Weekly Update May 16-20

Hello,

Wow!  I can’t believe how fast this year has gone!  They will be second graders soon J

On Friday we have our community walking field trip.  Remind your student to wear comfortable walking shoes.  Also, if you indicated on the field trip form that you will be joining us, I look forward to seeing you!  We plan to leave at 8:30 a.m.

On Friday, we celebrated the success of the Knowledge-a-Thon.  We decorated cookies because they are all one smart cookie and at the end we had an awards ceremony.  Our class won first place for the highest average score!  You can see in the pictures below how excited and proud we were of our hard work!

At the end of the year, fourth graders host "mini-courses" where they teach a skill to our 5k-3rd graders.  If you have empty egg cartons, please send them in with your child this week.  We have a group that needs them.  Thanks! 

Upcoming Events:

Friday, May 20: Community Walking Tour Field Trip

Monday, May 23: Family Event at the Kaukauna Public Library 6-7 PM

Thursday, May 26: Early Dismissal 

Friday-Monday, May 27-May 30: No School

Wednesday, June 1:Mini Courses/ Field Day

Thursday, June 2: Last day of school for students. Early Dismissal

Let's celebrate the last few days with a special GOOD-BYE!

5/23 G Green Bay gear and grapes

5/24 O Oranges and wear orange

5/25 O Odd day and Oreos

5/26 D Dot day: Wear dots and dot art

5/31 B Book buddies and wear blue

6/1 Y Yummy popsicles and yoga

6/2 E Exercise gear

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are continuing our nonfiction study. This week we will learn ways nonfiction readers can take notes about what they are learning so they can share with their partner. Some ways we are organizing our learning is by using T-charts, Venn Diagrams, Webs. We will also be comparing and contrasting books about the same topic to grow and change our thinking and notice when information doesn't match. We can compare and contrast books by asking, "Why is this important?" or "Why do you think this keeps showing up in all the books?"

Writers' Workshop: We are starting our poetry unit. This week will study other 1st grade poets to see what we can learn about writing poems. We we also be exploring poetry centers to get our poetic juices flowing. The centers include: illustrating a poem with watercolors, listen to songs, read song books, see ordinary objects with new eyes and add more poems to our poetry anthology. 

Word Study: We will continue to work on using all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We are working on short and long I words this week!

Math Workshop:  This week we will be finishing up our work with measurement, shapes, and time. On Monday we used paper clips as a form of measurement. We will review time and shapes and plan to take our unit test on Thursday.  We are taking the End of the Year first grade assessment.  It will be exciting to see how much we have grown as mathematicians in first grade!

Social Studies: We will be finishing up our community centers week and then ending our week with our walking community fieldtrip in which we will be touring the Piggly Wiggly, Times Villager, stopping at Dick's Drive-In for ice cream and eating lunch and playing at Horseshoe park. First graders are super excited for this field trip! 

As always if you have any questions let me know! Have a great week!

-Samantha 

Weekly Update May 9-13th

Hello,
As the year begins to wind down, we are still very busy in first grade.  Read below to find out what's happening!

Thank you to all who made me feel very special during Teacher Appreciation last week!  I love being a part of the New Directions family! Your support and willingness to be a part of your child's education this year has been amazing. Thank you! 

The Penny War has begun! Read below to learn more about this exciting activity.

Upcoming Events:

May 12: Family Night 5:30-7:00-Tailgate and Trail Night
May 20: Community Walking Tour Field Trip-Please return the permission slip and money by Wednesday. 

May 26: Early Dismissal 

May 27-May 30: No School

June 1: Mini Courses/ Field Day

June 2: Last day of school for students. Early Dismissal

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are continuing our nonfiction study. This week we will spend more time growing our reactions to what we are reading. We can think things such as, "In my opinion..." or "I agree/disagree with the part where..." to help us grow our reactions. We'll also be noticing when what we read doesn't match what we thought and change our thinking. We'll work on asking questions such as, "How do..?" "Why do..?" "How come...?" and "Why would...?" to help us think deeper about the text. Readers can use the information they do find to suggest possible answers to their questions. Partners have been reading books about similar topics and sharing and growing their thinking together.

Writers' Workshop: We are finishing up publishing our series books. We are working on blurbs to get our readers interested in our books, and All About the Author page to teach the reader more about the author, and fancying up our pictures and making a catchy cover for our celebration at the end of the week. 

