Thank you!

Dear Parents,

Thank you so much for reading this classroom blog this year-- an experiment of mine! Thank you for your feedback and for those of you who signed up to receive email updates from it.

(You will want to "unsubscribe" this summer so you don't keep receiving updates next year when your child has moved on. To do so anytime: just open an email with a blog update, scroll down to the bottom and click "unsubscribe now." That should take care of it.)

Thank you for a great year. I will truly miss this class. They are ready to conquer second grade. Have a wonderful summer! 

-Amanda

Summer Writing Ideas

As you know, it is important that your child keeps reading and you keep reading to him or her over the summer. Anything they are interested in is great—don’t worry about if the books they gravitate to are the perfect “level.”

Children’s literacy skills in general benefit (and avoid regression) if children also do some writing over the summer. They have grown so much in first grade as writers and I'd love them to keep up the habit. If your child is motivated to write on his or her own, that’s great. If not, the ideas below might help in inspiring them to do some writing during their couple of months out of school. Some of these ideas are from Chip Woods, a child development authority and author of the book Yardsticks.

• Give your kids a “shopping list” pad for their own use over the summer. Kids love to make lists, whether they are heading to the mall or the beach.
• Dictate your grocery list to your child. Then, let them check off items on the list as you shop.
• Encourage kids to write in a writing journal. They might like to keep a diary, or write fiction stories, or poetry, or informational teaching books about things they learn about this summer. 
• If there's a toy on their wish list, have them write about it with good reasons why they should have it to try to convince you.
• Email or write to grandparents and relatives. Grandparents love written communication. Or, write notes back and forth between you and your child in your house.
• Write fan mail to ball players or to music and movie stars.
• Remember post cards! If you’re traveling, have kids send them to themselves as well as to relatives. They love to get mail from themselves when they get home and they are always surprised because you usually beat the postcard home.
• Memory boxes. Have children write a letter to themselves at a given age about their summer, for example, “The Summer I was Seven.” They can put the letter in a special envelope and you can start a Summer Memory Box…a private time capsule that can be read in future years, who knows when…add pictures and drawings to taste.

*I am going to send home this list of ideas as a hard copy as well so you can keep it handy if you want. I am gifting each student a blank journal with lined writing pages in it. These are extras I've had for years that we don't need during the school year. Please encourage your child to use and enjoy them this summer! 

Step-Up Day

For a brief time on the morning of the last day of school, students will get to visit both classrooms of the grade they'll be entering in the fall. All first graders will visit both second grade classrooms, hear a bit about what second grade is like, and get to ask some questions. Hopefully this will help ease any summer anxiety about next year. :)

Writing our own Adventures

 

Ta-da! These are boxed sets of first graders' fiction series, and the result of a lot of hard work.

For weeks now during both reading and writing time we have been immersing ourselves in fiction. As readers, we have been practicing strategies for getting to know characters well in order to be able to really fully enjoy the adventures in books along with them. We've been reading a lot of great series books by a favorite author, Cynthia Rylant. We noticed patterns carrying over from one book in a series to another, and have really enjoyed getting to know characters particularly through series. 

In writing workshop, each student wrote a series of stories about the same pretend character (or characters). We tried to bring in techniques we noticed and loved in Cynthia Rylant's books, such as a pattern of a list of three things to add details. We tried to add dialogue with quotation marks, tried to show not tell, tried to add "sparkle" words, show character's feelings, and give our readers a good ending. (We even looked at some "meet the author" blurbs at the backs of books we've read, and wrote our own "meet the author" page.)

We worked hard to revise, and fix up these stories, then we fancied them up with covers, titles, and illustrations. Finally, we each designed a box to contain our series. We checked out some published boxed sets for what they included in order to plan our own. Some students even wrote a blurb about their series on the back, or advertised it with a fun tagline on the side. 

Students have been incredibly motivated by this big project to show off their work. I know you will want them to read their series to you the moment they bring it home....soon! We're hoping to visit second grade and get to share some of our stories with them this week. I haven't taken nearly enough pictures of us at work during this project, but here are a few.

Field Day

A school letter is coming home about Field Day, which is next Tuesday, June 12. A few things to note: send your child dressed to be comfortable running around and outside most of the day. Put on sunblock before school! Students in grades 1 through 4 are in mixed-grade "teams" for the day. Each team has a color; color assignments will come home with your child. Try to have them wear their team color, but no worries if you don't own that color. Just do the best you can. The traditional WRS Field Day lunch is a hot dog/watermelon/chips picnic, rather than what is on the cafeteria menu for that day. If your child prefers to bring lunch from home, they still can. It's always a fun day to celebrate the hard work they've done all year!

Money Games

For the last few days during math, we've played several games using dimes, nickels, and pennies to practice working with money (and with tens, fives, and ones).

(We also have been counting by 25s and collecting one quarter a day for every school day in May and June. Right now we have about $6.00. Some of us have pretty firm predictions at this point about how much money this will accumulate to by the last day of school.)

Farm Field Trip

We were so fortunate to get to spend a glorious May day last week at Cedar Circle Farm. Our sincere thanks to Eric and Lizzy, the friendly and knowledgeable staff who hosted us! We got a tour of the farm with many stops via a wagon ride.

We learned about how greenhouses protect plants and help them grow.

We got to pick and taste Red Russian kale-- and parents, you'd be delighted to know that a lot of first graders said they liked it and asked for seconds!

Can you name this leafy vegetable?...We also sampled chard, which had a stronger flavor than kale. But we were great sports about trying it.

We saw seedlings that had started in the greenhouse getting ready for the fields.

We saw a special way they pollinate the tomato plants in the greenhouse, and got to walk down the tempting rows.

We learned that soil is full of tiny living organisms, and that sometimes they plant a field just to replenish the soil.

We spent some time in a row of radishes, identifying the parts of the plant and then getting to pick, rinse, and sample some.

We also spent some time with strawberry plants and learning some special facts about the way these grow.

We ended with a picnic lunch under some trees. Thank you to Cedar Circle for a great field trip!