January 28, 2011

Dear Parents,

Report cards will be coming out in the middle of March, and we’ll be emailing you in February about signing up for the report-card-conferences.

In Second Grade Math, students are learning that you subtract when you are “taking away” something. You also subtract when you are finding the difference between two quantities. So, if I have six jelly beans and I give you 2 of them, I would say, “6 take away 2 = 4 left.” If, on the other hand, I have six jelly beans and you have 2 jelly beans, and the question is, “What is the difference between us? It’s not correct to say, “6 take away 2 =4” because there is no “taking away” happening. It’s important to say “6 subtract 2= 4. Five is the difference.” This become important in 3rd and 4th grade when kids have to find the difference between two quantities and really struggle to picture the operation to use because they have always associated subtraction with take-away.


Take away:

six take away two = four left over.
x x x x x x
6-2=4

Difference:

I have six and you have two. What is the difference (between your # and my #)?

Me: x x x x x x
You: x x

I can read this as 6-2=4 because I can take my six. And compare them to your two.

I subtract the number of mine that are the same as yours (we both have two). That leaves me with the difference between us:

(my) 6 minus the 2 (of yours that are the same as the two of mine) = the 4 (that are the difference between us because only I have them.)

An easier way to solve difference problems is to count up from your 2 to my 6:

Me: x x x x x x
You: x x

Your two plus _____ reaches my 6.

Hmmm. The difference must be 4.
4 is the answer.

"Busted!": ask your second grader why we said "Busted!" to each other today. (The answer is that while we were practicing "difference" problems, if one partner mistakenly said "take away" instead of "subtraction" and "difference", the other partner could say, "Busted!"


First Grade Math-This week students learned about the Little Blue Penguins. They learned that they are 16 inches tall and can weigh 2-3 pounds. Students are comparing them to two penguins (The King Penguin and The Rockhopper Penguin) that they learned about last week. What can your child tell you about any of these penguins. Can they compare them? For example, how much taller is the King Penguin compared to the Little Blue Penguin. Here is the info so you will know:

Rockhopper Penguin- 18 inches tall and 5-6 pounds

King Penguin- 36 inches tall and 30 pounds.

They also learned some new games. One game is called Help A Skuwa.
Can they tell you what a Skuwa is? (It is a bird that is a predator of the penguin. ) This game reminds you of Old Maid. The students are practicing two digit numbers and matching them to a picture. More next week about some other games they are learning.

First Grade Fundations: Students are beginning a new unit on “glued sounds” such as –ang, -ing, -ink, -and unk.

Second Grade Fundations- We finished up our unit on suffixes. More on what's coming up soon.d We are in our third round of our Science workshops. Ask you children how the workshop went this week and how it blends with what they learned in prior weeks about Solids, Liquids and Gases.

We talked about wearing glasses. Both Mr. B. and Ruben both got glasses this week, and we all talked about how it feels awkward to wear them at first, but you sure can see better and do more if you put them on. You can notice more when you are doing science experiments, you can see the board more easily in math, you can read the handwriting letters on the wall, so your handwriting will be neater, You can see from far away if your friend is up on the hill or not! And then there’s the fact that everyone tells you that you look smarter if you wear glasses. So, if you have a friend who is embarrassed to wear their glasses, tell them to go ahead and put them on so they can look smart and be smart!

Looking for a few good singers. The Horizon House Band is still looking for a few parents who would like to join us in the WSD Variety Show on March 11th. A few songs we are considering singing right now are Peace Train, Good Lovin’, and Return to Sender. We’d love you to join us. l

Half-day coming up: Next Tuesday, February 1st is a ½ day for a teacher inservice.

Have a great weekend!

David

Jan. 23, 2011

Dear Parents and Families,

First of all, I’d like to officially welcome Diego Ortiz (and his mom, Karleigh,) to our class. Diego started two weeks ago, and he’s a great kid.
Science: we’re in our second week of our Solids, Liquids, and Gases workshops. We’re studying the states of matter. Talk to your child about what he or she learned this week.

Reading: we administered half of the mid-year reading assessments this week.

At-home reading – Please email me:
By now, at the half-point in the year, our 20 first and second graders are all making good strides as evidenced by this week’s assessments. Students at this age are all in different places though, in terms of their interest in reading and in terms of their organizational abilities (getting books home and back again). Some students have latched on to books avidly, and they need no prodding to choose topics they like and books that are just the right difficulty for them (getting no more than five words wrong on a page). Others are reading mostly because we make them. They less enthusiastically, and they are bringing home books that are too hard or too easy. Their heads really aren’t in it. If you’re finding your child is more in this latter category, please shoot me a quick email:

- How is at-home reading going for you? Thumbs up or thumbs down?
- Does your child need more help from me to find “just-right” books to bring home each week?
- Does your child need more help in finding books that will interest him/her?
- From what you are seeing at home, what kinds of books is your child getting excited about?
- Would you like to have phone conversation with me to brainstorm ideas for getting your child more into reading?
- Anything else?

