Welcome Back to School!

Meet the upcoming graduates of the Class of 2028!

Welcome back to school! We are well underway to completing our first month in school and things are progressing smoothly and cheerfully. Most of the past few weeks have been spent learning about classroom routines, expectations, locations of supplies, how to care for them and classroom rules. We started out with a Scavenger Hunt so that we could all discover where things were kept in the room for when we needed them.

Scavenger Hunt in Room 211!

"Hey, did you find everything on the list for the Scavenger Hunt?"

Mikey is crossing out the items he found.

However, we have begun work in our major subject areas too, beginning with a slower-paced review of first grade skills. Here is a brief breakdown of what we've been learning in each subject thus far...

In math class we have been reviewing different strategies we can use to solve problems: switching addends around (gets the same sum), doubles and near-doubles, changing a problem to be "10 +" problem, and recognizing patterns to fact families. We will continue to hone our strategy skills as we continue in our Envision 2.0 math books.

This month we also began a new year of working with the online math site called STMath. This year a new fluency piece has been added so that every time we log in, we are practicing math facts for 10 minutes before beginning our problem-solving skill practice. We love Jiji! Miss Varrell also introduced the class to Xtramath.org and explained that if/when she is able to get some Chromebooks permanently stationed in the classroom for the year (when they aren't being used for schoolwide assessment purposes) we can also use Xtramath as a quick practice for our math facts as well. Below is a parent video about how to get your child started on Xtramath at home.

In our English Language Arts block to date, we have focused on author studies: Harry Allard and Kevin Henkes. We read several books by both authors and compared and contrasted the different stories to see how they were similar and how they were different. Next week we will begin our tiered reading instruction which includes thirty minutes of Fundations (phonics and spelling) work followed by sixty minutes of reading instruction and accompanying practice activities. Below are some books we read over the past few weeks in case you'd like to revisit them at home, at the library or at a book store near you!

During this time we practiced using techniques such as "turn and talk", "talk to your partner," written responses, adding details through illustrations, as well as practicing making smooth transitions between activities in a calm and respectful manner. We became familiar with some of the tools we will be using during our ELA block (e.g. whiteboards, dry erase markers and mini erasers, gel boards and magnetic pens, Spelling City, etc.). We will continue to review these skills as we apply them to a new activity this week: how to appropriately transition between classrooms!

This past week marked the beginning of our first science unit: Matter and Materials. We began with a review of the three states of matter: solids, liquids and gases and learned that over the next month or so we will be focusing our learning on solids and liquids in particular. We will be using lessons and different types of matter and materials provided by our fabulous Burlington Science Center. We will record our discoveries and hypotheses in specially designed e-notebook for our iPads. Thank you Science Center!

Last but not least, our class pets arrived this week! They are yet to be named, but we will take a couple of weeks to really get to know them so that we can make great name choices. They are a pair of female gerbils and they are only a few months old. We are SO excited to have them!

Photo courtesy of Ms. Pavlicek

Below are some helpful reminders/hints for parents:

• Written homework is due the day after it is assigned (e.g. Envision HW practice, etc.)
• Children have reading and math fact practice homework daily. 20 minutes for reading, 5-10 minutes for math fact practice. Your child's reading teacher may assign specific reading material for part of the 20 minutes. If so, you will receive a communication as such.
• When possible, children need to bring a snack each day to help them get through their longer academic morning, compared to last year's first-grade schedule. 
• Your child may ask you if he/she can have a small handheld pencil sharpener for school. It is true, our standard classroom hand-crank pencil sharpeners appear to be eating pencils, the electric ones melt the plastic coating on the pencils that children bring from home, and the handheld ones I ordered for the class this year appear to have the lifespan of a fruit fly. So...if you are willing, we would love it if you could provide a mini pencil sharpener for your child in the near future. I have posted a picture below of the kind that I have found most successful in the past. They are simple but get the job done without a lot of fuss and with a minimal cost. Thank you!