting; looking for the shape of a heart that appears in our world. For example a cut strawberry. IF your family finds one, feel free to snap a picture and send it our way to add to our collection.
On Wednesday February 14th we will celebrate friendship by exchanging cards and having a PTA party. This year we are tight on time and I am asking for some help. Please have your child decorate a box or bag to put valentines in and bring it to school on Wednesday, February 14th. Need a bag to decorate? I can send one home with your child, just send me a note. I will have a bag available for any student who cannot bring one as all students will receive cards. If your student wants to share valentine / friendship cards with the class please keep this in mind:
- Bring one for everyone in the class
- Address each card with the student's name-list coming home Monday
- No food can be shared
We continue to practice coding with Sam Lab. Students are pretty quick at connecting the blocks with Bluetooth and setting up a system on their Chromebooks that communicates with the blocks. During the holiday season student coded light shows on gingerbread cookies. Recently students created a metronome to help them play their instruments that they created for our sound unit. Metronome is a device that creates a sound at varying intervals to allow musicians to keep a beat. We added a light to enhance our device. Come see it in action at Open House.
Brainiacs is an annual exhibit of students’ original STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) projects made outside the classroom. Your child is encouraged to submit an optional project for this exhibit, which will be on display in the LMC starting Wednesday, February 21 through STEAM Night on Friday, February 23. Students will bring their projects to school early on 2/21, then all students get to “tour” this exciting exhibit as a class during the school week. Students take their projects home after school after STEAM Night. Brainiacs is open to all students K-5 who want to share their creativity and passions. Past projects have included things like science experiments, research posters on a favorite topic, creative writing, model-making, custom LEGO builds, cardboard creations – the ideas are endless! Watch for the flyer coming home soon! Questions? Email Megan Happ at mhappy8@hotmail.com.
We need parent volunteers to make this year's Brainiacs exhibit a success! Help receive projects, arrange and monitor the exhibit, or clean up after STEAM Night. Thank you for your support in celebrating the creativity of our kids. Sign-up link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0F4AA9AA2AA3FC1-brainiacs#/
- Friday mornings- make sure all library books are returned
- 2/9 Friday- Traditions Projects are due
- 2/9 Busy Bobcat Store @8:30am/Sports Night In @6:30pm
- 2/13-2/16 LMC Book Fair
- 2/14- bring your valentine box or bag
- 2/14 Wednesday PTA Friendship party- students can share valentine cards/no food
- 2/15 Open House @6:00-7:30pm
- 2/19 No School- President's Day
- 2/20 PTA Gia Mia Family Dinner Night
- 2/21-2/23 Brookdale Brainiacs Exhibit
- 2/23 STEAM Night @6:00-8:00pm free @ Brookdale
- 2/29 No School-Parent Teacher Conferences @1:00-8:00pm- sign ups coming soon
- 3/1 No School-Institute Day
- Sign-up to be a Mystery Reader in our classroom- link below in newsletter- 1 visit per family per year please to ensure all can participate
Is your child reaching their weekly Lexia goal? Every student is given a goal for Lexia depending on their level. Lexia tells students how many minutes they need to complete a week to reach the end of year goal. Students are given some time at school to work on Lexia, but many will need to do some Lexia homework to ensure their minute goals/unit goals are reached. IF a child has lots of minutes yet very little units completed then we know they are not doing the work, maybe just sitting in front of the screen. Please log into Lexia on your child's Chromebook and see what their goal is for the week. Please also remember to not give your child the answers when working in Lexia as the intuitive engine set for child will not do its job reducing your child's learning. See the picture and video below to learn more about these goals.
- Lexia access- on the student SSO Dashboard
- Each student has a weekly goal - depends on how many levels they need to complete before the end of the school year- most students goal is to complete 10-12 units
- Students are given approx 10 min a day to work on Lexia at school, so Lexia most likely needs to be done at home to reach the goal
- Students receive certificates when they pass to the next level- please note it is not a competition! I do not share what level students are on. We should all grow at our own pace.
- Make sure to logout correctly to have minutes recorded correctly
- Don't hop around from activity to activity - green bar needs to reach across to SAVE work otherwise they have to start over- very frustrating
- Pay attention to the color bar at the bottom of the screen- green good- yellow/orange student is struggling and the program will give another lesson
How was your day? FINE
What did you do at school? NOTHING
Here are some questions to enhance conversations with your child.
- Who is Hedgie?
- Who is Tacky?