Our Weekly Book Bags – changing things up:
As you recall, I began the year with having all students choose five books from our class library each Monday to read in class. I also had them choosing two books at a time to bring back and forth to home in a plastic Book Bag. The change: no more plastic bag. It gets crunched up and lost in book bags and cubbies, so now we’ll be using a laminated Reading Folder that will go back and forth in your child’s back pack. The more-beginning readers, several times per week, will bring home their shorter books to read to you -- the books they have just read in their book group. Reading to you is a way to get more fluent now with the new words and grammar they have just learned. The farther-along readers, the readers who are into short chapter books and beyond, will come home more like one time per week with a couple of books from the class library or the school library.

A check-out sheet: to help the kids (and us adults) keep track of books going back and forth, I have taped a “check-out” sheet to the Reading Folder, so your child can more easily keep track of books they have taken out, and there will be a space for you and for me to make comments about the reading.

Our Reading Treasure Chest – looking for donations! Do you have any little toys or trinkets or stuffed-animals under foot that your child has outgrown? Would you consider donating them to our Reading Treasure Chest? My own kids are now in fifth and seventh grade, and I am down to their last matchbox cars and silly putties. If you’d like to donate, please seal them up in a plastic or paper bag and send them in. Thanks.

A thought about the difficult events in Tucson and Mount Mansfield Union High School: students have not brought up, nor have we discussed in class here any of these sad events. We teachers received a very-smart set of talking points we could use with a child if we are asked. If your child has asked you about any of these events and you’d like me to send along this advice sheet, just contact me.
I feel over and over again how lucky we are that our six and seven and eight-year-olds here in Williston, day after day, have, compared with their counterparts in other places all over the world, remarkably-safe lives – physically, emotionally, and psychologically. We are so lucky, because even in Norman-Rockwellesque Williston, our kids’ brains are filled up each day with the very-real-to-them struggles of handing in reading log in, telling the truth, being on time, getting noticed, belonging, being liked, trying to like someone they don’t like, trying to do things they think they’re not good at, and trying to find a way to do those things they love to do in the blur of get-on-the-bus-get-off-the-bus-get-ready-for-practice-get-in-the-car-we’re-going-shopping -- So even here, our kids have a full plate. We have a full plate.

But we have, in the ten years or so left of these kids’ childhoods, the opportunity every week and every day to just spend time with them, listen to them, think with them, look at them when they’re talking to us, struggle with them. Either we will do it or we won’t. But, we’ve got just a few hundred weeks’ worth, of little opportunities, to help our children find their own gift and really flourish as confident purposeful, strong, kind, self-reliant, imaginative, contributing, and content human beings – or not. The lesson I keep getting as I think of Tucson and Mount Mansfield, is that it’s so much in our hands, that it’s the little things, and that it is now.

Have a warm end of the weekend! - David

January 14, 2011

Jan. 14 2011

Dear Parents and Friends,

There has been a lot of energy this week with the excitement over the snowfall! Hmmm. Today we’ll channel that by….

In Writing this week, we have finished up our first drafts of our Stuffed-animal short stories, and we have been conferencing with each other. We’ve been giving each other feeback, asking each other questions and responding to each other’s questions to clarify our stories. In the coming days we will be revising them, focusing on strong beginnings, potent words, and dialogue.
For Read-aloud, we are reading Winnie-the-Pooh. We’ve been using each little story (like Pooh’s run-in with bees and ballons to his run-in with Rabbit’s entrance) to look at how good authors introduce settings and characters, present a problem, then let their characters loose to work their way through the problem and usually learn a lesson.

In 2nd grade math, students worked this week on problems like this:
"Pretend that you need to build some new tables for us all to use in our classroom. Your are given five table tops. You are also given 17 table legs. You can make tables with four legs. You can also make tables with just three legs. Make all the tables you can using all the table tops and all the table legs you are given.
Question: How many three-legged tables will you end up with and how many four-legged tables will you end up with for your classroom? Answer with pictures, numbers, and words."

Students are also working hard to learn strategies for getting quicker with their addition and subtraction facts.

In Fundations, 2nd graders are learning to break big words down into their smaller syllables so they can more easily spell those words. They are learning, for example, that the word muffin gets split into two "closed" syllabes: muf/fin. Students now know that when two vowels are split by two consonants (as in this example), you split the word right down the middle between those two consonants. But, if the word is packing or fishing, you can't split up a ck or an sh so, instead, you split them like this: pack/ing and fish/ing.

