Has your child told you anything about Mrs. Dana and SuperFlex? SuperFlex is a Superhero who is able to manage all sorts of different social situations in an expected way. He helps defeat The Unthinkables (cartoon characters that externalize particular problems children may have) when they try to take over children's brains and make them behave in unexpected ways. We have learned about Rock Brain (he makes children get stuck on their own ideas) and Glassman (who causes us to over-react to small things). We have learned some great strategies from Mrs. Dana to help us to overcome these two problem areas. Ask your child to share this information and skills with you.
This week with our Wonders program we will focus on the Essential Question of: What can you see in the sky? We will be applying our prior knowledge (schema) of the night sky as we read many stories this week. Our phonics will continue with r-controlled vowels: ir, er, or, ur. Our spelling words are: her, bird, fur, fern, dirt, work Our Sight Words are: climb, through - - with exposure to: another, full, great, poor. Our grammar focus will be adjectives with our writing focus on word choice. With our Everyday Mathematics program we will continue learning about clocks - - telling time to the hour and half-hour and fractions. As your children have learned, when we divide a shape into equal shares it means that all the pieces have to be the same size. Dividing into two equal pieces creates the fraction ½. This week we will look at sharing four equal pieces and the fraction ¼. I have not seen the agenda yet for Thursday’s Community Meeting so I am not sure of when we will be performing. As soon as this information is available to me, I’ll update the webpage. Thursday is also Opening Day for the Red Sox – which means wearing Red Sox apparel to school. Go Sox!
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This week in our Wonders program we will focus on the Essential Question of: How can we classify and categorize things? We sort and classify daily when we use criteria to move around the classroom. For example: If you are wearing the color blue...If you have shoe laces that are tied...If your first name starts with a vowel. We will connect the concept of classifying with animals, as we continue our love of this subject matter. Our phonics focus is “r-controlled vowels” with the spelling pattern of “ar”:
cart, barn, arm, art, yarn, harm Our sight words are: four, none – with exposure to: large, only, put, round Our grammar focus will be joining sentences with “and, but, or”, which will tie in perfectly with our writing focus of: Sentence Fluency. We will also focus on Character Traits and Point of View. With our Everyday Mathematics program we will work more with clocks (digital and analog). We will continue practicing addition/subtraction, place value (a favorite activity), and learn about fractions. Has your child shared “biomimicry” with you? Last Friday during Science we had to design a solution to a human problem by mimicking how plants and/or animals use their external parts to help them survive, grow, and meet their needs. Using a turtle as a model, we had to design something to protect our head when riding a bicycle. Your children were very clever! This week, based on what we learned about the burdock plant, we need to design something to help us keep our shoes on if we don’t know how to tie the laces. Stay tuned for this challenge! Very exciting news!!!! We will be performing at the next Community Meeting. Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 5th. More information to follow.
New Boston Central School is celebrating World Down’s Syndrome Awareness Day by wearing “funky socks” on March 21, 2018.
Down’s syndrome is a genetic disorder that is caused by the presence of 3 copies of the 21st chromosome instead of the usual 2. It’s the most common genetic chromosomal disorder and cause of learning disabilities in children. It also commonly causes other medical abnormalities, including heart and gastrointestinal disorders (Mayo Clinic). Early intervention programs with a team of therapists and social educators who can treat each child’s specific situation are helpful in managing Down syndrome. We know that NBCS is a “special place to learn and grow” and we support the uniqueness of all our students! Join us in wearing your funkiest socks! If possible, please send your child to school on Wednesday with the “funkiest socks” they can find. Thank you for your support. Did you hear about our visit from Sundance and Jagger, the wonderful service dogs in training? We learned so much about service animals. Some examples of what service animals can be trained to do are: opening doors, hearing and alerting you to fire alarms, guiding you through heavily trafficked areas. This visit provided some excellent background knowledge (schema) for this week’s Wonders program: How do people work with animals? We will be reading and talking about different ways that people work with animals. Do you remember hearing about Koko, the gorilla that learned sign language? We will be reading the story, Koko and Penny. Back in 1972 Penny Patterson starting working with Koko, helping Koko to learn over 1,000 words!
Our phonics study for the week is Long Vowel Ee with the spelling pattern of y, ey. Our spelling words are: key, bumpy, puppy, funny, penny, sandy Our Sight Words are: wash, would – with exposure to: found, hard, near, woman, would, write During Writer’s Workshop we will continue to focus on the organization of our stories as well as word choice. With our Everyday Mathematics program we will learn about “What’s My Rule”. Information will be coming home on Monday. What’s My Rule is another way to look at addition and subtraction – but with a rule that needs to be followed for each equation. We will also look at the minute hand and digital clocks. Did you hear about our fun exploration with camouflage last week? We learned about the importance of camouflage with animals. We found out that it was pretty tricky spotting the moths that were “hidden” on the trees. We had a great time getting together with our Reading Buddies and creating Leprechauns. Due to the early release and snow day from last week – just a reminder that our spelling test for last week will be on Monday morning.
This week with our Wonders program we will focus on insects. Our Essential Question is: What insects do you know about? How are they alike and different? Our phonics focus will be the Long Vowel Ii with the spelling patterns of: i, y, igh, ie. The spelling words are: find, night, by, kind, right, pie Our sight words are: caught, listen - - with exposure to: flew, know, laugh, were. Because of the snow issues last week we were not able to get to our science exploration of: Why are polar bears white? What is camouflage and how is it important? One of the mysteries we will solve involves an insect: a moth. How does camouflage help a moth? We will solve this mystery on Friday. We have loved discovering so many interesting facts about animals with Wonders and Mystery Science. Even our discoveries about vultures was fascinating! I must admit I have never used “fascinating” and “vultures” in the same sentence...until now. After reading our Wonders story, Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre, we discovered the importance of this bird to our ecosystem. We found out that Vultures do not hunt live prey. Instead, they act as scavengers feeding on the carcasses of dead animals. They play an important role in nature, helping to prevent the spread of disease. Ask your child to tell you how the warming air in the morning helps the vulture to soar. Within the next several weeks our Wonders program will focus on service animals. We have the unique opportunity of a visit from service dogs in training. A permission slip went home last Friday – please sign and return this as soon as possible. Our writing will continue to focus on the organization of our stories. We have been discovering different ways to start our stories – to grab our reader’s interest right away. Once we have grabbed their interest, we are learning to put some great word choice into our stories. Come on Rain by Karen Hesse, When the Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant, The Listening Walk by Paul Showers, and Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud by Lynne Plourde will help us with sensory words and organization. With the Everyday Mathematics program we will be exploring the attributes of shapes: color, size, number of sides, and number of corners. We are pushing the Spelling Test off until Monday.
I received this message today:
"The PTA would like to inform everyone that if there is a snow day on Thursday, the Read-A-Thon/Pajama/Favorite Character Day will take place on Friday…same time, same place! Please add this to your websites and let the kids know! Thank you! Ruth (for the PTA)" Why do birds have beaks? Why are beaks different? Just before vacation we did an investigation to determine the relationship between the shape of different bird beaks and the food each bird eats. Using bent straws to represent “pointy beaks” and small cups to represent “duck beaks” your children tried to gather food. Then a challenge was thrown in - - what if your food was mixed in among “rocks”, how could you gather enough food to survive? What beak works best in this situation? This was such a fun exploration!
This week with our Wonders program we will focus on the Essential Question: How do animals survive in nature? We have loved discussing, reading, and writing about animals over the last several weeks. We will continue seeking out information on how animals get what they need to survive in the wild with a Mystery Science exploration. Why are polar bears white? What is camouflage and how is it important? A fun filled week ahead! Our phonics focus is the Long Vowel Oo spelling patterns of: o, oa, oe, ow. Our spelling words are: low, boat, no, row oat, toe Sight Words: over, more - - with exposure to: find, food, start, warm Just before vacation we practiced working with fact family “triangles”. Fact triangles are an amazing tool to help us to understand the relationship between addition and subtraction. We will work more with these fact family triangles this week. Be on the lookout for triangles to be coming home on Tuesday - - these provide great practice opportunities for your child. We will be heading to the Book Fair on Tuesday morning. Information about the Book Fair went home right before vacation. We will be heading to the Library for the Read-A-Thon on Thursday. |
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