All the Winsor Happenings This Week
Balloon Bonanza
An extra special thank you to our school community. Due to the hard work of our PTO, generosity of our families, and commitment of our students, the Walk A Thon raised over $6000. This money benefits our students, creating field trip, assembly, presentation, and enhancement opportunities for all. The students, after voting, chose to fill my office with balloons today. Please see the pictures below. What a wonderful way to start a Friday. Thank you everyone!
Pink Out
Thanks to all that work pink this past Wednesday to support breast cancer awareness. Our students and staff raised close to $200! All proceeds are going to the American Cancer Society. We appreciate the spirit of awareness that permeates through our school.
Picture retakes
Picture retakes are scheduled for Tuesday, November 5th. Forms are being sent home today.
Keeping Up With Kindergarten
Can you describe the structure of a worm? Your kindergarten children can! Our squirmy, worms arrived this week and the students were fascinated by their segments and how they move! We observed their structures and behaviors and recorded our observations in our Science Notebooks.
During Math Workshop, we completed Chapter 2 which was counting and writing numbers 6-10. We spent lots of time doing number practice on our white boards, counting forward and backwards, and telling which number is greater than, less than, or one more. We ended the week with our Chapter 2 Assessment, and some fun math stations. Please ask your child which one was their favorite!
In Mrs. Lakeway’s Reader’s Workshop, we continued reading pattern books. We are starting to recognize lots of sight words. We also focused on using our fingers to point to the words as we read because in many pattern books, there is a surprise twist at the end! ( The pattern usually changes on the last page). We also learned the “Partner Reading Routine”.
In Ms. Staruch’s class, we began reading the non-fiction text Life in a Pond. We have been learning about different text features that make non-fiction books special, such as headings and photographs. We are asking and answering lots of questions about ponds and using the text to help us figure out the answer. During writing, we have been writing about all the facts we have learned about ponds! We wrote lists of different plants and animals you can find in ponds and also used describing words to tell details about ponds!
This Week’s/Last Week’s FUNdation’s Letters: lowercase d, s, e, r
This Week’s/Last Week's Sight Words: and, is, see, to, are, at
Learning and Fun in Grade One
These past few weeks in our writing workshop, we continue to work on personal narratives. Students choose one small moment and then write a piece making sure they have a beginning (who, what, where, when), a middle (3 or more details about the small moment) and an end (how they felt and why). Right now we are working on Fall Favorite pieces along with Weekend News every Monday.
In Fundations, we began Unit 4 - Adding a bonus letter. Bonus letters are f, l, s, and z – these letters are added to a short vowel word with one syllable (usually) such as puff, fill, miss, buzz, etc. Continue to practice the Fundations concepts at home (Home-School Communication).
Math found our firsties completing their unit on subtraction to 10. Students should be comfortable adding and subtracting up through 10. Many students need to be careful when counting/drawing pictures to help them solve their math problems. They should be using 1-1 correspondence to solve the problem correctly. Our next unit will be Addition Strategies.
Last Thursday, our first graders went on their field trip to Four Town Farm. Everyone was so excited to see how the produce is harvested and brought from farm to table. We even packed our own carrots in the carrot house and took them home for dinner that evening or had them as snacks the next day. Have you ever heard of rainbow carrots? They come in lots of different colors - purple, orange, yellow, and white - we were all amazed at how many colors different vegetables come in. The farm sure is filled with so many interesting facts- for example – we all know why this farm is called Four Town Farm – It spans four towns and two states – Barrington and East Providence, RI along with Swansea and Seekonk, MA; wish we could have stayed longer. By the way, we even picked pumpkins, went on a nature walk, a tractor ride, and ended with a class photo in front of the koi pond/ cornstalks. Does a field trip get any better???? A huge thank you to our wonderful parent chaperones: Mrs. D’Uva, Mrs. Morrissette, and Mrs. Kristidhi in 1D and Mrs. Booker, Mrs. Pierpaoli and Mr. Vingi in 1K. Your help and support was most appreciated!!!
