News From the Marvelous Martians!

Hello All! I am so excited that our blog is now up and running! A big THANK YOU to Paul for creating this! My hope is that the newsletter brings a deeper understanding of what’s going on in the classrooms each week, perhaps providing a starting point for conversations with your children about their time at school. Happy reading and please know that I welcome any comments or suggestions you may have regarding the newsletter, as it is truly intended as a way to keep y’all in the loop!

Important Dates and Reminders
Workshops: November 20: Evan~milkshakes

Field Trips:

November 13th ~ Kennedy Creek, Olympia Center, Library

December 11~TBA

No school:

Thanksgiving Holiday: November 26 and 27
Winter Break: December 19 through January 3

Parent Meeting: December 2 @ 6:00

Portfolio Share: December 18 @ 9:00

Math

We start our days with Math, which starts at approximately 9:20 and lasts until 10:15. Currently, students are divided into 2 separate math groups, the Suns and the Ferns (ask your child which group he or she is in!). Typically I work with each group for half of the math period. The other half of the period is spent finishing work started during their time with me or participating in an independent choosing time. During choosing time, students have the opportunity to revisit and practice a variety of math games they learned during their time with me, to work on their “Math Packs” (a collection of relevant worksheets), to practice their Math Facts, or to build and create with some of our interesting manipulatives. I will not typically go into detail about the choices offered during this time as they will have been previously explained in the summaries of the weekly explorations of each group.

The Suns. So far this year we’ve explored patterns and have been working on solidifying our sense of numbers…practicing our one to one correspondence (pointing to and counting one object at a time), comparing numbers and gaining a general sense for just how many each number is (for instance a group of 10 pennies looks quite different from a group of 10 chairs, but there is still 10 in each group). Throughout all this, we’ve also been practicing writing our numbers.

This week we are taking our math skills to the next level and have begun work with simple addition problems and are learning multiple ways to solve these problems. An example of a problem we worked on was: There were 3 aliens and each alien had 3 eyes. How many eyes were there all together? The group was given this problem and was asked to solve it however they would like. Some drew pictures and some used cubes to represent the eyes. We compared results and methods and worked on solving a number of problems using similar methods. We are even learning how to represent our work using equations! We will finish our week by learning the game Chips in a Cup (an old favorite for many of the Ferns!), in which you have a set number of chips (we will work with numbers less than 6 to start out) and a partner hides some of the chips under a cup, and you try to figure out how many are hidden by counting the number of chips left showing. This is a great way to reinforce the concept that numbers can be broken into parts and that there are many ways to make a number. This would be a fun one to try at home with pennies!

The Ferns. We have been busy, busy, busy this year! We started the year out with some review work that focused mainly on continuing to build number sense…combining problems (You have 12 cherries and grapes. How many of each could you have?), a variety of number combination games (like Chips in a Cup described above), counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10,s…We have also spent some time practicing writing our numbers. After all this, we began exploring and learning about place value, using our “base-10 blocks”. We practiced building and reading numbers and learned a really fun game Race to 100, which continues to be a favorite during choosing time! Ask y our child for details about this one!

This week we are practicing some strategies for solving addition problems in our head. One method that we learned is called “near doubles”. This is for problems like 4+5 or 4+6, that are pretty close to being a double like 4+4 (we are working on memorizing the doubles up to 10 that we don’t yet know…so this may be something to practice in the car!). The near doubles strategy entails turning problems into a “double” addition problem and then adding on the extra. For instance, 4+5 would become 4+4+1 (the double of 4 plus 1). We practiced this in a dice game called “Near Doubles”. We are also working on memorizing addition facts at a level just right for each of us. We’ve created flashcards of problems that are hard for us to remember. To help us practice one tricky fact, we created story problems, illustrating the solution and writing the equation both horizontally and vertically. These story problems will become a choice during choosing time next week so that we solve each other’s problems!

Language Arts

Language Arts falls right after recess, at 10:50 and lasts until 12:00. We start each Language Arts session with some quiet resting to center ourselves so that we are ready for learning and to help ease the transition from recess. Mondays and Wednesdays are our Writing Workshop days, when we focus on writing. Each Writing Workshop lesson is comprised of a brief mini-lesson (sample lessons include how to sound out words, “fancying” up a piece of writing, and encouraging new genres of writing) followed by approximately 30 minutes of independent writing (this time varies throughout the year, lengthening as the year progresses). Once a week we have “Author’s Chair”, which is a time for students to share a finished piece of work. During the independent writing, I circulate amongst the students offering help sounding out words, brainstorming ideas, and with editing. Once a week we have phonics groups (right now this is on Tuesday, but will be switching to Thursday soon). Students are grouped with others that share similar phonics skills, and each week complete an activity that helps strengthen and build new phonemic awareness. Activities include word/picture sorts, worksheets, and games. We have been learning and practicing a variety of Language Arts games and activities to prepare us for an independent Language Arts choosing time that will begin shortly. During this time I will meet with reading groups. We also spend time each week practicing our handwriting skills. Kindergartners are focusing on upper-case letters, while first graders are focusing on both upper and lower-case letters. Each afternoon we have a Reading Workshop for approximately 15 minutes, which is a time for students to independently read books at their level. During this time I circulate, and make time to read with each student at least once a week.