Word Study: We will continue to work on using all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing.  This week we are focusing on short e and long e words.

Math Workshop:  We will continue learning about shapes this week. We will be composing 2-Dimensional shapes using other shapes, learning more about 3-Dimensional shapes and composing some of our own, and beginning to learn about measurement by measuring with length units. 

Social Studies: We are continuing our study of communities. This week we will add to our map of our playground and begin our community centers. Centers will include: reading and making a map, building a community location, and exploring community helpers. We're getting very excited for our community field trip next Friday!

Hello New Directions Families,

             As you know the Kaukauna Public Library has a lot more space for more books. Student Council would like help from the families at New Directions Learning Community to raise money for purchasing more books for the library.  Student Council is organizing a Penny War to buy books so there are more available for checkout. 

A Penny War works like this: Pennies count as one cent each as you would expect but each silver coin, bill or check reduces the number of points from that container by the amount of the coin. (e.g. a nickel reduces the points by five, a dime by ten, a dollar by 100, etc...). Teams can then place silver coin and paper money into their competitors jars. 

All the books purchased with the money New Directions donates will have a donor’s plate inside the front cover telling everyone we donated the books. Our Penny War will run from Monday May 9 - Friday May 13. (So get your coins/bills ready.)

 Our goal is to raise $500. If each student brings in at least $3.00 we will exceed our goal. 4th graders will present our donation to the Kaukauna Library on May 31. 


Thank you for supporting NDLC and the Kaukauna Public Library. 

Weekly Update May 2-6

Hello,
Happy May! This morning we filled our May calendar with events for the month….and it is definitely busy!  This week we are beginning some of our end of the year assessments.  On Monday I started PALS testing and again on Friday I will be testing students.  It is exciting to see how much they have grown this year!  

Upcoming Events:

May 12: Family Night 5:30-7:00-A note will be coming home today
May 20: Community Walking Tour Field Trip-A note is coming home today

May 26: Early Dismissal 

May 27-May 30: No School

June 1: Mini Courses and Field Day

June 2: Last day of school for students. Early Dismissal

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are continuing our nonfiction study. This week we will continue to work on determining what's important by using the "5 W's (and H)" Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?, putting information together by noticing how sections fit together, and coming up with our own ideas about what we're learning by thinking, "The idea I'm having is..." or "I think..."

Writers' Workshop: We are getting ready to publish our series books. Students have worked hard to create fiction characters, give their characters a problem and add details to make their stories come to life. We will be working on adding in punctuation, making our writing readable, using our favorite authors to give us ideas about what we can add to our stories, and use our illustrations to tell important details.

Word Study: We will continue to work on using all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We have also been adding many new poems to our poem binders!

Math Workshop: Last we practiced telling and writing time to the hour and half hour. Telling the difference between the hour and minute hand can be tricky sometimes, so keep practicing at home. This week we will begin to explore shapes. We'll learn about the properties of squares, other rectangles, triangles, and circles. We'll also split shapes into equal parts and compose 2-dimensional shapes.

Social Studies: We are continuing our study of communities. This week we will be learning about community helpers, neighborhoods and maps. We will be exploring our playground and drawing a map using a birds eye view. 

Summer Literacy Night

 

When: Monday,  May 23^rd  6-7pm 

Who: Friends and Families of New Directions

 Where: Kaukauna Public Library

 

Why:  To get a jumpstart on summer reading and writing!

 

  Come and get registered for the summer reading program, get a library card (if you don’t already have one), make a summer reading and writing kit and check out the new library!

 

*Students will still have a summer reading program presentation in classrooms and are still able to return summer reading program registrations to school.

Weekly Update April 25-29

Hello,
This week brings the last week of April. I can't believe how quickly the year is going.   We have been very busy!  Today we did a reading and math test on the ipads that the district is piloting for next school year.  The students all worked hard and were very patient during it!  Next week we will be doing our PALS testing.