Next week, we are looking forward to our class Fall Celebration. There will be many Fall stories and crafts. Thanks again to our room parents for making this all possible!!! Have a wonderful weekend!!!
What's New in Grade Two
In ELA, we are becoming "wizards of words" with contractions, homophones, prefixes, suffixes, and trick words. Our learning is always supported by our Blazer Fresh friends on gonoodle.com. Not only do their support our word work skills, they reinforce our reading fluency expectations, making mathematical patterns, greater than/less than comparisons, and components of the scientific method.
As mathematicians, we just concluded our work with number patterns, skip counting, and looking at ____groups of _____ to determine the total of a set without counting one by one. Next week, we are starting our unit on place value, determining the value of numbers based on their position, and adding two digit numbers.
Please remind your second grader that reading for at least 15 minutes AND practicing math facts (through 20) should be done NIGHTLY.
As always, thank you for everything you do at home!
Thrills in Third
What a week in 3rd grade! We have finally started the much anticipated topic of multiplication! Students are working hard to learn different strategies to solve multiplication equations and they are starting to memorize the tables. In writing, students have been improving their writing by adding in several tools such as dialogue, figurative language and juicy adjectives. They even wrote a scene about a haunted house. Students are continuing to work on fluency and being able to answer text dependent questions in reading. We are also reading The Wild Robot. Ask your child what has been happening in the story. The students are really enjoying it. Perhaps most exciting this week was our study of the human skeleton. Students got to create their own Mr. Bones and we will be learning about the function of the skeletal system. Enjoy the weekend!
Learning More in Grade 4
Students have been working on building a personal narrative this week in writing. Mentor texts were used as a model, so students could see the techniques a writer uses when writing a personal narrative. So far, students have learned how to create a hook and a descriptive introduction that includes the who, where, and when. They are sounding great!
In math, we reviewed Chapter 3 concepts with station rotations. Students played games, worked with manipulatives, and practiced their multiplication facts in 15 minute intervals. The classroom was filled with rich math conversations!
Next week, we will celebrate Halloween with more stations. They will be Halloween themed, yet reinforce concepts we have been working on. To make this extra special we ask students to bring an extra “special” snack for the afternoon and to dress in orange and black! We will run the stations after lunch recess. In the past, students LOVED this celebration!
The Fabulous Five
In reading workshop, we continue to unravel the plot as it thickens in our novels during guided reading. Ask your child to explain which events in the plot give rise to the conflict and solution. Also, have your child tell you an underlying theme of the story they are reading and state why they think it is that theme. The students are doing a fabulous job decoding complex vocabulary when they encounter it in their reading.
In math, the students have been working with the concept of division as they use the basic division algorithm to divide. They have been using estimation to reason about whether a quotient is reasonable and are determining what the remainder means in problems involving real-world situations.
As the students continue to study the Sun, they are using physical models to explain day and night. They are developing a deeper understanding of the cyclical changes that occur between day and night as a result of the Earth’s rotation around the stationary Sun.
In social studies, the students continue to finalize their five themes of geography group projects as they prepare to present them next week! Each group will be presenting their five themes of geography poster and one artifact related to their topic.
Music Update
Our Winsor Musicians are making some spooky sounds this time of year! Kindergarteners have learned the song, “Pumpkin, Pumpkin” and are collaborating together to perform the dance as a class. First graders are busy practicing quarter notes and rests. Next week they will be listening to different patterns and writing what they hear. Second graders are also working on rhythm dictations, but their patterns include not only quarter notes, but also eighth notes and half notes. Next week, they will be turning these patterns into special Halloween rhythms! Third graders are making gentle “soup breath” tones on their recorders, and have been busy as bees practicing the note, “B.” Fourth graders have just begun to play Recorder Karate Belt tests, and soon we will see recorders with colorful belts tied to the bottom. Our Fifth Grade Band is working hard with their new instruments, and this week were able to play a song called “Skateboard Sam” all together as a class. All grades have also been preparing some patriotic songs to sing for the Veteran’s Day Assembly, as a way to say “Thank you!” to our vets!