Grade 1-2

Dear Families,

We had our first full week! We are all beginning to settle into the routines and the schedule. There were a few wrinkles and we were tired by Friday afternoon but we had a very productive, successful week!

The children brought in their tree collections. They sorted the parts. They compared leaves, bark, and fruits or nuts.  They are beginning to learn how each part of the tree has a purpose or job. I read a book about trees and then the children had to label trees parts. They made a real graph of the leaves.  They were asked to visit our crab apple tree and make an observation of the tree. They recorded the date and then made a scientific drawing of the tree from bottom to top. We will do this during each season of the year to record the changes. They  did a bark rubbing of the tree.  On Friday we went on a hike on Mike’s Trail. We are practicing how to “stay behind the guide” , which is one of the safety rules that we need to learn for future field trips. We looked at and compared several old trees on the trail. We will use the information to make tree poems in the classroom this week. 

In math the children made graphs of the names of students in the class. They had to count the letters in their own name and then compare  names by fewer or more letters. The graphs were different, as you can imagine.  They had to read, discriminate, count, compare, write math vocabulary and analyze the graph. They  also counted collections of objects, large and small and learned to estimate bigger numbers. On Fridays we do “Fix It or Finish It”, which means they go through their math folder and finish work or fix it where I have suggested. This is independent work and they all rose to the challenge. 

The young authors continue to write personal narratives and as I predicted many more students were willing and able to share their work with the class. It is a powerful feeling to be able to put done your thoughts and read them aloud to others. Confidence is building each day.  Students learned their first spelling  words: the, and, and of. They realized that many new words can be made if you know the chunk “and” like: band, sand, land, hand, grand. We focused on the vowel “a” as in apple. 

We had our first pizza day , which was exciting and delicious! We had our first mixer with second grade. Basically the second grade and first grade participate in Choice Time together and students are able to use both the classrooms. Choice activities include block building, computers, art, clay, legos, listening to stories, and puzzles or games. It takes place on Thursday afternoons. It is a wonderful way of building community within the lower school.

I have been informed by the PE teacher that the children will need gym sneakers that stay at school. They can be old sneakers but they are carried back and forth from gym. Please send them in when you can. Also please return library books this week.   Thank you. 

The children really liked having homework. I’d like to send home one assignment a week. What do you think?  We can talk about it at Back to School Night. 

I am really enjoying your children. Thanks for getting them to school on time. 

Fondly,

Ms. Milani