Jan. 10th

Worktime Wow!!!! Everyone has come back this week fresh and ready to learn! Several students have moved up to a blue language workplan! Other students have been working hard at math and learning their teens, completing birds eye-view, and working on their place values! We also introduce some 3D shapes such as cube, cone, sphere, cylinder, and rectangular prism. Ask your child to see if they can find these shapes around your home, outside, or in while driving!!!

Readers Workshop

This week continued learning about non-fiction. We focused on remembering the difference between fiction and non-fiction. We also learned some new text features: table of contents and the index! The students did a great job using these features to find out where in their books there was specific information. Ask them to try using these two non-fiction text features at home.

Writers Workshop:

This week we started a new unit, OPINION WRITING!!!!! Students learned what an opinion is and how to write their opinion, including their reasons. This week they wrote their opinion on the best pet and the best tasting popcorn. Next week they will be watching a few movie previews and writing about which movie they think is the best and why!

Science !

We have started our new unit on wood!! So far we have looked at several wood samples and used our sense to describe each sample.







Geography

We about to start our geography study on the fascinating continent of, South America!!! Please let us know if you would life to come and share or have any artifacts to bring in!!






This week was Romaree’s last week. He is moving to a school closer to his Mom’s home in Redmond. We have been so lucky as a class to have Romaree in room 204 these past two years! We’ll miss his love of learning and great kickball skills!!! Good luck Romaree. Love, Room 204!!!!

Student of the Week:

Charlie has been working so hard since we’ve been back. He has grown so much as a writer and yesterday wrote an amazing opinion piece about soccer! He has made many great friends in class and has become a strong independent student. He is also engaged in reading and writing lessons, and also comes to school with a smile and positive attitude! Way to go Charlie!!!

Dec. 21st

Winter Break! Happy Holidays to all of you! Ms. Swchartz, Ms. Ooton, and I are so thankful for all the wonderful gifts we received. It was so thoughtful and we feel so lucky to have such wonderful families!
These past few weeks have been busy. I was gone two days the previous week. One for a training and another day to visit some local tutoring organizations. I am on the board of a great non-profit organization called North West Children's Fund, that supports over 30 organizations around Seattle for at-risk children and their families that help try to end the cycle of child abuse and neglect and are devoted to improving child welfare.

Gingerbread Boy This week we devoted our afternoons to a gingerbread unit. We read four different gingerbread books, made our own gingerbread characters, made our own ginger bread recipe, and our own how to books. Finally, we wrote our own endings and decorated our cookies to enjoy! It was a fun filled week.

Music

We ended the week with a wonderful music concert. The Students did a fabulous job with both performances and were so proud to be up on stage. Thank you to all the families who were able to come and see the kids perform!!!

Africa Continent Study

Last week we saw an amazing presentation by Lucy’s mom! She showed us pictures from a trip she took to Uganda where she participated in a Ugandan wedding ceremony! It was so great to see photographs of a traditional wedding ceremony! We learned about the culture of a Ugandan wedding ceremony and noticed similarities and differences between a traditional wedding that we might see in the U.S. in comparison with the one we learned about this week! Please ask your student about this! We also had Lena’s mom come in and share with us her experience in Kenya. She taught the students how to greet one another in Swahili and then had students practice the new words they learned by singing a song. Ask your child to sing with you: “Jambo. Jambo rafiki. Habari Gani? Mzuri Sana!”

This week we wrapped up our African Continent Study with an African Market celebration! We had rice balls and lentils made by Ruby and Nathan’s parents, from room 206, and the parents of Kaz, Henry, and Charlie made rice ball and brought in Ingera bread. We also had plantains and shredded chicken, bread and olive oil with spices. We lit our kinara candles for Kwanzaa and celebrated the last principle which is unity or umoja!

Writers Workshop: This week in writing we finished our All About Books!! We added the dedication page, cover page, glossary page, and favorite things page, and the all about the author page. We had a writers celebration and Ms. Claytor and Mr. Case, Mr. Glenn and Ms. Tedi, Ms. Stout and Ms. Lee all came to read our writing! It was a wonderful celebration and our students are proud of the work that they accomplished!

Star Student

Nina has been working so hard the week before. She finished her language work plan and her weekly work plan. She has pushed herself as a learner in readers and has moved up several reading levels. She has become a writing machine! She also stepped up this week and invited a kindergartner to sit with her at lunch and be a recess buddy for him. She invited him to play and show her all the things she does at recess. I know that really filled that kindergartners bucket! Way to Go Nina!!!!!