Upcoming Events:

Friday, April 29: Yoga-wear comfy clothes
May 12: Family Night
May 20: Community Walking Tour Field Trip

May 26: Early Dismissal 

May 27-May 30: No School

May 31: Mini Courses

June 1: Field Day

June 2: Last day of school for students. Early Dismissal

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are starting a new unit, "Reading Nonfiction Cover to Cover: Nonfiction Book Clubs. In this unit we will focus on growing nonfiction reading skills, as well as work on our speaking and listening skills. As we read longer books, we'll need strategies for hanging on to the important information. We'll also learn to take the information provided in one book and add it to information learned in another, and another, thinking and learning about a topic across many texts. This week we will be focusing on reading with an explaining voice, and using and explaining voice when talking with our partners about our books. We will also notice the different ways nonfiction books are organized and think about how it will teach us. We'll spend some time determining what's important by looking for words and phrases that repeat.

Writers' Workshop: We will continue to work on writing series.  This week we will be working no showing realistic settings by remembering places we have been that are similar to places in our stories, including chapters in our stories, using everything we know about fiction writing to help us set goals, and using patterns like one of our favorite author's Cynthia Rylant to help us elaborate.

Word Study: We will continue to work on using all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We have also been adding many new poems to our poem binders!

Math Workshop: This week we will be starting our new unit, Geometry, Measurement and Equal Shares. In this unit we will be telling and writing time to the hour and half hour, learning about the attributes of squares, rectangles, triangles and circles, partition circles and rectangles into two or four equal shares, compose 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes, compare and order objects by length and measure objects with same-size length units.

Social Studies: We finished up our US Symbol study on Friday, by presenting what we learned to the rest of the class. Mrs. Welhouse finished up our Junior Achievement program yesterday. This week we will be starting our study of communities and families in communities.

Weekly Update April 19-22

Hello!  I loved listening to our weekend shares this morning.  Everyone sounds like they had fun enjoying the warm weather.  Tomorrow we will be walking around the neighborhood to clean up trash to celebrate Earth Day.  Make sure that your child is wearing walking shoes J

Our end of the year field trip in First Grade includes a walk around Kaukuana with a few visits at local businesses.  It’s a great way to celebrate the end of our Communities unit.  We will be starting this unit next week. We will be needing chaperones for this day.  If you would like to add it to your calendar it will be Friday, May 20^th.  Also, if you will need a background check done, please let me know as soon as possible! 

Upcoming Events:

April 20th-Earth Day Clean-Up

April 21 & 22: Brianna our Staff Developer from the Teachers College at Columbia University will be visiting our school and working closely with teachers and students.  We are excited for this learning experience!

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are continuing our unit, Thinking and Talking About Books. We are focusing on making connections for a couple days this week. We will be noticing when we think “That reminds me of... because…” or “This makes me think of… because….” and using these as a conversation starters with our partners and as stop and jots in our books.  We will also make sure that our connections are not taking us too far away from the book, so that we can continue to carry the meaning of the story.  At the end of the week we will revisit the importance of our partners during reading time.  Partners can help us in many ways including solving tricky words.

Writers' Workshop: We will continue to work on writing series.  We will revise and celebrate the books in our first series this week.  We will then investigate what makes realistic fiction realistic.  We will use mentor texts to help us in our inquiry.  At the end of the week we will work on “show, not tell” by focusing on tiny realistic details so that the reader can picture the story in their mind. 

Word Study: We will spend the month of April reviewing all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We have also been adding many new poems to our poem binders!

Math Workshop: We will continue to practice 2-digit addition this week.  See the chart below to see the methods that we have been using in our classroom.  We will have the unit test on Thursday.  On Friday we will be doing more number-work with numbers up to 120. 

Social Studies: This week we will be finishing up our research on U.S. Symbols.  Students will share their findings with each other.  It really is exciting how much they are learning through their own investigations!  We will also learn about Earth Day and importance of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Have a great week!  As always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

-Samantha 

Weekly Update April 11-15

Hi!

Our KAT was a huge success! This is a huge fundraiser for our school. Money can be turned in through Friday, April 15th, so if you haven't turned yours in there is still time. Thanks again for all your support!

This Friday, April 15^th, four-year-old-kindergarten through second grade classrooms will be cheering on our third and fourth grade as they get ready for state testing in the coming weeks! Please feel free to have your child wear work out gear for our “pump up for testing” day! We will conclude the day by having our third and fourth grade students parade through the halls, while the rest of the school cheers them on!

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, April 12th: Family Night-Science, Social Studies and Subs  5:30-7:00

Monday, April 18th-No School-In-service for teachers

Wednesday, April 20th-Earth Day Clean-Up. Please return permission slip if you haven't already.

