Pajamas and Basketball

We had a blast on Pajama Day this past Friday. Students watched the movie, Chicken Little, after reading a version of the book and then we compared it to a 10-minute Disney clip from the 1940's. Students did a great job listening and making connections. Tara also stopped in for a visit and read the story, "Two", which discussed including all students.

We had a great turnout at Will's last Senior home game on Friday night. Amherst basketball has a great record, they won this game and one player reached his 1000th point. Will is a senior at the high school who is taking a self-directed study or course and whom has chosen to volunteer at an elementary school. He is a great help and the students adore him. He is also volunteering with Mr. James in gym.

100 Days in First!

Congratulations to all Room 4 students! We have spent 100 days together learning, growing, taking risks, showing CARE,becoming friends and teaching each other so much! For the 100th day we had a delayed start but still had time to fit in a full day of 100th day centers: 100 cups stacking challenge, 100 day hats and bookmarks, 100 day glasses and writing/illustrating activity, 100 word writing, 100 day monster, "When I'm 100" writing and drawing, Race to 100 math game.

Tomorrow will be our Crazy Heart and Crazy Hair Day! If you would like to send a treat with your child to share, please feel free to do so. We will have a small celebration and card exchange in the afternoon. In Students will do a few CARE activities and Valentines activities throughout the day in addition to normal curriculum.

In math this week, we continue with place value, looking at adding and subtracting 10 to numbers and learning and pattern and an easy way to solve mentally. We will also do some review of previous math units, as I hope to focus on measuring how much material is "sticking" and what we may need to revisit. After the break we will continue with more place value.

In ELA, students continue to work on long and short vowel sounds and open and closed syllable patterns. We we return from our break, students will learn the CVCe word pattern and the long vowel sound. In writing we will wrap up our YELP reviews and students will share their reviews across all 3 first grade classes. I will work on entering these over the vacation so that you can read students' reviews online. Our next unit after the vacation will be realistic fiction writing.

During Unit study, we are focused on symbols and we will be wrapping up flags this week and looking forward to learning about the Statue of Liberty, following the vacation.

Hope you all have a wonderful vacation time with your family!Keep all the great reading you are doing with your child at home!

Let it ice, Let it snow...

I guess all this weather is just a reminder that it's still winter and this is New England so anything is possible, which includes a major Superbowl comeback. So this week has not been much of a week , assuming we may have a snow day tomorrow (?), had a snow day yesterday and a delayed start/early release today, but I can fill you in on some changes and what we have been working on:

Math: place value with base 10-students need to know that the 6 in 65=60 and the 5 in 65=5. Some students are working on 100's and 1000's place value too. We will be moving to adding two digit numbers and coins-dimes and pennies-which connect with tens and one's place value.

Writing: We are working on our Yelps and I hope to have these done and ready to be entered by end of week next week. I will enter them over the break so you can read all of Room 4's reviews.

Social Studies: We are learning about American Symbols and are learning about what a symbol is and the American flag this week. Students will also do a project this week into next where they will draw and write about one of the state flags.

Superkids Reading: Students are working on long and short vowels and the open and closed syllable type. Students continue to work in small reading groups and I encourage students to answer all comprehension questions in complete sentences.

Changes: 

100th Day-this Friday unless tomorrow is a snow day and then it will be moved to 2/13

Breath in, breath out... mindfulness

Hello Families! It feels like this week just flew by! A lot was packed in and looking ahead, we have two very busy and packed weeks before our February break!

Students began a new math unit, new Superkids unit and a new writing unit. In math we are starting to look at place value and decomposing and composing 2-digit numbers. We are learning about base 10 numbers and students are really strong with this new concept. We will revisit our last unit, which was focused on subtraction later in the year.

In Superkids, we have started long vowels and learned about two syllable patterns: open syllables with a long vowel sound and closed syllables with a short vowel sound. Please ask your child about these. I am very impressed with how comfortable and confident students already are with this. Students are learning the new memory words: here, you, only, said, of (some of which are review). Today we read a story and we discussed the text and will be working on drawing conclusions from text next week.

On Wednesday we had our field trip to downtown Amherst to try some of our local restaurants. Students did a fantastic job and we had so many parent chaperones-THANK YOU! Parents truly made this field trip a success for us. Students are starting their yelp reviews in class and they should be completed and posted on yelp no later than our February break. If your child does any writing at home, please encourage neatness, complete sentences, punctuation and capitalization. Spelling is less of a concern so long as students are spelling phonetically right now.

We have also had a high school student, Will, start to help us in the afternoon for a couple of days a week. He will be helping both us and Mr. James as a volunteer for a course he is taking. Will is an awesome person, student and athlete. We are so lucky to have him!


Thank you to all of the families who made it our to mindfulness on Thursday night! I think it is such a great thing to have going on at our school and in homes! I really enjoyed playing math games with the students that night but I am sorry I wasn't able to attend the presentation as well. Tara, Amy and Ms. B. are awesome and have brought mindfulness to some of our staff meetings.


Here are some upcoming things we have going on in the next 2 weeks:

February 8th is a 1:20 dismissal
100th day is February 9th (assuming no snow days)
Crazy Heart Party/Crazy Hair Day is February 14th-a note has been sent home about this.
Will's last Senior Home Basketball Game is February 17th at 7 pm @ Amherst Middle School-Boys High School Varsity Basketball Game-Let's all show up to support our friend, Will, who has been helping us in the classroom. He is a tremendous athlete. This is informal but it might be fun to gather together and cheer him on. Adults are $5 and kids are free.

Wish List:

Peanut Free snack (almost out), manilla folders, clear binder sleeves, thin black dry erase markers