- In Sam Lab- what is a RGB?
- What are all the combinations to make 10? 2+8, 4 + 6 ...........
- Show how to add 2 + 7 + 8
- Explain the Flsz "floss" rule- -ff, -ll, -ss, -zz
- What is the setting in Tacky the Penguin books?
- What are vibrations?
- Explain how you see vibrations on an instrument, on the alligator.
Book Fair
The book fair is coming to Brookdale. It will be at school the week of February 12th. The entire class will visit the fair to create wish lists. Students write down a few titles that they would love to buy. Parents can then decide if their family wants to purchase any books. Parents can send money to school with their child to buy the items on the list or come in to school themselves to purchase. The fair will also be open the night of Open House. Please checkout the Bobcat bulletin to find out more details or to even be a volunteer for the fair.
Since the fair is here, I will not send in a book order until the end of February. It might work well to think about books for spring gifts or spring break fun.
Everyday student communicate their plan for lunch. Students must decide if they need to order anything before 9:10 am each day. Please talk with your child each day to help them know what to order as changes cannot be made at lunchtime. You might find printing out a menu for the week helpful. Need information about our food service? Click the button below.
SEL- Social Emotional Learning
We will be wrapping up our unit on Empathy. It is an important skill to notice and understand the feelings of others. First we must be able to identify our own feelings, next recognize feelings of others, last try to put ourselves in their shoes, understand. Compassion is empathy in action. You can help support this learning at home by having conversations about feelings, helping your child understand the feelings of their family members, siblings or teammates. The Homelinks below are also another way to support your child.
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Literacy
My View Literacy- We have jumped into our next unit Imagine. Students will be immersed with fables, folktales, and poetry. Along the way students will focus in the following skills:
- comprehension- retelling a story
- Phonemic Awareness- rhyme, alliteration
- Writing- poetry
- Grammar- proper nouns, plural nouns
Word Study - Long vowels are next on our list to master. We will begin our focus with words that have a CVCe syllable pattern. Students quickly learn the pattern: when a vowel is followed by a consonant and a silent e that the vowel will produce a long vowel sound.
Reading Behaviors- We continue to strive to read independently for a period of time, 15 minutes. This has been very challenging for most students. To aid in this goal I will be providing practice packs for students. These packs will have decodable texts or books I have assigned at their level. My hope is that students will build their confidence about reading empowering them to seek out more books. Please continue to read nightly at home.
Fluency - See if your child wants to read/ sing one of our recent poems.
Math
There are four math topics/skills that create a solid FIRST GRADE mathematician.
- Number Identification
- Forwards and backwards counting
- Structuring numbers- decomposing/composing
- Addition/subtraction of numbers
We work on all of these skills daily, but recently we have been putting these skills together to learn efficient strategies for addition and subtraction. It was so important that your child crawled before they walked. Keep this mindset when it comes to addition and subtraction. If your child simply memorizes facts they will struggle with math in the future. Those who have strong number sense can structure numbers backwards and forwards. If parents want to help their child in math, besides working on counting forward and backwards, work on structuring numbers.
Structuring numbers refers to the ability a student has to combine and partition numbers without counting. When you ask a child to list a “way to make 7”, we want them to be able to instantly say, “6 and 1 or 5 and 2 or 4 and 3 or 7 and 0”
You can see how important it is to break numbers apart in the problems shown to the right. Being able to do the Make 10 strategy is essential for not only mental math but math skills that appear even in high school. Thank you in advance for helping to practice these strategies at home.
Science- We had a blast with our short unit on sound. Students were behind the scenes to see how cartoons and movies make sound effects. Students learned all about vibrations . Students created instruments like head harps in class and then created instruments at home. Thank you for all your support with this project. Did you see the video of our band up above?
Social Studies- We continue our mantra that in our classroom everything is the same, same, but different. This is true of families. We will be looking at families near and far celebrating our similarities and differences. Your child brought home an assignment to create something to teach the class about their favorite day of the year, a family tradition. Please remember that these do not need to be connected to a national holiday or religious holiday, but can. For example in my family every summer we have a movie night in the backyard. Another example is that some families visit Chicago the day after Thanksgiving. Every student will present (Show and Tell) their project, so a visual of some kind is required. This visual can be a poster, an artifact, clothing, digital item something that can be shown to the class then left for our display in our classroom. Please note that no food can be shared with the class but photos of these items are a great solution to this rule. I have linked the assignment below in case you have lost your copy of it.