Hello families,
Happy New Year! I hope that everyone had a restful and calm break. Students started the new year back continuing our non-fiction reading and writing units, and started reviewing and learning adding and subtracting within 100 strategies in math. In this newsletter I have included a summary of SeeSaw, a new journaling/blogging app, and the login process for Reading Horizons. Technology Update SeeSaw At QAE, we are so lucky to have access to the newest technology. We just started a using a new program called SeeSaw! It is an app that allows students to document their work in writing, drawing, photo or video. It's similar to KidBlog with slightly less login hassle and a simpler user interface. Students will be able to sort their work into separate folders depending on what they are blogging about. Students can comment on other students' work. Before any work is posted, SeeSaw requires that I approve student work. This feature is great because I can give feedback to students right away about their work, and regulates what content is posted. Here is the letter from SeeSaw for parent access: Dear Parents, This year we're going to use a new tool to share what we're learning in class called Seesaw. Your child will have his or her own learning journal, and you can get notified when your child adds new items. It's completely private -- only you can see your child's journal outside of class. Click on https://app.seesaw.me/s/011-355-975 to sign up -- it takes just 30 seconds. Once you sign up, you can download the Seesaw Parent app for iPhone or Android, or access your child's journal on the web. Thanks! Once you click on the link, SeeSaw will send me a notification that you would like to view your child's work and I will approve you. You may send the link to anyone, and I will verify with you if there is anyone who is not a guardian asking for access. Most students should have at least one post. Some might not have any due to some technology glitches, but we will be adding more in the weeks to come! Reading Horizons We also started the Reading Horizons app which is associated with the Reading Horizons phonics curriculum. It is an engaging app that teaches and reinforces the marking skills from the Reading Horizons curriculum. We will mostly use this app in school. If students would like to use it at home, that is great! I would set the limit to about 60 minutes per week, however this is not required. To sign in, first download the Puffin Academy app (the background is purple). Then download the Reading Horizons app within Puffin Academy. Then, students use queenanne as their site ID. Next, use the first initial of their first name, and then their full last name. No spaces. For example, my name would look like: kthibault Please let me know if you have any questions or ask your student to see if they remember our login process!
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Multi-Cultural Celebration This week we enjoyed two celebrations. First, our unity point party and second our Multi-cultural celebration. Students were introduced to traditions from around the world including Ramadan, Chanukah, Japanese New Year, Danish traditions and Kwanzaa. Students moved from station to station playing games, hearing stories, and tasting the delicacies from each culture. Enjoy photos from the celebrations below. Snowman Glyph and Resolutions Students created a glyph, a symbol with agreed upon symbols, of a snowman telling the rest of the classroom whether they enjoy playing outside or staying inside, hot cocoa over apple cider, or sleeping in or waking up early. After creating these glyphs, students examined each others' creations, uncovered the data, and created a graph of the information to share with the rest of the class. Students took these glyphs home. Ask your student to share with you the different symbols and results from the classroom. Hello families! This was an exciting week. We earned our first unity party, celebrated Hour of Code and created some focused non-fiction writing. Unity Party As a class, we earned 50 unity points since the beginning of the year. We gained unity points by working together to accomplish a task, completing a routine as self-directed learners (without prompting of a teacher or adult), or receiving a compliment from a teacher for exceptional behavior. In honor of the hard work together, we will have a PJ, Stuffy, Cardboard Box Fortress Movie Event on Wednesday, December 16. That means students will be able to wear pajamas, bring a stuffy that fits in a backpack, and we will have a craft hour to make a cardboard box creation. If you have a cardboard box that your student can sit in, bring it in! I have a storage spot in the room. Anything we don't use will go to the recycling. We will watch Inside Out. Non-fiction Writing We have started our non-fiction writing units and already students have started their informational texts. This week we have looked at features of a non-fiction text, how to dissect a tricky word and the importance of keywords to talk the talk of experts. As we move through this unit of writing, students will work on structure, explaining ideas and using multiple resources to teach readers. Hour of Code On Tuesday. students worked on either Star Wars or Minecraft programs through Hour of Code that taught the importance of sequence and the basics of programming using characters and items that were familiar to students. Students and families can download the app for use at home. Enjoy some photos! Hello families! Handwriting It has a been a busy week back from break. We have started many new learning endeavors! We finally received our handwriting notebooks! So, this week we had our first session of handwriting. The handwriting is called Zaner-Bloser and it covers both print and cursive in the same book. We will practice handwriting at least 2 times per week. Math In math, we have been looking at place value for numbers up to 1,000. To gain