First Grade Math: “We wanted to give you an update on what we have been working on in math. We are all going on a journey to Antarctica. Below you will find a link to my blog where you can see some cool Antarctica Passports. As part of this unit the students are learning about Antarctica and penguins. So far the students have decorated their folders and we have recorded their height and weight on their passports. They have cut out measurement strips that show their actual height. We have played a game called Journey to Antarctica where the students spend money for various necessities along their journey. Today we talked about the temperatures of the Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic Oceans. The Atlantic and Pacific winter temperatures are 60 degrees and the Antarctic Winter temperatures are 30 degrees. In small groups the students were given a small glass of water and a thermometer. Their task was to get their water sample temperature and change it to be 60 degrees and then 30 degrees. They had hot water, cold water and ice to help them. They were all able to do it and loved it. Check in with your child about this experiment. What can they tell you?
More next week..... Donna”

Have a nice weekend, everyone!
David

January 7, 2011

Jan. 6, 2011

Dear Parents and Families,

We have had a busy first week back at school in everything from writing short stories to launching our Solids, Liquids and Gases unit to even dealing with sneaky stuffed animals. It’s great to be back in the classroom as we begin this stretch of what is usually the most productive time of the school year.

In reading, as we approach the 80th day of school, we are beginning our winter assessments of students’ reading levels. We’ve also revamped the At-Home Reading Log, and congratulations to Grant Mitchell for being the first to read 300 minutes and get a chance to reach into our classroom treasure chest!

We finished up our read-aloud book, Toys Go Out. We have been talking about a couple of interesting themes. First, Stingray, the grumpy know-it-all had been jealous about not having been picked by the little girl to go to the seaside. Still, her friends, the other animals, treat her with kindness and understanding, and they even save her life, and on the last page of the book, we see Stingray dancing joyfully on the Little Girl’s bed, fully-happy and joyful at last, transformed by the love of her friends. Another theme we looked at was, “Does it count as lying if you make something up to make a sad friend happier?” When Lumphy the Buffalo loses his tail jumping off the bed, and Plastic the ball tries to comfort him, we read…

“Oh, I need it very badly!”
“’What for?” Plastic wants to know.
Lumphy sniffs back his tears. He tries to think of an answer.
“You look tough without it,” says Plastic kindly, rolling around to examine Lumphy’s bottom.
“Really?”
“None of the tough buffaloes have tails,” lies Plastic. I read it in an animal book.”
“They don’t?”
“It’s the tough-buffalo fashion.”
Lumphy thinks for a minute. “Who needs a tail anyway?” he sniffs.
“I don’t.” says Plastic.
“I don’t either then,” Lumphy says bravely.

The culmination of this book led nicely into our Short-Story unit. As you know, we all brought stuffed animals into the classroom and began writing stories about them as we studied story structure including setting , characters, problem, and solution.

We found that just like Lumphy, Plastic, and Stingray, our stuffed animals are a clever and sneaky crew. They did things like hide in the plants and the bookcases every time we left the classroom. So, it hasn’t been hard to think up stories for them.

We studied another important writing organizer -- the topic sentence. We all took a look at the big plant in our classroom and we made a list of words to describe it. We suddenly realized that if Mr. Terko came into the classroom and saw “pointy, tall, fat, huge, green and thirsty” written on the board, he might think we had seen a monster! So, we started our piece off with, “In our classroom, we have a huge plant.” We figured that would keep Mr. Terko from being scared.

In Second Grade Math, we are continuing our study of math facts, learning four important strategies for tackling them – including learning the doubles (8+8 and
4 + 4)), the neighbors (8+7 and 4 +5), the tens facts (10 +8= 18 and 10 + 9 = 19), and learning the halves (if 9+9=18 is easy for you, then keep that in mind when you see 18-9=?)

In 2nd Grade Fundations , we just finished our unit on the suffixes –s, -es, -d, -ed, and –ing.

We began our unit on Solids, Liquids and Gases (“Excuse me, Mr. Bolger, is a
burp made of gas? What about when you – you know -- fart?” ) We’ll be doing multi-age workshops between now and the next seven weeks with students rotating among the classrooms Thursdays and Fridays to do experiments and learn the terminology like matter, properties, and state, atoms and molecules.

Calling all Singers: The Horizon Teachers along with para educators, Mr. Terko, Ms. Trasdiatti-Holmberg, and a couple of musician-parents, will be performing two songs in the upcoming Williston Variety Show (WCS auditorium on March 11??). We would love to have two or three more parents to join with us. We haven’t picked the song yet, but over the past several years, we’ve sung “Jumbalaya”, Sunshine (Jonathan Edwards), Aimie (Pure Praire League), It Don’t Come Easy, and Running Down a Dream (Tom Petty) We generally just have two or three rehearsals on Friday mornings before school, and then we do it. ). If you like to sing and these songs appeal to you, please email us.

Please help our classroom plants! We bought some nice hanging plants at the beginning of the year, and they are beginning to suffer now that they have outgrown their pots and dry-aired winter is fully upon us. I would love it if someone could drop by, check in on them, and give us some advice on how to help them stay alive and flourish in here.

And finally, thank you all, parents and kids, for the holiday gifts you gave me –The handwritten cards, baked goodies, the several gift cards, the cool gifts and the smiles and hugs at the door were all equally appreciated. I feel very luck to be working with you and your children. I learn from you, and from them each day, and I can’t wait to get to work in the morning. What a job.

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

David