Post 6

IMPORTANT DATES:

October 17th: ASCA begins

Please notify me in writing if you decide to enroll your child in the PTO's After School Creative Arts Program (ASCA) as this will affect dismissal plans. (Thank you to those who have already notified me). Please visit the ASCA site if you are interested in learning more or registering for classes.

October 19th: Picture Day - Coffee Pond will be at Memorial-Spaulding on 10/19 for picture day. Our class is signed up to have our individual and class pictures taken at 10:00. If you would like to pre-pay for an individual picture, please use either the order form sent home in your child's folder or you can order directly online. All children receive a complimentary class picture. 

October 27th: Flu Clinic - The Memorial Spaulding Flu Clinic will be held October 27, 2016.   Parents may sign students up to receive the flu vaccine at no charge by returning consent and screening forms to the school nurse.  MDPH is providing Flucelvax, a quadrivalent, cell-based flu vaccine, for our students.  The nasal spray flu vaccine, FluMist, will not be offered this year due to updated recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The forms are due October 25, 2016.  Forms and additional information are available online at www.newtonma.gov/flu or in the school nurse’s office.  Once again, the flu clinic will be on October 27^th and forms are due October 25^th.

November 11th: Veteran's Day - NO SCHOOL  

NEW NOTICES:

Homework: Homework will be sent home beginning 11/1/16. In the meantime, please work with your child to find or create a comfortable place for him/her to do homework and determine how homework will fit into your afternoon/evening routine. Each night, students will have 3 pieces to complete: 1 math, 1 literacy and 20 minutes of reading. Here is a link to an article about ways to help your child with homework at home. 

Fall Conferences: Fall conferences are here! Please sign-up for a conference on Sign-Up Genius and note that conferences are for adults only.

Playground Community Build: Time to get our hands dirty together and build this amazing playground! Please consider signing up for 1 or more time slots to help. If you come on Saturday morning, you will see me there! We encourage spouses, family members and friends to get involved too! The more volunteers we have the faster this will get done. As you sign up remember that no one under the age of 18 will be permitted at the site, so please arrange for childcare. We also need your tools and supplies! Take a look at the items needed and if you have anything we can “borrow” from Weds 10/19 to Mon 10/24 that would be great! Please label any items you bring. Thank you for your help and support! Donated food, drinks, snacks and lunch will be provided.

REMINDERS: (any new info added to these reminders is in bold. For those who follow weekly, this is the only newly added info here). 

Wow words: Each Wednesday in our class is Wow Word Wednesday. Our Wednesday morning work is to write and decorate a Wow Word and we need your help with this. During the week, as you are reading and talking with your child, there will be words that are new to him/her. I encourage your children to inquire about these unfamiliar words and I would like you to do the same, as this is one way your child can be in control of his/her own learning. These new vocabulary words are wow words - words that they can teach the class so that we are all increasing our vocabulary! Please help your child to learn what these wow words mean (Here is a link to Merriam Webster for kids - Word Central). If it is helpful to your child to help learn these words, s/he can jot them down on the Wow Word worksheet in our child's folder. If your child encounters many wow words each week, feel free to have him/her write them on the sheet, but they will pick 1 word to teach us each week. Here is a link to the wow word worksheet in case you need a new one.

Cool Weather Dressing: As the days are getting cooler, please be sure to send your child with a jacket or sweatshirt, if necessary.

Parent Volunteers: Thank you so much to those who have helped out already and those who have offered to volunteer! It truly takes a village! If you are interested and available to volunteer with in-school tasks (such as photocopying, laminating and cutting materials, organizing materials, fixing classroom library books, etc.) and/or out-of-school tasks (such as helping with the Scholastic Book Order, helping to organize our classroom library by labeling books, picking up photos for our class from CVS, etc.) please email me to let me know. Thanks!!

Responsive Home Workshop: The Social and Emotional Learning Department of the Newton Public Schools will be sponsoring Responsive Home Workshops for families to help you create a calm, supportive and encouraging environment at home. This workshop goes hand in hand with the Responsive Classroom work that we are doing in the classroom. Although I have never attended one of these workshops, I have attended a week-long Responsive Classroom workshop with the presenter, Amy Kelly, and it was phenomenal! I am planning to put on my mom-hat and attend one of these workshops myself just to see what it is all about!  

CURRICULUM UPDATE:

In reading we: 

• Read The School Mouse by Dick King Smith and Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.
• Learned about activating our schema before reading. 
• Used sticky notes to show our thinking while reading. 

Next week, we will discuss and practice using our schema and making connections to help us comprehend fiction and non-fiction texts. 

In Fundations (Word Study) we: 

• Continued our practice with the rules for the /k/ sound 
• Use k before e, i or y (e.g. kite, kit, or key)
• Use ck at the end of words immediately following a short vowel (e.g. sock or back)
• Reviewed the trick words they, said, one, you, your was
• Reviewed closed syllables

Please refer to the orientation and unit 1 family letters to learn how you can support our word study work at home. Also, look though the fundations-word study section on my website. There, you will find all of the first and second grade trick words. If your child need practice with these words, please practice through activities such as playing bingo, memory or through reviewing them on flashcards.

Next week, we will finish unit one, take our unit 1 assessment and begin unit 2. Here is a link to the Unit 2 family letter for you to support this important work at home. 

 In writing we: 

• Read Ralph Writes a Story and talked about how ideas really can come from anywhere in your life if you pay attention. Please continue to support your child's use of his/her tiny topic notebook at home. Here is the bit on tiny topic notebooks from last week's blog if you need a refresher: We are learning that authors often get their ideas from events that occur in their lives. To help us remember meaningful moments in our lives, we each received a tiny topic notebook. These notebooks will go to and from school in your child's folder and are a place for your child to jot down meaningful moments that s/he may want to turn into a Small Moment story for writing. If you notice a meaningful moment, please note it with your child. You could say something like, "That was such a meaningful moment. That would make a great Small Moment story." and suggest that s/he jot it on the tiny topic notebook.

• Continued our work on writing small moment stories. 

Next week, we will learn about including details in our small moment stories and creating powerful endings to our stories. We will continue to use Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and The Leaving Morning by Angela Johnson as our guides.

In math we:

• Watched BrainPop videos about Doubles and Number Stories. I have provided links to watch with your child if you choose.
• Played Grab Bag Addition, Grab Bag Subtraction, and Finding Doubles to practice our doubles and doubles +1/-1 facts. 
• Told and solved addition number stories.

Next week, we will continue working on addition and subtraction number facts.

In Science we:

• Observed our germinating seeds.

Next week, we will will begin learning about seed dispersal and will collect seeds in nature. 

In Mindfulness we:

• imagined that our arms and legs were filled with heavy, wet sand when practicing our anchor spot breathing to help keep our bodies still. You can practice mindful breathing with your children at home. It is so calming! 

Open Circle: 

We started a new time in our week called Open Circle. The Open Circle curriculum proactively develops children’s social and emotional skills, including managing emotions, empathy, positive relationships and problem solving. This helps build communities where students feel safe, cared for and engaged in learning.

In Open Circle we:

• Read Chrysanthemum and discussed how the main character in the story felt when she was teased. We discussed that teasing in unfriendly ways is not okay, it's important for everyone to feel safe at school and to keep everyone safe, it is not okay to hurt each other's feelings or bodies. 
• Read Odd Velvet and discussed how it is not okay to leave someone out on purpose, how we can help everyone feel welcome and include everyone.

Next week, we will further discuss befriending classmates who are teased or left out.