Learning To Go Mr. Avery's Class on the Web 

You’re invited! Our Spring Concert/End-of-Year Celebration will be held Wednesday, June 11, 9:30-10:15 in our Cafeteria. Similar to our Winter bash, we will be performing on the stage for family and friends, and we will remain after for photo opportunities and congratulations!

 Please see the blue note sent home today from students in the Frankian-Kelly classrooms. We need at least two volunteer parents from each classroom in the building to help us set up and take down displays for this special event. Please sign up as you are able, and thanks!

Big thank you’s go out to Dr. Feldman and to the Shrewsbury Fire Department for their first-grade presentations last week! We learned the best way to brush and care for our teeth, including good eating habits (just in time for Easter candy season!). We also learned tips in case of fire, such as covering our faces before stopping-dropping-rolling, and the importance of setting and knowing our family’s meeting place outside the house. We appreciate the care and attention our community members bring us!

 Our focus over the next few weeks is on Comprehension. Reading for meaning and understanding is at the heart of what we do as adult readers. In whole-group lessons, we are reading and thinking aloud to practice making connections, predicting, inferring, asking questions and looking for answers, determining importance in text, and summarizing. It’s the whole ball of wax! We’re using the Flat Stanley Worldwide Adventure Series (Brown), which I can highly recommend, but try doing the same with any chapter book or long text from home.

As the year comes to a close, we will focus closely on ELA skills such as parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns); alphabetical order; synonyms & antonyms; and more!

In math this week we will look more in-depth at fractions. We will learn to create and identify fractional parts of a whole (e.g. 3/4, 6/8) using concrete and pictorial models. We will then compare fractions by visually and manually matching amounts shown on fraction strips, blocks, etc. Here is a link to one of many sites that include info and games for kids and families (a simple web search will return lots more!): http://www.coolmath4kids.com/fractions/fractions-08-which-fraction-is-greater-01.html

In science, we have been learning about the parts of a plant and how they support this living system. We have also been learning to make careful scientific observations of our own plants, which we will continue to do for several weeks. This week we will learn about the life cycle of the plant, that we might later develop an understanding of life cycles in all living things. More info and games can be found at Turtle Diary, which is a good resource for lots of academic areas: http://www.turtlediary.com/kindergarten-games/science-games/plant-life-cycle.html

We will also begin lessons as part of our school’s annual environmental awareness day, Floral Goes Green. Our class will be learning about the role of trees in providing shade that nourishes ecosystems and provides energy-saving cooling to buildings, along with learning about the greenhouse effect on the environment. We will design and conduct scientific inquiries that call for asking questions; collecting and analyzing data using scientific tools; and drawing conclusions that lead to further questions.

Reference:

Brown, J. (2009). Flat Stanley Adventure Series. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Thank you for returning the pedometers and log sheets from last week’s final leg of data collection!  Thanks too for the donations of Kleenex and band-aids. We’re prepared for allergy season and spring outdoor play!

Speaking of spring, we’re almost ready to re-open the playground (an annually anticipated event at Floral)! This week we will join other classes in cleaning up the space and turning the mulch. We hope to teach children the value of taking care of public spaces in their community and instill the feeling of satisfaction that translates to civic pride.

This week we will receive a visit from the Shrewsbury Fire Department. We will learn the importance of fire safety in our home and school environments. We will also learn best ways to respond in emergencies and when fire threatens. If you haven’t already, please make time to develop a family with your child in case of fire. Important for kids is to know 2 exits from the home and to have a designated meeting place (backyard tree, neighbor’s house). You can learn about this and access free ebooks (great for nonfiction reading!) at: http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-public-educators/join-sparky-the-fire-dog-for-read-for-fire-safety

We are fortunate to receive another visitor this week! Dr. Alisa Feldman, an established pediatric dentist in Shrewsbury, will be coming to engage first-grade students with lessons on oral health and hygiene. Research has shown the importance of preventative dental care from infancy to adulthood, and we hope to teach students the ways they can care for their teeth and gums on their own. For more, including kid-friendly info and games, visit the ADA’s website: http://www.ada.org/387.aspx#Easy-to-do-Activities

