January 2015 Happenings
Searingtown School
Happy New Year!
No Name Calling!
Searingtown School kicked off January with a "No Name Calling" campaign. In the classrooms, students heard the story, Bully by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. Assemblies were organized by Maureen Granfors, our school psychologist.
The K and first grade students "took a stand" against name calling and bullying by stomping their feet, marking their footprints, and signing footprint coloring pages. These footprints will be displayed in our primary hallway to show our students' great work!
The second and third graders listened to a story about a boy named David who had a "bad day" because of being bullied and teased. The students worked together to think of ideas about how they could act as upstanders, stand up for David, stand up to the bullies and ask adults for help. With these ideas the students "rewrote the script" of the story. They turned David's day from a sad day to a happy day!
The fourth and fifth graders shared stories of personal experiences in which they witnessed or were victimized by name-calling/bullying. They discussed how they could stand up against bullying or act as upstanders. For each upstander idea the students stood together and linked their arms into a large, grade-wide circle. They learned that one witness or bystander might feel powerless to help, but linked together with other witnesses or bystanders it is easier to "take a stand" against bullying or name-calling.
Kindergarten
We have started this New Year off with lots of learning! Kindergarteners have developed Super Reading Powers which we are all now using as we read books! We celebrated these reading strategies by making super reader masks and reading. As writers, we finished up our true stories and now we have begun to write “How – to” books. We are teaching each other about all of our talents. Some of our books are about ice skating, swimming, gymnastics and many more topics!
This month, we also enjoyed our trip to the Shelter Rock Library! All the kindergarteners went to the library to visit, learn, and sign up for a library card. We saw the books, heard some classic stories, we visited the circulation desk and the children’s section. What a great resource in our community!
The kindergarten has computer class with Mrs. Forte. We explored many amazing apps using the ipads and learned how to work them! We can make story pictures and share ideas using this wonderful technology. We also learned to unwind this month with the Yoga program that was brought to us by the PTA. What a fabulous experience for the children. They learned yoga poses and breathing that stretched our bodies, minds, and imaginations!
We explored mathematics, working more with teen numbers, and all the way to the number 100! We are skip counting and counting by tens, all the way to 100. In math, we are also exploring measurement, comparing height and length.
In kindergarten we also discussed the life and message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His legacy is one that gives us all inspiration. One inspiration at Searingtown was no-name calling week. The kindergarteners embraced the theme by joining with the school in meaningful activities that promoted kindness, tolerance, and friendship.
Grade 1
The month of January brought a New Year filled with many new learning experiences and fun activities. The first graders at Searingtown have continued learning about nonfiction writing, focusing on the many conventions that are important in nonfiction, such as a table of contents, a glossary, an index, bold words, diagrams, captions, comparisons, and photographs. We even had the chance to write our own nonfiction information books (or “All About” books) during our Writing Workshop time! We also started exploring our “Collections” and writing opinion based articles and being judges of our collections. Next month we will start writing “Reviews” to persuade our readers. We are so busy in Writing Workshop.
In Reading Workshop we started discussing and analyzing our fiction characters. We stop to think and jot about what our characters say, how they act and how they feel.
The first graders learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how he helped make our country a better place to live in. We also celebrated many birthdays and Super Mestar first grade students!
The month of January has kept us very hard at work with so many new things to learn. We are looking forward to the exciting activities and learning experiences that are yet to come this year!
Grade 2
Happy New Year from Grade 2! We are off to an exciting new year with new experiences. Each class discussed all the wonderful events that we celebrated in 2014 and what we look forward to in 2015! We discussed resolutions and choices that we would like to continue and some we would like to eliminate from our new year!
In addition to celebrating the New Year, we started many new projects and curriculum that have excited and thrilled our young learners. We embarked on our Heritage Celebration. The students are very excited to write an “All About” book about themselves and their culture. The children are currently sharing their Treasure Boxes and writing about what makes them special and unique. The teachers are quite excited to see the heritage dolls as well. Keep up the hard work!
