Thank you!

Dear Families,

Mrs. McNick and I wanted to thank you all for the beautiful flowers that many children brought in for Teacher Appreciation week!  We are so lucky to be working with such fabulous families!!

Dear Families,

I hope you had a wonderful April vacation!  We have had so many things going on during the month of April...

Curious Creatures
Corey from Curious Creatures came to Memorial with many animals to share.  The children learned about each animal and it's habitat, it's defense, what it eats, and the make up of the animals body.   Here are some of the friends we met...

We also had science afternoon where the children got to investigate 4 different organisms: millipedes, pill bugs, guppies, and snails.  Thank you to Mrs. Blood, Mrs. Costabile, Mr. Lemieux, and Mrs. Dodge who were my brave volunteers!

On Thursday, we also had The Food Play.  The children learned about healthy foods and how many of each food group they should be eating in a day!

Lastly, our class spent a week doing an author study of Kevin Henkes.  We read many of his books such as Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Chrysanthemum, Wemberly Worried, Sheila the Brave, and Owen.  Our main focus during this study was to learn about character traits.  We talked about each character and compared them to the rest of Kevin's books.  Most of Kevin Henkes books have mice as the main characters.  The children really enjoyed this study.  At the end of our author study, we made mice during centers and then voted for our favorite mouse!  Owen was clearly our winner!!!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me at hherring@email.medfield.net

Best,
Heather

Dear Families,

Happy March!  I really enjoyed meeting with all the families to talk about your child's progress thus far.  It was also fun to see many of you at the Winter Carnival!  Here's some things going on in Room 24...

In Fundations, we have been talking about open and closed syllables.  Closed syllables are words that have a short vowel and end in a consonant (example: cat).  Open syllables are words that have a long vowel and no ending consonant (example go).  The children have really enjoyed marking these types of words during dictation.  I have also introduced some vowel teams (ai, ay, ee, ea, ey, oi, oy)  The children are just learning the sound that these teams of vowels make.

In Writer's Workshop, are finishing up our non-fiction unit.  We had our author's celebration today.  The children had a chance to go around and read each other's books.  On Thursday, we will share our books with Mrs. Elrick's and Mrs. Pollock's class.  The next unit of study is persuasive writing.  For this unit the children will need to bring in a collection of things (7-8 small objects)  Children in the past have brought matchbox cars, shells, shopkins, action figures...  Just know that these collections will be kept in school a couple of weeks so please don't send in your child's favorite toys:)  More information to come on this.

In math, we have taken a break from place value and are now learning about measurement.  The children have really enjoyed using cubes, tiles and paper clips to measure an assortment of things.  Next up, we will be measuring fish and tapes on the floor!

In science we have been learning about organisms.  We were lucky enough to have Marla from Stony Brook come in and talk to our class about different habitats we will see when we go on our field trip in May.  We have also been growing plants for the last couple of weeks.  The children have really enjoyed doing weekly observations of their plants.  Be on the lookout for them coming home soon!

This week, we have also built an aquarium and terrarium.  We will be having science day this Friday and next Friday to learn about the plants and critters that will go in each.  For now they are empty and not too exciting but here is what they look like:)



Next week, we are fortunate enough to have David Biedrzycki as our visiting author.  He will show us how he illustrates his books.

Makerspace...The children continue to make many creations with our March makerspace materials. This month we used playdough, cups, ink pads and stamps, and zig zag scissors. Here are a few photos..







Supplies
After a long dreary winter and many stuffy noses, we are running low on tissues.  If anyone could donate a box it would be greatly appreciated:)

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me:)
Heather

Dear Families,

I hope you had a great snow day!  I love days like that when I can snuggle up with the kids and get school work done.  (I probably will regret saying that in June when we are in our hot classroom for an additional day!!! :)  Here's what's been going on in Room 24...

In reading group, the children performed their first Reader's Theater.  Each group was given a play and the children each played a role in the play.  We practiced this play all week long so we could read our lines fluentlys.  We also created props to go with the play.  The children loved it!  Here are some photos I took of the groups practicing before they performed.

In writer's workshop, we continue to work on teaching books which is part of our non-fiction unit.  Next week, we will start chapter teaching books which will include a table of contents and other features of a longer teaching book.

In math, we are at the end of our place value unit.  The children have worked so hard to learn about the difference between the ones, tens and hundreds.  We have used many different manipulatives, such as place value blocks, dice games and more to explore this concept.  I think the children's favorite activity was building the first letter of their name out of ones and tens (I will add a picture of this once I get them up on the bulletin board:)  Next week we will start to learn about 2 digit numbers.  We will learn how to add 1 more, 1 less, 10 more and 10 less as well as how to compare numbers using the greater than, less than and equal to terms.

In science, we have been learning about solids.  We were lucky enough to have a science afternoon where we combinied classes with Mrs. Elrick and Mrs. Pollock's class.  The children had a blast exploring the different properties of a solid.  They were able to do 4 experiments with solids with float and sink, magnets, hardness, and roll and stack.  Thank you to Mr. Attia, Mrs. Dodge, Mr. Foscaldo, and Mr. Robertson for running each of our groups.  Great job!  Next week, we will begin learning about liquids.









In Fundations, we are finishing up our unit of welded or glued sounds.  Next week, we will start learning about blends (fl, st), digraphs (th, sh), and digraph blends (such as n and ch in the word lunch).  We will also talk about -r controlled vowels (ar, or, ir, ur, er).