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are continuing our new unit, Thinking and Talking About Books. We will begin the unit with retelling.  This week we will be working hard to envision what's happening in our story by pretending we are in a movie and saying, "I'm imagining that...", trying to hear, smell, feel and taste what's happening and saying, "I can picture how _________sounds, feels, looks, tastes, and envisioning "between the pictures" scenes by asking, "What's happening that's not on the page?" We will also be making predictions by thinking about what's happening in the story so far and revising our predictions when they don't match what's happening in the story. We'll be trying to mark our thinking with post-its so we can share our ideas with our partners. 

Writers' Workshop: We're finishing up the first bend of our realistic fiction unit this week. We've been working hard to make up pretend characters, imagine adventures for our characters, make sure to solve our character's problem in the ending and write catchy leads. This week we will work on starting to write series books. We'll learn how authors introduce their characters in book one of their series and how to develop the dialogue in our books. 

Word Study: We will spend the month of April reviewing all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We’ll also be using the patterns and parts from these words to help us spell new words.

Math Workshop: This week we'll be starting to explore 2-digit addition. We'll be using sticks and circles to represent 10s and 1s to help us solved 2-digit addition problems. We'll also be practicing writing equations vertically so the tens and ones line up. We will be reviewing adding a 1-digit number to a 2-digit number and adding a 2-digit number and a multiple of 10. We've been doing alot of learning with our Math Partners :)

Science/Social Studies: We are continuing our study of US Symbols. This week students will decide which symbol they'd like to learn more about and do some research using resources such as books and Pebblego.  It is a topic that they love chatting about! We’ll be sharing some of our learning during our Family Night.

Have a great week!

-Samantha

Weekly Update April 4-8

Hello!  

I hope that your week is off to a great start!  It's so hard to believe that we are already in our second week of the 4th quarter!  As a school we have decided to implement some more options for nightly reading homework for the 4th quarter.  Today a list of reading and writing options will be coming home and students will be able to make a literacy choice nightly or at least 3 times a week.  I still plan to have kids pack books to bring home each night as they are always an option.  Our school goal is to create meaningful home literacy experiences for all kids.  If you have any further questions about this please feel free to email me or write a note in the planner.  

Upcoming Events:

Wednesday, April 6: Dress Up Day

Thursday, April 7: Mix Up/Backwards Day

Friday, April 8th: Dress like a Cat of KAT question/answer, Knowledge-A-Thon

Tuesday, April 12th: Family Night-Science, Social Studies and Subs  5:30-7:00

Monday, April 18th-No School-In-service for teachers

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: This week we've started our new unit, Thinking and Talking About Books. We will begin the unit with retelling.  Students will become aware of the elements of the story, particularly character, setting, and plot which will help them to have other kinds of talks about books.  We will learn that readers don’t just have thoughts after they read a book but while they read the book. We will use post-its to mark important parts and character change.  We will work on having meaningful conversations with our partners as a way to hold themselves accountable for comprehension.  Below is a checklist that we are using to check if we are including everything that we need in a great retell.  You might use this same checklist after retelling books that you are reading at home!

Writers' Workshop: We started our realistic fiction unit this week. This is an exciting unit for students because they get to do a lot of pretending!  Students will come up with characters of their own, naming and putting them into imagined scenarios. This week we will introduce that characters face trouble and that when characters get out of trouble writers give readers a satisfying ending.  We will also spend some time working on spelling and adding “sparkle words” to our writing to help bring our stories to life.  We will end the week by looking at the Narrative Checklist to see what we are doing well as narrative writers and set goals for what we want to work on next.  

Math Workshop: We've just begun our new unit, 2-digit addition.  We are taking some time this week to explore two digit numbers closely.  We are doing a lot of work with the 120 grid, before and after, and 10 more and 10 less.  Getting to know these numbers really well will help students as we move forward in this unit.  Towards the end of the week we will introduce the adding 2-digit numbers through picture drawings. 

Science/Social Studies: We are continuing our study of US Symbols. Each day that we have social studies we are choosing a new symbol to study closely.  They are becoming experts on each of these symbols…be sure to ask them about what they are learning.  It is a topic that they love chatting about! We’ll be sharing some of our learning during our Family Night next week.

Word Study: We will spend the month of April reviewing all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We’ll also be using the patterns and parts from these words to help us spell new words.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

Samantha