Second graders work hard each day. They have learned many new strategies to analyze numbers and place value. We are now entering our Addition and Subtraction Unit where we will explore the various strategies that were introduced in the beginning of the year but with larger numbers. In addition, we have explored the three types of communities and are working to understand the pros and cons of living in each area. Soon, we will dive into our unit on Geography and learn about the world around us! Our reading unit has allowed us to flex our reading muscles and enjoy stories that have, in turn, helped us draft our fictional stories. The kids are very excited to create characters that solve a problem and develop an interesting plot!
We were lucky enough to visit the Cradle of Aviation where the children made their own kites and learned all about the history of flight. In addition, the children visited the firefighter exhibit where they learned fire safety.
We look forward to celebrating the winter with our young, eager learners!
Grade 3
Snowmen, snow angels and snow days – oh my! Along with the snow and cold temperatures the third graders have been busy solidifying their multiplication facts and division facts while gearing up to tackle area. The classes are thoroughly immersed in nonfiction reading and writing. In reading we are all enjoying biographies and the amazing lives of others. We ask the children to be mindful of all there is to learn from narrative nonfiction. Not just the obstacles and accomplishments of their subject, but for vocabulary as well as what they can learn about the world during the time their subject was living. The children have been working very hard, and we have all enjoyed another productive month which appears to have flown by!
In keeping with our school wide No Name Calling Campaign, today and everyday we are looking for ways to be extra kind to others as well as acknowledging ways others are kind to us. We are also working on remembering that feelings are everywhere, so we always have to be mindful of our actions and words.
Kindness and smiles are contagious…we intend to pass it on!
Grade 4
“Extra, extra, read all about it!” The fourth graders have a lot of opinions and they are working to organize these thoughts into essays. Our study of personal and persuasive essays is well underway and the fourth grade writers are living everyday as essayists. Each writer has developed a thesis statement and reasons to support it. The fourth grade writers are collecting lists and writing “vignettes” to include in their essays. Who knew fourth graders could be so convincing?!
We are all immersed in reading historical fiction books, both as a class and in our book clubs. This work builds upon the realistic fiction unit of study we did in the fall and even incorporates our nonfiction reading skills as we “rev up our minds” and learn about the historical context of our fiction books. At this point in fourth grade, most of the students have progressed to higher reading levels. By tackling complex texts like historical fiction, students are beginning to see how books become more complicated and include character change, multiple plot lines, and deeper meanings and messages. By working in our book clubs, students are able to support each other through conversation and shared note-taking to draw conclusions and make inferences about a book’s theme.
Our historical fiction study dovetails nicely with our social studies curriculum. Many of the students are reading Pocahontas and the Strangers which directly relates to our study of Native Americans and the early exploration and settlement of North America.
Our focus in math has been on fractions and representing equivalent fractions using a tape diagram. The students have been exposed to a lot of domain specific vocabulary such as unit fraction and improper fraction. It’s amazing how much they have learned already and we are only 1/5 of the way through the unit!
Fourth graders are looking forward to February!
Grade 5
Happy New Year from the Fifth Grade!
Westward Ho!
This month we wrapped up our unit on government and headed west. The fifth grade loaded up our wagons (buses) and headed east to the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook. There we participated in their “Wagons West’ program which fits perfectly with our social studies curriculum. Students were able to experience the hopes and fears of a 19th century family preparing to leave their farm to travel to a new life in Oregon. Students helped the family pack, and then visited authentic vehicles to learn about overland travel to reach the “jumping off point” at St. Joseph, Missouri. They explored the emigrant wagon outfitted as a “prairie schooner” and met a blacksmith to learn about wagons and wheels. Finally they packed a model schooner with everything needed for a six-month journey on the Oregon Trail. When we loaded up our wagons to go back to school, I think we all agreed that we are living a much easier way of life.
Fractions! Fractions! And More Fractions!
The fifth grade students’ understanding of addition and subtraction of fractions extends from earlier work with fraction equivalence and decimals. This unit marks a significant shift away from the elementary grades’ centrality of base ten units to the study and use of the full set of fractional units, especially as applied to algebra. Throughout this unit, a concrete to pictorial to abstract approach is used to convey these concepts. Students learned to use tools such as decomposing fractions, the number line, rectangular fraction model, tape diagrams and bar graphs to illustrate their thinking. By the end they were able to add apply truly difficult skills such as, adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators (including mixed numbers) by replacing given fractions with equivalent fractions in such a way as to produce an equivalent sum or difference of fractions with like denominators. Students were also able to solve word problems by using visual fraction models or equations to represent the problem.
I’m An Expert At . . .
This month to kick off our informational writing unit students were given the opportunity to show off their expertise in any area of their choosing. We had athletes, dancers, artists, musicians and students that really knew a lot about a wealth of different subjects. This is our springboard for our informational writing pieces on the Westward Expansion of our country.
No Name Calling Week
No name calling week was celebrated school wide starting January 20 and continuing (due to snow) through January 30th. Through a series of grade level activities during lunchtime recess children were sensitized to the feelings of others. It was a wonderful way to extend Dr. Martin Luther King’s message of peace and tolerance. We all launched the week by reading Bully by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. Then on Monday we wore either mismatched clothes or an “ugly” holiday sweater. This was to show that true beauty is on the inside. On Wednesday character T-shirts were adorned by all signifying that character counts. We showed our good character by using kind words and being an upstander. Thursday we “used our heads” by wearing our favorite hats. They reminded us to think before we speak or act out and finally on Friday we wore our favorite team jersey to show that Searingtown is truly a team. What a great way to start the year!!
ESL
First graders and kindergarteners learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We discussed what peace means to us. We wrote the word PEACE in our home language.
Ms. Macri’s ESL students wrote about their goals and resolutions for the New Year. They also wrote a short story about a time they were trapped in a snow globe! They practiced writing in past tense and using descriptive language to “show not tell.” Students also learned how to write a topic sentence to begin writing and a concluding sentence to end writing. Stop by room 14 and check out our snow globes in the hallway!
Last fall, Ms. Vanore’s second grade students read a book with embossed illustrations. They wrote a letter to Mrs. Renna, Searingtown’s art teacher, and asked her about this beautiful technique. After winter recess, Mrs. Renna taught a lesson for them in the art studio! She showed the children different ways to emboss paper, and the children created snowflakes - proudly displayed in Ms. Vanore’s room.
Ms. Vanore’s third grade students wrote stories using both descriptive words and dialogue. They used netbooks to type and print their creative pieces. They are now researching the Polar Regions, and the net books will be used for both internet access and report writing. We love technology!
Speech
Fairy Tales
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want your children to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” --Albert Einstein
Fairy tales seem to be making a comeback lately. You can find them in the movies, on television, and even on Broadway. While these mediums have assisted these tales in reaching the masses, many children are unaware that the tales originated as actual books.
Reading, or even retelling, fairy tales can offer more than just entertainment to children. Comprehension skills, listening skills, vocabulary development, problem solving and social skills are some of the areas that can be improved through reading or listening to fairy tales.
These are some of the skills that can be developed by reading and talking about fairy tales:
--Predicting/Infering/Cause and Effect—Ask your child what might happen next, why a character may have done something, or why something may
have occurred.
--Comparing/Contrasting—You can discuss different versions of the fairy tales, and even explore how the fairy tales of various cultures are similar and different. There are many different versions of fairy tales that can be found at the library for your child to enjoy and explore.
--Understanding Point of View—New clever versions of classic fairy tales are also available, such as The True Story of the Three Little Pigs which tells the story from the wolf’s perspective. These updated stories provide fresh insight into all of the characters and give the old tales a humorous twist.