This is such an enthusiastic and creative group of writers! I so enjoy seeing the topics everyone chooses to write about! This week there was a series of diagrams with a tire and a nail and an uh oh(!) flat tire, a collaborative book about a made up group of beings “the zoo zoos”, a story about a meteorite falling from the sky and having to call the fire department, and a story about the Samhein celebration and jumping off the hay pile! On Thursday, we will collect all of our finished pieces and choose a piece to “fancy” up…to publish (just as someone going to a party might get fancied up, we are fancying up our work to share with others!). The first step in the fancying process will simply be to choose a piece for fancying! Next week we will reread our pieces and look for places where we might have missed a word or would like add more detail. Our phonics groups for this week focused separately on: a review of all the consonants and words that begin with these sounds, a review of all the short vowels, and gr, cr, tr, and br. This week we practiced our handwriting by choosing a space word to write using our very best printing. We will soon make diagrams to go along with these words, creating a matching game for our pocket chart!

Theme

Each afternoon we have theme right after lunch from 1:00 to 1:45. This is the time where the majority of our theme related activities take place…although they are also intertwined with many of our Math and Language Arts lessons. Generally students spend at least one theme time each week in mixed age groups. We call these K-4 groupings “families”.

As I am sure you well know, we have been studying space this year!!! We started our explorations here on Earth learning about our very own rocky planet, what causes the seasons and how the Earth’s rotation causes us to experience day and night! Our explorations then took us to the moon, the sun and even Mercury! We have had so much fun traveling to and studying these far out objects! Our journey has now taken us to Venus where we will be for the remainder of this week (if we can last that long!), before heading to Mars!

We started the week by learning all about Venus and creating a page for our planet books all about Venus. Each page includes fact about the planet, as well as an oil pastel drawing of the planet. It was interesting to learn that Venus is the hottest planet even though it is not the closest to the sun! We also learned about the Roman Goddess of love, Venus, whom the planet is named after…supposedly because astronomers believed that under the cloudy atmosphere of Venus they would find a very beautiful world, much like our Earth, and the beautiful Goddess Venus. Instead, they were surprised to find a sulfury, carbon-dioxide filled world littered with active volcanoes! Ahhh! We made popsicle stick puppets of the Goddess of Love to add to our growing collection of God/Goddess puppets! It was interesting to see the different ways each student imagined Venus would look…we even had an interesting discussion about whether or not it would be ok for her to wear pants!

Our week will finish up with an afternoon with our friends the Moon Toons. This will be our first introduction to Buddy Reading this year! Beginning readers are paired with more advanced readers that will be able to help them with their reading. Be sure to ask your child about this fun and exciting tradition!

Investigations

We end each day with Investigations! Investigations is typically 45 minutes long and is a time that consists primarily of an independent choosing time. Choices during this time vary from day to day and include things like: games (we all love playing and learning new board games, so if you have one you’d like to share, feel free to bring it in some day!), art center, casita, doll house, Kynex (these are the big hit right now!), clay, magnets, puzzles, light bright, blocks, etc. This is a wonderful time for students to interact socially and engage in creative play together. This is also a time for art, and we often spend part of the time creating!

Kynex, Kynex and more Kynex!!!! Last week it was checkers and chess, and now it’s Kynex! There have been a plethora of interesting vehicles created, as the Kynex play has been focused mainly on creations with wheels. And what fun with vehicles be without ramps?! It is fun exploring a variety of ramps with different inclines!

While making our Venus puppets we felt inspired to create puppets of ourselves and other beings! And then we of course needed a puppet show stage! So presto! We transformed an ordinary paper towel box into a couple of beautiful stages! Once there’s a stage the performances come naturally…we were lucky enough to view some impromptu shows, complete with tickets! This choice will be around for a while, so we’ll see what else develops!

Amidst all this, we made some time to create our Venuses, which will eventually become part of our planet mobile. We used white crayons, and yellow, orange, and brown water colors to create this sulfury world.

Are you still there? I promise not all newsletters are so lengthy! For this first one, though, I wanted to explain a bit about classroom routines and give a brief history of what’s been going on up to this point. Hope you have a lovely week!