This Week at Winsor

OUR WEEKLY REVIEW

Read Aloud Day
Thank you to our PTO and guest readers for a fantastic Read Aloud Day. Our students had a wonderful day. Seeing community and district leaders read aloud to students sends a powerful message. The joy of reading can take you to great places, including to a partner read with a different grade level. Please see our gallery below.

Winsor wants to express our best and offer a thank you to Mrs. Fogarty. She has admirably filled in for Mrs. Tanski. While we are sad to see Mrs. Fogarty end her tenure as a long term sub in Grade 3, we look forward to welcoming Mrs. Tanski back on Monday.

Keeping Up With Kindergarten

Dear Families,

Hopefully your child came home full of fun details about their day on Wednesday, as we celebrated the 100th Day of school! We spent most of our day discussing the number 100 though books, crafts, coloring and crowns! Students also loved filling in their tens frames with stickers, sharing their home projects and doing 100 exercises!

This week we also wrapped up our unit on addition. We finished by reviewing combinations of ten. It is really important that students have a good understanding of what “ten is.” For example, that when a “tens frame” is all filled in, that means ten. We revisited our Friends of Ten Rainbow, played some partner games and wrote lots of number sentences. Students completed the chapter assessment, too.

In Mrs. Lakeway’s/Miss Quigley’s class, we continued our study of nonfiction books. Students are learning lots of facts and can’t wait to apply these facts to their next writing unit on “Animal Research Books.” For now, during Writer’s Workshop, we are finishing up our How To books. Students have been brainstorming things they can do, and are writing down the steps! We have lots of talented students in Room 1!

Ms. Staruch’s class has been doing a close read of the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. We discussed what the main character, Peter, did first, next, then, and last in the story. During writing we wrote stories about our very own snowy days! We wrote what we did first, next, then, and last on our snowy days!

*Students are doing a great job learning and returning their sight word lists. Please keep them coming!

*Mrs. Lakeway’s class is fresh out of tissues. If you happen to see a sale, we would appreciate a donation of a box or two. Thank you in advance! :-) We have plenty of Clorox wipes. Thank you to the PTO for those donations a few weeks ago!

This week’s/Last Week’s sight words: funny, want, find, help, where, eat

Learning and fun in Grade One!

We could hardly believe the 100th Day arrived on Wednesday! Wow, time sure does fly in grade one! The 100th Day brought quite an assortment of senior citizens (centenarians) to our classrooms. The children honored the 100th day by dressing up and writing about being 100 (what they’d look like, dress like, what they’d eat and what they’d do all day). We also discovered different ways to make 100, along with some 100th Day challenges ie, being silent for 100 seconds (seemed like forever), staring for 100 seconds, how many times they could write their name in 100 seconds, reading a poem that had 100 words and reading stories about 100, just to name a few.

Last week, we went outside to discern if there was a difference between dropping our parachutes inside and/or outside. They were also dropped from different heights. It was an experiment that was enjoyed by all (and the weather was quite cooperative – 60 degrees!). After this experiment, students were asked how a parachute interacts with air – here are some of the responses:

“The air pushes up into the canopy and makes the parachute fall slower.”

“The wind blows the parachute sideways and even up higher.”

“With more passengers, the parachute goes down faster because it is heavier.”

Wow, first graders have learned quite a bit about air and air resistance.

In Math we began our unit on adding and subtracting two-digit numbers. This is proving to be challenging for some of our first graders. It is important that students remember to always begin adding/subtracting from the ones place. Be sure to monitor/practice this concept at home.

This past Wednesday was National Read Aloud Day. We were fortunate enough to have Mr. Ackerman join our firsties and read his favorite book, The Giving Tree. In the afternoon, we also partner read with grade 4. A fun read aloud day was had by all.

As the flu season is in full swing, we are washing the desks and spraying with Lysol each day to keep the germs at bay. We hope all our families stay well and healthy. Have a wonderful weekend.

What's New in Grade Two

Our second grade scientists are becoming quite the geologists!

Last week, we focused on sorting and classifying different rocks.

By using three different mesh sizes (small, medium, and large), we were able to sift/separate the rocks based on their size.

Once we separated the collection of rocks, we sorted them into different cups based on their classifications.