--Develop Empathy—Understanding another character’s perspective and connecting with characters in a story can help a child understand the wishes, dreams, hopes, anxieties and motivations of others. The exaggerated emotions in a fairy tale are easy to interpret and can serve as a springboard for conversations with your child about their feelings and emotions in general.
Reading fairy tales can be a fun way to develop a variety of language skills!
Library
Second graders began their study of the Caldecott Award by examining the role of illustrations in picture books. They are learning how illustrations can enhance a story and set the mood of the story. They are now in the midst of judging books for our annual Searingcott Award.
Fourth and fifth graders are now immersed in various research projects. Fourth graders are learning about NYS explorers; fifth graders have begun our Survivor MD project and our Amazing Race project. Special thanks to our technology integrator, Mrs. Forte, for helping out with these projects!
Our special author visit with Michael Northrup was cancelled due to the blizzard! Purchased autographed books will be delivered to the library soon and will be distributed. We hope to reschedule Mr. Northrup in the spring.
We are so excited about our PTA sponsored author visit coming up in February with BRYAN COLLIER! Bryan Collier is an accomplished artist and illustrator who lives in Harlem in New York City. School Library Journal says, "The prolific and award-winning illustrator and author Bryan Collier is known for his unique style of artwork that combines watercolors with detailed collage, featured in such titles as Rosa by Nikki Giovanni, for which he was awarded a Coretta Scott King (CSK) Illustrator Award and a Caldecott Honor; Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave, for which he also was awarded both the CSK and a Caldecott Honor; and Uptown (Holt, 2000), the first book that he authored and illustrated, for which he was awarded both the CSK and an Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award."
Reading Room
What better way to spend snowy winter days than curled up with a good book. That is surely happening in reading workshop. In kindergarten readers are becoming a class of reading teachers. Partners are coaching each other how to use their super powers to figure out all those wondrous words in their books.
In first grade, readers have switched from learning about the world through nonfiction to getting to know interesting characters in fabulous fiction books. First graders are ready to study what characters say and do so that they can get to know characters real well. Perhaps we’ll even learn a few life lessons from the characters in our books.
In second grade, readers are growing in leaps and bounds. Readers are immersed in all genres and are shoring up on foundational skills by reading harder books, learning new vocabulary words and reading with greater accuracy and fluency. So grab a good book, find a cozy spot and enjoy a great read during this wonderful winter season.
Music
Searingtown School Chamber Music Club's Concert Tour
Searingtown School’s Chamber Music Club united for a 9 day tour of the community to perform holiday music for various events. The kids got a taste of a real musician’s life preparing many songs in a short period of time and presenting them in various indoor and outdoor venues in mid-December.
The Chamber Music Club is made up of orchestra and band students who hit the road to perform at the Williston Park Tree Lighting, the St. Aidan’s Festival of Trees, The Barnes and Noble Searingtown PTA Holiday Fundraiser in Manhasset, and the Herricks Community Center for the Seniors during their Holiday Luncheon.
“This experience taught these students the rigors of live performance in unknown venues”, said co-director, Andrea Somma. “They learned how to get to the performance early with all music, to set up the staging area, and help tear down after the performance.”
The group played to large audiences and was well received. “They played very well given the amount of music they learned and the sometimes stressful circumstances,” commented co-director David Steven referring to the gusts of sub-freezing winds that kept toppling the music stands at the outdoor tree lighting. “The kids were troopers and were able to adapt and discovered that a really successful performance isn’t necessarily a perfect one.”
In the end, the community was enthralled by the young performers as evidenced by the cheers and general spirit after every performance.
Video, Searingtown Chamber Performs at Barnes and Noble: http://youtu.be/JNJsv5ffXK0
Searingtown School Happenings
Written by the faculty of Searingtown School
Published by K. Kliegman, School Librarian