Another exciting thing happening in first grade are the maker space boxes.  Mrs. Elrick and Mrs. Scier wrote a grant to make boxes of supplies that will be rotated in all the first grade classroom.  Each month a classroom will get 4 boxes of supplies.  Some of the supplies are disposable and some are not.  This month, we were lucky enough to have a bucket of straws, pony beads, white boards and letter dice, and connecting rods.  The children had a blast last week making all sorts of creations.  They were so creative with the pony beads ad straws making so many interesting pictures!  They especially loved the connecting rods.  Here are many of their creations (they all wanted pictures taken:)

                                     

                          


As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me at hherring@email.medfield.net

Have a great day!

Heather Herring

Dear Families,

Happy New Year!  I wanted to first thank all the families for the generous gift of the Bertuccis gift card and the snuggly mittens!  It so nice to work with such caring families!  I also wanted to thank Mrs. Dodge, Mrs. Nolan, Mrs. Roux and Ms. Wambolt for a fabulous winter party.  The children had so much fun!

I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Lauren Ingoldsby.  Lauren is a freshman at Endicott College and doing her student teaching in our classroom during the month of January.  We are so excited to have her in our classroom!

Here are is what's going on in Room 24 this month...

In reading, we have been focusing on non-fiction to pair up with our new writer's workshop unit  which we just introduced.  The children are so excited to be trying out a new type of writing.  We have many experts in our class that are ready to teach us many new things!

In Fundations, we are finishing up our unit on suffix "s" and will be introducing more glued or welded sounds in the next couple weeks.  We will start with the -ng ending (-ing, -ang, -ong, and -ung) and then move into the -nk ending.  Ask your child to show you our way of tapping using 3 fingers for these sounds.

In math, we are finishing up Topic 6 on survey questions and data collection.  The children have become very good at showing data in the form of tally marks and a picture graph.  They have also worked on interpreting this data using the words most, more than, fewest, fewer than, and equal.  On Friday, we did a quick survey on how many children were left and right handed in the class.  We learned out of 22 students only 1 was left handed and 21 were right handed.  We talked about how most of the class is right handed and the fewest was left handed (Lauren and I are also left handed but we weren't included in the survey:)

In science, we continue to learn about solids.  This week, Mrs. Pollock, Mrs. Elrick and I will be combining our classes to do some solids science experiments.  In years past, the children have really enjoyed working with friends from the other classes.

We have begun learning about Martin Luther King and this will be what many of our activities revolve around this week in preparation for our no school day on 1/16.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email me at hherring@email.medfield.net

Thank you,
Heather

Dear Families,

Happy holidays!  Here's what's happening in Room 24...

Last week, we read many versions of the Gingerbread Man.  We compared the characters, setting and major events in the story.  I think the children really enjoyed The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.  We have continued reading more of these versions this week.

In reading groups, we have been "reading closely" using non-fiction text.  The children all read a book and put a sticky note on a page where they learned an interesting fact.  Then they shared their fact with the group and drew a picture and wrote their fact.  These are hanging on our bulletin board in the hallway. If you are in the building, check them out!

In Fundations, we have started discussing basewords and the suffix "s".  We have talked about how "s" can either have the "s" sound or the "z" sound such as in the word cats and bugs.  We have also discussed sigular vs. plural (cat/cats).

In math, we have begun Topic 5.  In this unit, we will learn about missing addends, true and false equations and adding 3 addends.

In Writer's workshop, we are finishing up our narrative unit and when we return from winter break we will start learning about non-fiction writing.

In science we have begun learning about solids and liquids with Mrs. Elrick's and Mrs. Pollock's class.  We will be looking for volunteers to runs some science centers when we return from break. More to come on this..

Exciting news... all the first grade classrooms just received 6 new iPad minis as well as new headphones!!!  This past week we have used the ipads for Raz-kids and also during math.

Lastly, I wanted to thank all the families for donating for Brooke's presents.  We raised so much money that we were able to put the extra toward a 12 year old little boy named Ryan's presents!!!  THANK YOU AGAIN!  I think it was a great lesson to teach the children what the holidays are really about, so thank you again for your generosity!  Here are some pictures of the gifts that were purchased.

Thank you for all your support and if you have any questions or concerns, you can email me at hherring@email.medfield.net

I hope all your families have a wonderful holiday and a relaxing break so you can spend some quality time together!!!

Heather

Dear Families,

It has been so great meeting with each of you and discussing your child's progress in the classroom!  Thank you for taking the time to meet with me:)

This week I had many requests for the list of sight words to be sent home.  With that said, know that the children have only been explicitly taught list 1 and that is the list they are responsible right now to be able to read and spell.

In Fundations,  we continue to talk about words with bonus letters (words that have short vowels and end in s, l, or f-miss, fall, puff)  We have also started talking about glued sounds.  Have your child show you how to tap out a word with the glued sound of -all.

In math, we have switched gears a bit and have started talking about subtraction.  The children will continue to work on addition to 20 throughout the year.

In writer's workshop, we continue to write small moment stories.  It was fun to share some of those stories with you at the conferences.  Next, we will be looking at the stories they have wrote and learning about about editing their writing.  I will be teaching the children that their writing should have an uppercase letter at the beginning of a sentence, some sort of end mark, lowercase letters, finger spacing between words, and spelling the trick words correctly.

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

Heather