Hello 1JB Families!

November is already flying by! 1JB has been very busy… check out the learning and excitement below.

Important dates/Reminders:

• Nov 15: 3-5pm, God’s Love We Deliver bag decorating event in the Inner Courtyard
• Nov 22-24: No School, Thanksgiving Break
• Nov 27: Diwali Potluck, 6:30-8:30pm
• Nov 29: School Store is open! 8-9:30am
• Dec 1: Family Visiting -Please see the following note for 1JB’s Winter Traditions Book for the classroom community: Holiday Family Traditions Invite 2023 
• Dec 4: After Owls Trimester 2 Starts
• Dec 7: Picture Retake Day
• Dec 8: Save the Date for Lower School Winter Sing-a-long: Friday, 10-10:40 AM in the Meetinghouse. Lower School Families are welcome to participate.
• Dec 11-15: PEACE WEEK
• We will be introducing Raz-Kids to the students at the start of next week. Check out the information for parents/families: Guide to Raz-Kids: A library filled with “Just-Right” books
• Over the break… if you would like to include some math and literacy in your child’s time away from school, here are some ideas!
  • Everyday counting. How many family members are we seeing this weekend? How many place settings do we need?
  • Cook food together. How many cups of flour do we need? We need 4 cups of water for our recipe and we only have 2 right now, how many more do we need?
  • Read books together!
  • Writing opportunities: Have your child help you make a menu, make name cards for the table, a list of things/people they are thankful/grateful for, etc!

Math/Literacy Resources from Parent Conferences:

• Math blog (including math games): https://blogs.friendsseminary.org/lsmathematics/
• Helpful Literacy Sheets 
• I Message/ Making a Repair

FUNdations/Literacy:

1JB has been learning so much during their reading/spelling periods.

Recently, students learned about digraphs:

Digraphs are consonants that ‘stick together’ to form one sound, even though there are two letters. That is why they are on one card. They are not separated. Digraphs also get ONE tap when tapping out words. For example, the word ship gets 3 taps. One tap for sh, one for I, and one for p. Ask your child to show you how to tap out digraphs! Here are some examples of words  (chip, luck, thick, shut).

Students have continued learning trick words: as, has, in, into, we, me, be she, he — ask your child about these words! Why are they tricky? Can they skywrite them? 1JB also learned about nonsense words! Nonsense words?? Yes! Nonsense words! These are NOT real words, but allow students to practice spelling patterns.

During FUNdations, 1JB has also practiced scooping sentences and reading a story with fluency. In this activity, we also practiced looking for the main characters, setting, and events in a story.

Reading: 

1JB did a lesson in reading roles this week. They listened to chapter one of a chapter book (Iris and Walter) and became Imaginative Illustrators. Their job was to illustrate a picture for the text based on something they imagined during the reading and wrote a caption along with it.

1JB has been busy picking Just Right Books/books of interest to read during D.E.A.R. time. Ask your student what books they have in their book bag.

Social Studies: 

Quaker Spices- Peace

This week 1JB took a deep dive into another Quaker Spice, Peace. We asked students, what does peace mean to you? 1JB blew us away with their thoughtful response. Here is a glimpse:

Peace means: silence, when everything is calm, meeting for worship, quiet, nature, the stars in the sky, helping someone when they need help, being calm, meditating.

We also thought about how peace looks at school/in our classroom.

To help us deepen our understanding of peace, we read/listened to the book Peace Train by Cat Stevens and Peter H. Reynolds. 

Ask your child: how did this book show peace? how do they practice peace?

Another aspect of our Social Studies curriculum that 1JB has continued to discuss is the school-wide theme: Continuing A Culture of Connection. While thinking about the theme and how it relates to the post office, we read Dear Mr. Blueberry.

We asked questions like, how does letter writing build a connection?

Ask your child about this book! What was it about? How do the main character and her teacher use letter writing?

 

 

 

Math

10’s Frame: A tens frame is a rectangular frame divided into ten individual boxes. The boxes are arranged in two rows of 5. Children add dots to the ten frame sequentially to occupy the ten boxes: the top row is filled first, from left to right, followed by the bottom row. Ten frames are such a helpful tool when it comes to building number sense in young children because they are a tool for visualizing numbers and quantities. They also support understanding relationships between numbers, especially from 1 to 10, and how to work with them. For example, if a student fills in 4 boxes, they can see 6 empty spaces remain and use that information to better understand that 4 + 6 = 10, 10 – 4 = 6, and 10 – 6 = 4.

Many of you learned about our use of ten frames during conferences last week. We recently played this fun game with partners using our special dice. Ask your student how they used ten frames to work on their addition skills?

Writing

As 1JB starts to think about Thanksgiving we spent this week writing period thinking about the people at Friends who we would like to thank. We especially thought about the faculty and staff that do so much behind the scenes of FS (like Martha, Ian, Tracy, Nancy, and our recess coaches). Ask your child who they wrote to? What did they thank them for?

Along with writing letters, 1JB thought about the word gratitude. What does it mean to show gratitude? What are you grateful for? After listening to this read-aloud, we made our own gratitude jars! Ask your child what they are grateful for? How do they show gratitude?

1JB writers began thinking about question words: who, where, what happened?

Ask your student about the difference between a sentence and a fragment? Can they give you an example of a sentence that has a who, what, and what happened?

Language Arts/ SEL

Our mornings are filled with classroom jobs like (schedule helpers), partner greetings, and check-ins.

Community Time: Diwali: This Friday, a special visitor came to 1JB to teach us more about Diwali!

Students were able to listen to the story above and ask questions/share connections about Diwali. Each student was able to take home their own Diya. Ask your child about this special event! What activities did they get to do that celebrated Diwali?

God’s Love We Deliver Bag Decoration with Isabel:

Activities

As many of you heard from your children’s self-evaluations, activity time is a beloved time in our classroom. Ask your child what activities they have been enjoying? Who do they spend their time with?

Spanish – a message from Luis!

¡Hola families! Our students got dulce (candy) today in Spanish class! Besides spending a whole month learning vocabulary related to Fall, Halloween, and Día de los Muertos, our students learned a song I used to sing on Halloween. In Colombia, where I grew up, people also celebrate Halloween, or as we call it Día de las Brujas (The Day of all Witches, scary name). Kids go door to door singing the triqui, triqui song. The translation is something like this…Tricky, Tricky Halloween I want candy But if you don’t give me any candy Your nose is gonna grow big. Hope you enjoy it.

Check out the 1JB singing the song: IMG_2822

Recent 1JB Read Alouds: