newsletter 13

March 19, 2010

BANYAN N

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First Grade Library

Portfolio Day

Audubon Group 2

Water Bottles

•opportunities for parents to

Maecenas non quam. Cras

•Send in a water bottle

As the days get warmer, please

volunteer

erat. Aliquam pede. vulputate

•Dress your child for the

send in refillable and reusable

•Plan to come in at least one

eu, estmorbi tristique senectus.

weather.

water bottles that your child

am to share books with your

Thursday, June 3

Thursday, March 25

can drink from during the day.

child.

May 3-7

READING WORKSHOP: CHARACTER CLUBS What are your character’s traits? Who are secondary characters? Do you and your character share any personality traits? How do you infer what a character is thinking and/or feeling?

These are some of the questions that we have been exploring in our character clubs. Your children have been working in cooperative groups around certain characters. They share materials, books, ideas, questions and thoughts. They have become experts on their character.

They made some Venn diagrams to compare themselves to their characters and the main characters to secondary characters. The students discussed the physical traits of their character as well as the character traits and provided proof for each trait from the text. We began learning to infer: making a thinking guess about how a character is feeling by considering proof from the text. Yes, your children can do this! We played a fun game, in which a student steps out of the room. The rest of the group comes up with a feeling. The student reenters the room and the others provide proofs or clues for the feeling (example: When it is my birthday, when someone compliments me, when I am with my friends. These are clues for the feeling, happy.) Then the student can guess: “ I infer the feeling is...” They love this game and they are getting very good at identifying the feelings based on the clues.

Banyan newsletter •

Physical Traits Students created their own self-portraits in the style of Todd Parr before they looked at the physical traits of their characters.

March 19, 2010

BA N YA N Writing Workshop Banyan writers are finishing up their All About books.

They chose their topics and their 3 big ideas. They gathered facts around each big idea. Now, they are picking elements from their nonfiction elements book (that they created) to put in their books.

Social Smarts: We used our characters from our book clubs and we wondered if they had unthinkables visit their brains. Yes, they did! Banyan social thinkers paired up and identified which unthinkables were in each characters head in different scenarios. They also came up with some Superflex solutions to defeat the unthinkables.

We learned about some new unthinkables: Grump Grumpininy and The Worry Wall. Grump Grumpininy makes you grumpy and makes you stay grumpy even when others are kind to him. He makes you have a grumpy frown on your face and makes you have difficulty getting out of this mood. The Worry Wall makes you worry so much about things that he stops you from being able to do what you want to and need to do.

Making and Recording Repeating Patterns

Math:Patterns Banyan mathematicians have been looking at patterns. We have been asking questions about repeating patterns: What comes next? What comes here?

How do you know? We have been comparing AB patterns to ABC patterns.

Now, we are looking at growing patterns.

We looked at a penny jar and asked, “What if we start with 3 pennies in our jar?” Then, I add 2 more pennies to the jar each day. “How many pennies will be in my jar on day 1, day 5, day 12?

How do you know? What patterns do you see in the numbers?”

Science We finished our balls and ramps unit with a final assessment. Each child showed us an activity on the playground in which they could identify where gravity, friction and momentum were taking place. Does friction slow us down? We also took turns going down the slide with and without wax paper to feel less and more friction.

We began our last unit for the year: BIRDS! We discussed the do’s and don’ts of bird watching. Half our class went on a trip to the Audubon in Tiburon. The other half will go next week. Thank you to Debbie and Does friction slow us down?

Banyan newsletter •

Alina for being our chaperones!