Unit 9 in math is our last unit of new material for grade one. Building on the skills learned in earlier units, we will now delve deeper by exploring addition and subtraction of 2-digit numbers. Many of us learned to “carry” when adding, and “borrow” when subtracting when we were young (a strategy we call regrouping). To be sure, these are two strategies that can be efficient. But we’ve found that until students understand what’s going on there (increasing and decreasing tens and ones), it’s best that they learn other strategies first.

In all cases, number sense is important. As I mentioned in September, a solid understanding of the 100 number grid is a student’s best friend! Over the next weeks I’ll be highlighting different strategies that we encourage students to learn and practice. One such strategy involves adding 2-digit numbers: Adding Tens and Ones. To solve 23 +11, students should see that 11 is 10 +1; therefore add 10 to 23 (one hop down on the number grid) which makes 33; then add one more to make 34. The same applies to 45 + 22 (two hops down the number grid and count on two more). This kind of fluid thinking really helps kids understand the numbers involved, and makes them less prone to errors. Try practicing it with a number grid, physically pointing to numbers, and if greater challenge is needed then practice without the grid but with children saying the steps aloud (reasoning). Here’s a printable 100 grid: http://www.mathwire.com/100board/100board.pdf

Our poetry work continues in writing. We are learning to select topics that have meaning to us, especially ones that make us feel strongly (excited, happy, sad, angry). The next step is to write all that comes to mind on the topic. Then the structure work begins, deciding on how to phrase things in the format of a poem, including metaphor, rhythm, lines, and especially careful word choice (we say that poets paint pictures with words).

Consider this poem by Isha called Spring. Notice how she carefully uses language to convey feelings and paint pictures:

Spring white tulips

start to bloom.

A smooth

carpet of green grass

tickles tulip

stems. April showers twirl

and disappear.

Hooray! Spring is here.

10 weeks to go!

The end of the year is in sight! Thank you for your contributions of health supplies this year. To get us through the end (and through allergy season) we need boxes of kleenex. We can also use boxes of band-aids (regular, not antibacterial). Thank you for helping us stay healthy this year!

They’re back! This marks the final week of pedometer data collection grades one and four. Thank you for your help with this initiative all year. Please help your child remember to bring back the pedometer and recording sheets this Friday.

Our math work in unit 8 comes to a close this week. Homework for Tuesday and Wednesday will be separate handouts (labeled and dated), not from the homework packet.

 This week’s CAFE focus is on Checking for Understanding. Bringing together elements of fluent-sounding reading and summarizing, students will work in 2s and 3s at reading time to read books together. When one student finishes a page (or a few pages, or less if the text on the page is long), the other tells what s/he heard the first student read, in hisorher own words. This strategy improves reading by giving the reader practice with reading aloud in ways that show s/he understands the book, in order that the second student may also understand and be successful at summarizing.

April is Poetry Month! We have spent a year analyzing great poetry (including some by our classmates) and understanding the elements of poems. This month we will learn to write poetry of our own. What’s important is that kids understand that poetry conveys thoughts and emotions in ways that paint pictures in the minds and hearts of others, through carefully chosen words. Here is a site with fantastic poetry selections for kids; there are surprisingly few out there (caveat: it is advertisement-heavy): http://www.storyit.com/Classics/JustPoems/eletelephony.htm

And here is an exciting one where children’s poetry is read aloud and you can learn more about poets and their craft: http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do

All this month I will be posting poetry from our classroom, such as this amazing piece by Cindy. Consider how she uses imagery and metaphor to paint pictures with her words:

Spring is like

the wind is singing

in the sky,

Like the birds gently

pecking seeds from

people’s hands,

Toses and sunflowers

blooming and

bees bringing nectar

Home to hives.

Happy, happy me!