Newsletter

Hello Families!I hope you've been enjoying your weekend. Here is everything you need to know...WEDNESDAY, JAN. 29th TRIP: We will be going to the Jewish Museum this Wednesday to see Rachel Feinstein's art works. We will be taking a school bus.We will be leaving at 9:30 and returning to school by 11:30Kids will be eating lunch at school.This trip is part of our Lincoln Center Institute work.REQUESTS: We are in need of the following things if anybody wants to donate. Thank you!Paper towelsPlay dohLysol wipes or a can to help with the germs going around.toilet paper rolls, paper towel rollscone cups (the paper ones you pull out next to water coolers)STAR REPORTS: Will be going out by the end of the week. I'd like to remind everybody that there are certain benchmarks we use in our assessments based on the time of year and end of year goals. An "approaching benchmark" is not something to be upset about - the benchmarks are generally high and what we know about child development at this age is that there are bursts of learning that occur at different times in a child's early education and that barring any learning issues, all children get to where they need to be eventually. These benchmarks, however, are used to help teachers know where to work with each child to move them forward - from their "points of need."CHANGE IN SPECIALS: From tomorrow until the end of the year we no longer have Dance. Instead we have ART ON WEDNESDAYS and MUSIC ON FRIDAYS.WHAT WE ARE UP TO:In our Lincoln Center Institute study Susan, our teaching artist, has been coming to us twice a week. We have done some really interesting and fun things all centered on understanding transformation. So far we transformed sticks into other things using our imaginations, paper to transform into other things, costumes to transform and we transformed a ladder into a castle! We then used that castle along with old shoes to develop characters and moments. The pieces we are going to be seeing on Wednesday by Rachel Feinstein have a fairy tale like quality about them - which is why we are studying fairy tales at the same time. In phonics we are learning about part/whole power - basically about word families and rhyming words. For example, we know that if we can spell one word, like at, we can spell so many words like cat, bat, rat, sat and so on. We will continue this work this week.In writing we are continuing our Persuasive Writing unit. We worked on writing songs last week and this week we will introduce lists - also intended to be used to make change. We will then have all of the writing choices open to us, signs, letters, songs and lists to work with. We will also be working on rereading and fixing up our writing and independently making decisions to either be done with a piece or whether we need to revise.In reading we are going to be learning about figuring out the changing words in pattern books. We will think, "What is the same and what is changing on each page?" We will also be learning that we can use our pattern power to think about how the ending of a book goes with the pattern and then ask ourselves, "What is this whole book really saying?"In math we are going to be working on our last week of geometry. There were a couple of lessons that we were unable to get to and this week we will get to them! We are also going to be having number talks about two digit numbers - how to read them, what they actually mean (place value) and knowing what number comes before and after a specific two digit number. Stacie will come this week to do another lesson on her amazing fairy tale song "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover." We will continue to read fairy tales, look at the parts of each story (characters, setting, problem, solution, magic, moral) and we will do some fairy tale projects. We are also working on being our best selves/making the best choices in regards to how we behave throughout the school day. What should we do if somebody is trying to distract us during a learning time? How can we help a friend learn to better pay attention? What does it mean to be our best self?Have a fantastic week!Love,Lynn