Lucy will be the star student when we get back. Lucy really pushed herself as a writer, working on her all about book. She was so focused and driven and wrote a ton about SHRIMP!!!! She also finished her pink language work plan, which she worked on almost everyday. Lucy always comes to school with an excitement to learn. She has been a kind friend to everyone in class and a great role model for everyone. WaY to go LUCY!!!!!!!

Enjoy the rest of you break!! I am currently enjoying half of it in sunny Tucson, where I just visited Biosphere 2. Next week I will be headed to snowy cold Idaho! Hope your spending time with your family, friends, and creating your own adventures. See you in January.

Welcome back!

Worktime

The students came back ready from break and focused. This week for work time students have learned more practical life works that focus on multi-step directions, fine motor skills, and concentration. Many more kindergartners have received language work plans and moved up to a new language work plan. The kindergartners have been learning about place value through golden beads and a work called birds-eye-view. It has been wonderful to come back and see all the growth that is happening!!!
Africa

This week for Africa students have learned more about Kwanza traditions, the candles (kanara), and weaving a Kwanza mat. The students have also learned about different geographic locations and important mountains, landforms, and rivers in Africa. On Dec. 20th we will have our final African celebration during the morning. If you have anything to share or bring in please let us know!!!





Readers Workshop In readers this week we have introduced a little bit about non-fiction. We compared the differences between fiction and non-fiction books. We also looked at the cover page to get ourselves ready for the book. We focused on thinking about what is this book going to teach us and then reflecting what did we learn. We talked with a reading buddy, " What is the main idea, and how do you know? We will continue non-fiction through January delving deeper into features and information non-fictions offers.

Writers Workshop: This week in writing, we have been continuing our great work on our all about books. We focused this week on doing a quick sketch and then trying to add words. We have also zoned in on trying to stretch our topic over multiple pages, making sure each page has a clear focus. We then learned about headings (tells us what each page is about) and how we can add headings to our own writing. Our next goals will be to continue to learning about how to add diagrams, captions, table of contents, and editing.

Student of the Week: Mateo has been working very hard this week. He finished his work plan and really pushed himself to do some challenging math. He was motivated and driven this week to keep up with his work. Mateo has set great goals for himself and is trying to meet those goals. He always comes to school with a Can do attitude !! He has been a great 1st great leader and role model. WAY TO GO Mateo!!!

Novemeber 15th

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My post is a little later this week, but it is because I have been able to have a chance to meet with almost all of you for conferences. Thank you so much for taking the time to come to talk about all the wonderful things your child is doing at school. I love getting to share with families all the growth your child has made in only a few months. Thank you again to all the families for coming to meet with Ms. Ooton and I.

I also wanted to say a big Thank you to all the kids, and help of Dakota's Mom Sauntia, for surprising me on Friday with birthday balloons and wishes. The students each gave me a wish and a candle to blow out. It was such a warm filled last day before break and very thoughtful of everyone, THANK YOU!!!!

Native American Assembly/Chief Leschi

On Thursday we got the treat of joining the rest of the school at a Native American storytelling assembly. Students got the chance to take an active role in voicing different characters and doing actions that made the stories come alive! We also learned about a important Native American that our school and community are named after, Chief Leschi. We learned how he stood up for his peoples rights, and we painted a portrait of him with spices! See these great paintings displayed in the hall.

Continent Study: Africa! Many of our new works over the past couple of weeks have been focused on the continent of Africa. Student have been learning to Africa’s different climate zones, research and give presentations on different animals that live on the continent and most recently, begun a study of Kwanza.

Readers Workshop

In readers this week we learned some new sight words: that, his, are, and for. The students did fun activities to practice saying these sight words such act like you are tossing glitter as you say each letter in the word. The students did a great job looking for these sight words in their stories. Keep practicing all the sight words we have learned over break! A, and, at, are, for, he, his, I , it, in is, of , on the, that, to, was, you.

Writers Workshop:

This week in writing, we started on our first page of our all about unit. We learned about zooming in on important parts of our topic and how to draw a close up. We also learned about fancy words that help our readers understand our writing and did our best to spell those fancy words. Next week, we will be adding more pages to our all about book! Ask your student about their topic to help them get ready to write more about it next week!

Science We wrapped our science a few weeks ago but I wanted to share some great pictures of the students learning about snails and worms. The students loved this unit and being able to have a hands experience learning about animals. Our next science unit will be wood!

Student of the Week:

William has been working very hard at writers workshop and his all about book! He challenges himself at work time by working on his sandpaper letter, math works, sensorial, and practical life. He is respectful to others in our class, shows responsibility with his learning and our classroom environment, and is peaceful to others.

