What's Your Point of View?

Third grade has started the year thinking about how we view the world. After reading books such as The Look Book  by Tanya Hoban and listening to the story of Ocean Frog, students took to the Headwaters Discovery Playground with the iPads to take some pictures. We had a very specific task. We were looking very closely at the world around us, peering at very specific points and parts. We took close up pictures, as close up as we could get. The pictures were printed and laminated. The third grade is challenging the fourth grade to see if they can find where the pictures were taken. As we have worked through this, we discussed how more information can completely change what we think about something. We've also talked about how important it is to peer in closely sometimes.

EC Explores instruments of the music room!

We begin every early childhood music class by exploring instruments: How do you play that? What does it sounds like? What are some other ways you can play the instrument? Can you play it standing up, walking around, marching? What about playing with others? Can we make a band?

These are some of the questions I might ask students during their exploration time. I also sit back and watch them make their own discoveries and see what magical and wonderfully creative ways they come up with to engage with the instruments and one another. It's a super-fantastic time and a great way to settle into the music room, helping our youngest students gear up for making and exploring music and sound. 

Third Grade Exploring West African Stone Passing Games

Obwisana

Obwisana sa nana

Obwisana sa

Obwisana sa nana

Obwisana sa.

The rock has crushed my hand, grandma

The rock has crushed my hand.

The rock has crushed my hand, grandma,

The rock has crushed my hand.

Third graders started off the year learning to play a Ghanaian stone passing game called Obwisana.  The game features a singing part and an ostinato (a continuous rhythmic part) that accompanies that song using stones (or in our case, shaker eggs). As the song speeds up, the ostinato also speeds up, doubling over time. 

 We started by learning just the song first and keeping a steady beat on different parts of our bodies, then we practiced simply passing the "stones" slowly on the steady beat. Once students felt comfortable with the passing pattern with the ostinato, we tried speeding it up. Here is n example at a moderate speed:

Second Grade Shares their "Weekend News"

Each Monday since school started, second graders have written their few first editions of "Weekend News." This piece of writing happens each week all year long and is an opportunity for the students to share a bit about their weekend adventures.  Teachers and classmates get to learn a bit more about the students as they share about soccer games, family outings and activities that they enjoy when they are not in school.  As the year goes on, the students will be coached to add even greater detail to their writing and to practice their spelling and handwriting skills.  Stop by our classroom and you can read their work. At the end of the year, all of this writing becomes a book and is a wonderful way to remember all their weekend adventures!

Book Clubs in Third Grade

Third grade students are engaged in book clubs this fall. Stink and the Great Guinea Pig Express  by Megan McDonald and Ivy and Bean Book One by Annie Barrows are the choices for this first round of book clubs.

Investigating character by determining the personality traits of the main characters and finding the proof in the text is a way for students to think deeply about the story and to deepen their comprehension. Both of these books have writing that students can enjoy reading with expression and increase their fluency as they act out sections of the books. The plot is exciting and often surprising in both of these books.

Great conversation that includes students making connections to their own lives and to characters in other books is part of every book group session. Writing about their ideas allows students to further develop their thinking about the text. Both Stink and the Great Guinea Pig Express and Ivy and Bean are part of a series. We are already seeing students choose other books from both of these series to read independently. When students read several books in a series, they can really sink into their reading as they already understand the structure of a book.

AFS Home and School Association Annual Fall Food Drive

Noticing Caterpillars

Wednesday morning in Meeting for Worship, Andrea read the beautiful book, Butterfly House by Eve Bunting.  Thanks to her keen observation, a young girl rescues a caterpillar from being eaten by a hungry jay.  A gentle and loving story evolves along with her grandfather.

After Andrea finished the story, many students shared memories of their monarch study in first grade.  The story was particularly poignant for our first graders as last week several students made an amazing discovery in the science room garden as they were being very observant scientists. They found a large monarch caterpillar on a milkweed plant!! It was so exciting to see one thriving on plants planted just for monarchs a few years ago!

discovering a monarch caterpillar in the garden

thriving on milkweed 

Our Monarch Watch caterpillars arrived last week and we have been watching them closely everyday, writing and drawing about their rapid development.  We are learning a great deal about the importance of milkweed to their survival.  This Friday during Community Time the first graders and resource teachers set out to map the locations that milkweed is growing here at AFS and to get an up-close look at it where it grows. It is quite a miraculous process that the students are witnessing each day and the exploration of the milkweed plant will deepen their understanding and appreciation.

Fourth Grade Begins Exploration of the Lenape

The fourth graders had the opportunity to visit Churchville Nature Center's hands on Lenape living history village. We have begun our yearlong study of Philadelphia, and the students had many questions and wonderings about the indigenous Lenape people.  

We arrived by bus and hiked down a hidden trail through the woods that was like a doorway to the past. The village, tucked behind woods and fences, shares the customs and way of life of the Lenape before their contact with Europeans.

Students were guided through their day by an educator dressed in hand made deerskin clothing replicating the dress of the time period. They rotated through different interpretive stations with the help of their guide. 

As they learned the history, they interacted in activities that ranged from fire making, practicing the skills young Lenape needed to master to be effective hunters, pottery making, gardening, cooking, cordage making, long house construction and matrilineal family structure. 

The students quickly discovered that nothing was ever wasted and the Lenape were amazing at creating usages for every aspect of the animals they hunted. The children thoroughly immersed themselves in the culture and will continue to explore and research the Lenape and their history.

The Evolution of Place Value Understanding

There are a number of skills that are critical to math success in the elementary grades.  Among them are an understanding of number and of place value. We started the year in grades kindergarten through fourth with a focus on place value. We emphasize that the position of each digit in a number determines its value, and we help students develop this understanding through grade appropriate practice.  In kindergarten and first grade this means that at this time in the year, we focus on numbers up to 10, in second grade we look at numbers up to 1000, in third grade numbers up to 10,000 and in fourth grade numbers up to 100,000.

Place value serves as an important foundation for much of the math work that we do in lower school. It is essential to have a strong foundation in place value in order to achieve success in making sense of our number system (based on the digits 0-9 and referred to as a base-ten system), counting, adding multi-digit numbers, money and many other math skills.  When teaching computation, we don't want to develop students who merely memorize algorithms, but rather, who are able to apply their understanding of place value to help them work with numbers, whether using mental math to compute or when solving multi-step problems.    

One way that we help students practice place value concepts is by learning to represent numbers in different ways, including standard (number) form, expanded form and word form.  We introduce these forms in second grade, which helps students learn to break numbers apart.  For example, if you are a looking at the number 258, understanding that is made up of 200+50+8 is important for successfully working with that number.

Also, just a reminder...

A great way to learn more about the sequence of math concepts at your child’s grade level is to check out the ‘Parent Resources’ section of the AFS Lower School Math website.  I have included videos for each grade, organized by chapter, to help you get a sense of what your child is learning in math.  These videos can be helpful if your child has a question about his or her math homework or if you just want a deeper understanding of how the concepts are being taught in school.

To go directly to the Parent Resources section of the website, click here.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the ‘Videos’ section.

Community Building in Kindergarten

What skills do we need to take care of each other and be kind?  In kindergarten we are practicing clear and honest communication, and we are also working on thinking about other people's feelings.  Developing our expressive and receptive language skills is helping us to create our community.  We recently got to practice these skills when our 11th grade friends came to visit.  Some of our kindergartners were a bit reluctant to engage with the bigger kids, but it did not take long for all involved to begin playing and running around joyfully!  We are looking forward to partnering with our 11th grade friends in the relay races on September 30th during Field Day!

The Power of Picture Books in First Grade

First grade has begun their year in reading workshop exploring the most effective strategies to read and respond to picture books. They have learned to examine the cover for clues as to the focus of the book and to utilize the title and picture on the cover to begin their thinking about the book.

Some of the books are written by one author and illustrator and others by two different people. Students have been learning to identify connections that they make to books and to their own lives and how these connections help us to understand a book more deeply. The vocabulary in picture books is often sophisticated and allow our students to grow in their use of words and language. We encourage the students to not only discuss the meaning of new words, but to connect the words to other words and categories.

The strategy of acting out the meaning of a new word allows that word to be remembered. Picture books often have messages that students can incorporate into their own lives. Our students listen carefully and respond while the story is being read, share ideas with a partner, envision a part of the book that they want to write about and then write and illustrate one aspect of the story. This beginning of the year study in first grade is such an effective way to start first grade reading workshop.

Thanks for a terrific Back to School Night! Also, end of week announcements.

We are grateful so many families were able to join us for Back to School Night yesterday evening.  Families had the opportunity to connect with resource teachers, meet our Home and School Association clerks and visit their children's classrooms.  We hope you learned more about what your child will experience this year. If you were unable to attend, please connect with your child's classroom teacher who will ensure you have any materials distributed and will gladly answer questions you may have.  We are looking forward to a year where we will be asking big questions, exploring possible answers and putting what we learn to work in order to help us grow as thinkers and as active participants in our world.

A few announcements: 
The after school enrichment ceramics class with Mindy for grades 1-6 is full.
Please remember to send in a change of clothes and shoes like sneakers for outdoor play.
If you don't have an AFS yard sign or car magnet, please let us know!
Many questions can be answered by visiting the AFS website http://www.abingtonfriends.net/.

Lower School Book Club for Adults

       
Join us this year for our Lower School Book Club for adults, led by Ann Botel-Barnard, our Language Arts Specialist. We are excited to come together to share a love for a great story!

Books and Meeting Dates:

The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney Friday October 14, 2016

The Turner House by Angela Flourney  Friday November 18, 2016

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante Friday January 20, 2017

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley Friday February 24, 2017

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout Friday March 17, 2017

The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni Friday April 21, 2017

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett Friday May 26, 2017

Location: Lower School Library from 8:00-9:00am.

Enjoy a light breakfast and great conversation as we discuss what we loved about the book, what we had questions about and what we could connect to. Feel free to join us even if you have not read the entire book. You will still have a lot to contribute and the discussion will enhance your reading of the book. You are welcome to bring adult friends and relatives that are also interested in discussing this book.

RSVP: Ann Botel-Barnard  abotelbarnard@abingtonfriends.net

Expected and Unexpected Places to Sink into Reading in 4th Grade

Fourth grade students brainstormed places that were conducive for sinking into reading at their first reading workshop of the new year.  Some of the ideas were expected and some were surprising and unexpected. Data was collected about how many students have enjoyed reading in each of those environments. We discussed the qualities of the various settings that allowed them to read with stamina and enjoyment. Strategies that students could use to sink into reading in the classroom were then shared. The next step in reading workshop was to pick "just right" books for the beginning of the school year that have great stories, are relatively short and will allow students to practice comprehension strategies as they are reading. Readers will be looking for examples of character traits in their books and writing short notes about these traits on post-it notes. They will be saving their post-its on sticky "parking lots" so that they can keep track of their thinking about the books.