Blackberry Families,
For the past two weeks phonics has been hard, but as our Blackberrians know “we can do hard things.” We have done spelling activities, phoneme manipulation activities, and even some spelling “show what you know’s.” We have been focusing on the Phonics Rule for OI and OY, as well as the long vowel letter e – as in EE and EA. We have even started our Morning Meetings with a quick phonics game, like “which word is spelled incorrect,” “fill in the blanks for these words,” as well as vocabulary word reviews!
We’ve heard your feedback and are adjusting accordingly. We have made our Monday morning “Weekend News” an option and now there is a creative writing piece. Our Blackberrians have loved being able to write about various prompts. We’ve also began working on informative writing where we write “All about me.’ Students have been excited to share the some facts about themselves, such as where they live, their favorite drink, who else in their family, etc. We have also done some other creative writing exercises, such as, what would you do in this scenario: “you wake up and there’s a dinosaur in your room – what do you do?” This allowed students to come up with some silly and unique responses.
In 2nd grade math we have been working on measurement. We’ve been estimating how long or tall different things in the classroom are. We will continue our work with measurement when we return from break.
1st grade math number rack story, and played some rounds of sparkle to brush-up on skills for counting by 5’s and 10’s.
This week Danette, Mark, and I welcomed SweetBriar to our class for a mixer. We have named it the “Sweetberry Mixer.” The kindergarteners came to our class to experience what it would be like to be in the 1st grade classroom. Mark set up some different drawing areas and we were able to connect over good smelling markers, what some of our favorite things are, and what is in our community. This allowed students to socialize with each other and collaborate on a big art project!
In science we have been discussing natural habitats. We’ve begun constructing our very own habitats. During this project Blackberrians were able to choose their own habitats, and then were required to pick three living things to place in the diorama. We’ve been working hard all week long, adding model magic, cutting construction paper, and hot gluing drawing together. We will continue working on these after break!
When we return from break, we’re going to start talking about the different plans that children and families have for next year. We’ve found it helps your child to feel confident and finish strong when they know what their plan is. We normalize change and talk about the different choices that families make for their children – no choice is better than another, we are all part of the community and we will continue to be intentional about how we talk about family choices. Some people will go to third grade at TBS, others will go to 2nd grade at TBS. Some people will go to 2nd or 3rd grade at a different school, but no matter what we’ll always be connected by our time together. We also want to highlight how we still have 2 + months together and so many experiences and learning and good times together – we’re going to focus on our time together. We’ll let you know if anything comes up during the conversation, on your end please let us know if anything comes up at home.
Thursday, we had students bring home worksheets from their Finish-Up trays. This included activities that we do for Morning Work, writing exercises, math activities, science hand-outs, etc. Each and every student has made such great progress and this is all their hard work done throughout the year! Everyone should be extremely proud 🙂
Enjoy your time for the Spring Break and we will see you all Monday, April 8th.
Dates to remember:
April 1-5- Spring Break (no school)
April 13- TBS Block Party 6-9PM
April 18-Oakland Zoo Field Trip
Gracias y Saludos,
Leslie and Mark