Nov. 11th

Continent Study: Africa! The students have really enjoyed learning about Africa. This is week for Africa we have learned about different flags from numerous countries such as South Africa, Senegal, Kenya, Morocco, and Ghana. The first graders also had a project to research a African animal. The presented their animal research to the class on Friday. Please ask your child what animals they learned about. Please let me know if have any artifacts or would like to come in an share any connections you might have to Africa.

Special Guest

This week Katie Busby came in to talk to our class about a very health food, persimmon. She talked about the benefits to eating persimmon, such as a great source nutrients like antioxidant Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and FIber. She brought some for all the kids to taste and then we voted on whether we liked it, just thought it was okay, or didn't like it. The results were 19 students enjoyed the taste!! Thanks again to Katie for getting us to try something new and healthy. Ask your child what they thought.

Readers Workshop In reader’s we have talked a lot strategies to figure out those tricky words. We talked about taking a look at the cover, thinking what words we might come across in the story. We also talked about using a picture walk and the context of the story to take our best guess. We learned to STOP, and CHECK for UNDERSTANDING. This helps us to make sure those guess we make, make sense with what we are reading about. Practice this with your child’s reading at home.
Writers Workshop:

This week in writing, we started our non-fiction units. The students had a chance to brainstorm all the things they are experts on. There were a lot of great ideas such as dinosaurs, basketball, gardening, jump roping, and school! We also learned about how to tell what we know to a partner and then go back and write down all the facts we know. We made it our goal this week to write by drawing the reader in, having a great lead to our stories.

Student of the Week:

Ian!! has been working really hard to push himself in reading and writers workshop. He tries to choose work from every area to work on each day. He pushes himself to work on more challenging works and keeps his focus on his own work. He is always ready to learn and participate at the carpet. Way to be a great leader, keep it up Ian!

Continent Study Africa!

We have started our Africa continent study! We read some books about Africa and researched some things that we didn't know, but learned! We looked at Africa in an Atlas and also learned about some animals that you may see in Africa. We noticed similarities and differences in some of the cultures in Africa in comparison to ours. We also learned about the different terrain that Africa offers; dessert, rain forest and the Savannah. If anyone has traveled to Africa and would like to come in and share their knowledge with our class and room 206, please let me know! Guest speakers are so powerful and students love learning from a variety of people! 

Readers Workshop

In reader’s we have talked a lot about our characters in our story and reflected on how they are similar and different to us! We took a closer look at the setting in our stories to help us re-tell what happened. We ended our readers celebration by making our own leaf men characters. Please ask your child these story element questions each time you read. Who are the characters, what is the setting, and re-tell the story!

Writers Workshop: This week in writing, we are also wrapping up our small moments unit! We chose one piece of writing and edited it. We ended this unit by having a celebration with some special guests coming in to give us compliments on our writing! Mrs. Guzmán’s class joined us by also sharing their stories and some treats! The students felt so proud of their work and it was wonderful to have them share that with someone else. Look forward to reading these stories at conferences. Our next unit will be All About Books!

Parent/Teacher Conferences!

Please remember to sign up for parent/teacher conferences! If you need to check your time, you are more than welcome to come in and look at the conference sheet! They are coming up soon! I will send home a reminder about it soon.


Student of the Week:

Henry works hard on his language work plan and chooses challenging works for himself everyday. He holds himself accountable for his choices during work time and is showing his leadership skills by focusing intently on his work! Henry loves learning new works and is always participating. Way to go Henry !!

Peppi's Woods Planting day!

A huge THANK YOU to Jana Robbins for organizing a school wide event for the kids to plant plants in Peppi's Woods, helping to contribute to Green Seattle Day that took place on Sat. Unfortunately I wasn't able to be there on Friday, due to a wedding, but I heard so many amazing things about this event. Our class was able to plant many non-invasive plants in the woods with their 4/5th grade buddies! What a wonderful event for the students to come together as a community and make our forests great. Thank you again to Jana and all the volunteers for making this day happen!

Harvest Party!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for all of you who helped make the Harvest Party happen! We had such a great time, getting to spend time with each K/1 class and making fun crafts. We also had so much fun at our feast! The decorations and the help was greatly appreciated. Thank you again for helping us celebrate fall.

Carving out the pumpkin!!!! On Tuesday we were able to meet our new class Buddies from Mrs. Deese's class. Each child was paired up with a 4/5th grade buddy. With our new buddies we dug out the pumpkin and sorted through the seeds and guts. IT was so much fun to for the students to get to know their new buddy. Look forward to hearing many more things we get to do with our buddies!

Student of the Week:

Gibson has been working incredible hard at work time. He has challenged him self with his reading, and math works. He has especially pushed himself with writing and adding more details to his stories. He loves learning new materials and has been a pleasure to have in our class. Keep it up!!!