understanding of place value, we have practiced skip counting by 10's and 100's within 1,000, playing games such as "10 more, 10 less" and starting to explore binary for some dessert math. If you would like to support your student at home, you can practice skip counting up and down within 1,000 by 10's and then 100's. Ask students what patterns they notice, and how many different ways can they say one number (ie. 650 - 6 hundreds and 5 tens or 65 tens). Seattle Tilth and Mercer Slough On Wednesday, we had a special visit from Seattle Tilth. Look forward to your student's kidblog on the thing that they most enjoyed about the presentation (hint: worm in sunglasses could be one of them). Today, we went to Mercer Slough with Ms. Shaw's class. The weather gods were on our side! The sun was shining and the bugs were out. Students went on a guided nature walk where they got to touch soils (dry and sopping), ferns, and painted on mud warrior face paint. In the lab, students learned about different soil creators and observed them under microscopes and bug TV! Enjoy some photos of one group's nature walk and bug exploration. Thanks to parents who were able to take time from their day to help out, both Wednesday and Friday. It's great to have you enjoy these opportunities! Important event: Friday, November 20 - 9:25 - 9:45 am - Publishing Party! Hello families, On Tuesday we celebrated Veteran's Day with an all-school assembly. During the assembly, one member from each grade level shared reasons why they were thankful to the men and women that serve out country. Many families at QAE honored and thanked their veterans in person during the assembly by inviting them on stage. Each member shared when and where they served. To culminate the event, all students, including our own, performed the national anthem, which we had practiced all week during song time and with David Thompson during music. Thank you veterans! Soils This week in soils we explored sand, humus, and clay. We not only examined their properties (color, sound, touch, smell) when dry, we got a chance to get messy and observe what happens to each type of soil when water is added! Students were eager to roll, smear, and blend the different components of soil. Next week we will continue to explore other properties of these soil components. Enjoy photos below! Publishing Party Time to celebrate our writers! During this beginning part of the year, writers have been working hard looking at master authors, learning their writing crafts and incorporating them into their own writing. On Friday, first thing in the morning, students will celebrate their hard work with a publishing party. Parents, families and friends are welcome to come from 9:25-9:45am to read and talk to the authors. If you have any other questions, please email me! Hi families, This week we started our soil science unit. This is the first science unit in the Project-Based Learning second grade curriculum here at QAE. We began our investigation by asking what are scientists and what do they do? Here are some of the describing and action words students came up with:
Next, we asked what we already know about soil and what we would like to know about soil. It was one of the glorious moments in a students life where talking about poop is expected (worm poop)! Our students already had a solid base of knowledge about soil, and many questions they hope to answer. Examine their thoughts here: Finally, on Friday, we dove in and explored living soil.
"I have a big worm!" "Baby worms!" "Look! A rolly polly bug!" Students literally got their hand dirty closely examining soil, noting whether their observations matched the predictions they made. Students found leaves, sticks, rocks, and bugs. Some students shrieked in delight, and some students just shrieked at the creatures their found plodding away in the soil. Next week we will continue our examination of soil by looking at its different components: sand, humus, and clay. Wishlist In other news, some people have been asking if there's anything we would love to have in the classroom. I have created a wishlist! On the list I have posted books and tools that would help our classroom thrive and create. Please let me know if you have any questions. Find the link here. Old and New Hello families, This week we say goodbye to a beloved principal, David Elliott, and also welcome our new interim principal, Amy Jessee. Though I am new to the QAE, I know David Elliott changed lives -- he founded this incredible school with a powerful vision. We are all here because of David. He created the environment where both students and teachers felt comfortable to learn and find community and happiness. David's leave of absence and ultimate resignation hit us hard. All teachers, staff and parents have the same information about his departure, which is leaving many of us unsettled. Please know that I am here for you and that my main duty is to take care of your students and their well being and learning. David is a great man and principal--we could never replace him. We are lucky to have our new interim principal, Amy Jessee. She is a kind, highly capable, and gracious visitor joining us from Coe. She understands the vision and mission that Mr. Elliott created to teach the whole child. As a way to welcome Ms. Jessee to our school your students wrote welcoming cards to her. Inside each card, they wrote things they love and cherish about QAE in order to help Ms. Jessee feel more at home and get to know the loving community she is entering, if only for a short time. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you, and I can't thank you enough for your support during this tumultuous time. Kate Thibault Hello families! You may have noticed a letter in your student's orange folder on Friday or today. The letter is a note to inform you about Reflex math, one of our new math fact fluency programs we will use throughout the year. As the letter mentions, Reflex math helps students practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division math facts through games and incentives, such as "buying" things (t-shirts, haircuts, etc) for their Reflex math avatar (NOT actually buying anything (: ). We will use Reflex Math 2 times per week in class. Each session lasts between 10-30 minutes depending on a student's proficiency of the math facts. In addition to the 2 sessions at school, I ask that students do one more at home. I anticipate students may even want to do more, however, one is all I ask! We also started ST (Spatial-Temporal) Math this week. We will do ST Math as a whole class twice a week for 30 minutes (or three times per week for 20 minutes). ST Math states in order to get through the curriculum, students should complete 90 minutes per week, so I ask that students do one more 30-minute session at home. Just a quick run down for new families or those who would like a refresher, ST Math is a "game-based learning system that features Jiji the penguin." Math language and symbols are removed and get introduced in a sequential order as students master the math concept. Though it is an individual activity, it is important to support students as they move through the problem solving process. You can download the ST Math and Refelx apps onto mobile devices or access it online. For any other information about this, please email me. If you have any other questions, let me know ([email protected]). Also, check out the rabbit on Reflex Math. He's my favorite. Hello families, Jog-a-thon Enjoy just a few Jog-a-thon photos I took while running! I wasn't able to get everyone, but hopefully it captured some of the day. Brain Conversations The first few weeks of school we have discussed what our brains are doing when we learn and when we have emotions, especially strong ones. In reading and writing, we talked about how our brains work like marathon runners. You can’t (at least not most of us) run a marathon on the first try. You have to practice and build up stamina. Our brains work in the same way. In order to train our reading and writing brains, we have added one minute per day to our reader’s workshop and quiet, concentrated writing. We also discussed the “Brain in the Hand” during classroom meeting as a way to communicate how we’re feeling. When a student is stressed or scared, we call it “flipping your lid.” We use hand motions to communicate how we’re feeling and if we’re ready to learn or need to calm down. If you want more information about the brain, ask your student to show you the Brain in the Hand, how many minutes we read for today, or our time-to- beat for quiet writing. Their brains are in training and they are building their stamina! I also learned that there is some research out there that suggests the same part of the brain the receives pain gets activated when people learn new things (I learned this at the Positive Discipline training – actual source is unknown to me at the point). So, it’s actually a little painful to learn new things! How great is that? Now we know a possible reason why learning feels hard and why we can be tired (and maybe a little crabby?) after a full day of working hard. Curriculum Night I have attached the PowerPoint presentation from Curriculum Night and our weekly schedule (Sorry it's a blurry photo. I didn't have a Word copy). In the PowerPoint presentation you will find information on literacy, math, positive discipline, project-based learning, how to contact me and our classroom coordinators (Jody Stewart and Shinae Kim). There were a couple questions from the evening that I would like to answer here. There were a few more (about handwriting) that I'm going to ask around and then report back. 1. Will we be able to use Reflex math at home? The answer is yes! We will do two 10-30 minute sessions (depends on student) in class, and you will complete one at home. Log-ins and information to come soon. 2. Does the 20 minutes of reading include read aloud? The answer I got back from the Laura Cooper, the reading specialist, is that students should try to do the 20 minutes independently. However, if it becomes a battle, just a couple minutes of them reading is ok, followed by parent/guardian read aloud. Feel free to set goals, like 2 minutes tonight, 3 minutes tomorrow! 3. When students start to take home Book Baggies, will the books be at an independent, instructional or interest level? I will at the moment assign books that interest students, and as the year progresses, narrow book borrowing to more specific levels.
Hello families, This week has been packed with new routines, writing, reading, math, and classroom meetings! In writing, we have started our unit on personal narratives, stretching out small moments into non-fiction or fictional stories. We've been talking about how master writers get ideas from everywhere, even ordinary things! You may have noticed that your student brought home a Tiny Notebook, and if they haven't yet, not to worry, it'll be used all year. This notebook is for jotting down inspirational ideas during the day, night or weekend. I encourage students to take their notebook home every night and return it in the morning so that they can have it with them in order to write down their small moments and then have it with them at Writer's Workshop ready to write. If you would like to support them, ask your writer how to jot down notes in their notebook. Do they write the whole story or just a few key words? This Friday was the first day of Buddy Reading. Every Friday, Mrs. Ward's kindergarten class will meet with our class. Students read to their buddies familiar stories, talking about the characters and helping their buddies practice reading. Enjoy some photos of the buddies! |
Ms. ThibautOne of the second grade teachers at QAE. Read this blog and stay up-to-date on classroom activities. Archives
March 2017
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Ms. Thibault's 2nd Grade | Class Blog |