This week, we talked about sedimentary rocks and how they are formed. We watched a short video describing physical, chemical, and biological/plant types of erosion. After learning about those, we discussed what two things are necessary for sedimentary rocks to form.

Ask your second grade scientist, what those 2 components are. Then we took a collection of rocks (big rocks, gravel, sand, clay...) and , in no particular order, funneled them an empty water bottle. After all of those rocks were added, we added water. The final step was to shake it all up. We let our bottles sit for over an hour. We observed the bottles and saw how the different sized particles separated into layers.

In conclusion, we discovered that this process is due to gravity!

Please remind your second grader to practice their addition and subtraction fact fluency every day!

We are moving into triple digit addition and subtraction. The basic fact foundation is essential.

As always, thank you for everything you do at home!

Thrills in Third

What an exciting week it has been in 3rd grade! We had a visit from Mrs. Tanski on Thursday! She officially returns on Monday! Although we are excited to have her back, we are very sad to see Mrs. Fogarty go. She is amazing and we wish her the best of luck! This week also brought us the 100th day! We celebrated on Wednesday with some fun activities. We also welcomed Police Chief Richard St. Sauveur as our guest reader for Read Aloud Day. We wrapped up our study on landforms, and introduced our next research project on the National Parks. Students were excited to move on to fractions in math. Everyone is doing very well with fractions on a number line. We are continuing with the topic of nonfiction in both reading and writing. Guided reading groups read an informational piece about the different types of avalanches. Students worked on revising/editing and typing their biography reports as well. Enjoy your weekend!

Learning More in Grade 4

This week we modeled how to write a five paragraph essay after reading two informational texts about the same topic. Students learned about scorpions. We previewed the two articles, marked them up, (highlighted important ideas), then used the 4 square method to plan our paragraphs. Once the plan was complete, we started to write the paragraphs. Now, students have a model to use along with a “recipe sheet” that they can refer to when they need to write a five paragraph essay on their own.

In math, we are working with adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers. We will also continue to review some of the concepts from the last chapter. We encourage students to practice their math facts each night. Fact fluency is a very important part of a strong math foundation.

We traveled to the southern region of the USA this week. Students learned about the major landforms, climate, agriculture, and natural resources. Students wrote a paragraph describing three things they learned about the south.

Science was all about magnets!! This unit is always a hit! Students explored magnets with some hands-on activities.

Next week, we will celebrate Valentine’s Day. In the afternoon, students will have some fun traveling to different stations. Students can bring in valentines and an extra special snack to enjoy as well.

The Fabulous Five

How do the characters’ relationships to each other, to the setting, and the plot illuminate the historical event in a historical fiction novel?

In reading workshop, we have begun our historical fiction novels. We have been working on how historical events can shape a character’s relationship with other characters and how the reader develops empathy for main and secondary characters in the text. To demonstrate what we have learned, ask your child to share with you what they have recorded in their Key Moment/My Reaction in the shoes in the character chart they are working on in class. As students are reading and discussing their chapters, they are pausing to consider what a character (even the villain) sees and thinks!!

This week, the students explored the concept of fractions as division. We started by reviewing the parts of a fraction (numerator/denominator) and the difference between a fraction and an improper fraction. They solved real-world problems that helped them interpret a fraction as a division problem. As we work towards understanding equivalent fractions and being able to add and subtract fractions, the students learned to identify the greatest common factor (GCF) of a set of numbers and applied this knowledge to problem solving.

In social studies, the exploration race is on as we sail into our Explorers of North America Unit. The students worked in small groups to research reasons why the Europeans explored: for new land, commercial trade, money and riches, spices and fine silks, and new trade routes for a better life. We also learned how most Europeans in the 1400’s

knew little about the world outside of their own villages and took dangerous risks to discover new lands across the oceans.

Our field trip to The Hall at Patriot Place was a fun and exciting learning experience! The students participated in the “Let’s Have a Ball” STEM module where they were presented with a sports-related technological problem. The students were given specific criteria to test a variety of sports balls for a game manufacturer. They were expected to work in groups to test and measure the bounce and distance rolled on various services, record the data and, as a group, make a recommendation based on the outcome of each test. Finally, the students used their creative skills to come up with some very interesting games based around the recommended sports ball, including rules, playing field, equipment, etc. It was truly exciting to see how engaged and enthusiastic our students were throughout the day!

Thanks everyone. Have a wonderful weekend!