KINDERGARTEN

Reminders

The weather is changing and it’s getting cooler by the day. Please remember to send your child to school with a light coat or sweater. If your child doesn’t know already, please have them practice tying their shoes and zipping coats. Pack an extra mask in their backpack and bring a water bottle too! Please label all clothing, lunch bags and snacks! Remember to check your child’s folders every night.  Please be sure to sign up on their Google Classroom and Konstella if you have not already done so.

Reading Workshop

In Reading Workshop, we will continue our first reading unit called “We Are Readers.” We’re learning to read the environment around us. We’re noticing signs and labels around the classroom and community. By the end of October, we will begin reading emergent storybooks. These are books that we have been reading since the beginning of school. Your child will be so familiar with each story, they’ll practice reading” them and acting them out!

Writing

This first Writers Workshop unit is designed to help your students work with independence, confidence, and stamina. Routines and procedures will be taught. The importance of drawing for planning will be stressed in this unit.

Math

In math we are continuing our work comparing and ordering numbers from 0-5 and learning to read, write and count through 10. Please take any real world opportunity to help your child to count objects up to and including 10.

Science

Kindergarten scientists will investigate the needs of plants and animals.

Social Studies

All Kindergarten classes will create a Class Charter. This will help develop an understanding of why classrooms have rules to help maintain happy, healthy, and safe learning environments.

Upcoming Events 

Oct 1-School Photos 

Oct 11-No School

Oct 29- Halloween classroom celebration

SEL/Equity Corner

Kindergartener classes will be exploring different cultures and ethnicities through read alouds in the classroom.  Students will try to identify themselves in these texts.  They will also be identifying their own emotions on our classroom mood meter and looking for these emotions in the diverse text we read.

FIRST GRADE

Reminders: 

• Remember to check your child’s folder every day for important notices and empty it out. 
• Be sure your child completes all the assignments and return it back to school in their homework folder. Your child should be reading every night and practicing their sight words for the week.
• Please check Konstella for any school-wide updates.
• Please pack a healthy snack for your child to eat in school.

Reading Workshop

This month, we will be learning how to become a better reader in first grade by building good reading habits like rereading and retelling. We will also be learning how to build good habits for solving tricky words in our just right books. 

Writing

This month, we will be starting our narrative unit. We will think about true events that happened in our lives to write a true story about. We will write across three pages, learning how to use transition words like first, then, and last. We will learn how to sound out and spell many words for our story.

Math

In Math, we will be working on understanding addition and subtraction. We will also be working on finding combinations for different numbers.

Science

In Science, we will be investigating a sea turtle’s body parts and how it helps them to get food, air, and water. We will observe videos, read, and do different hands-on experiments to learn!

Social Studies

We will discuss why families are important and how they influence who we are.  

Upcoming Events

10/11 – No school for Italian Heritage and Indigenous People Day

SEL/Equity Corner

In class, we have all been brainstorming and coming up with our class charter or class promise. For our class charter, we discussed the different types of feelings that we want to feel in school like happy, calm, and safe (just to name a few). We will continue to help each other and work hard to keep our class promise to make sure our first grade year shines!

SECOND GRADE

Reminders

• Check your student’s take home folder and Konstella daily
• Encourage your child to try their best
• Make sure your students comes to school prepared including having sharpen pencils
• Review with your child proper mask etiquette 

Reading Workshop

Second grade will begin the year working toward the big work of reading with fluency, stamina, and comprehension.  We will also explore different ways to tackle hard words and be able to pay attention to an author’s craft and lessons they are teaching the reader.  

Writing

We will begin the year with writing small moment stories.  Throughout the unit students will learn different craft moves to help bring their stories to life.  

Math

During the month of October, second graders will finish learning different strategies to help both add and subtract numbers within 20.  In addition, they will begin working with equal groups.  They will explore even and odd numbers and using arrays to find totals

Science

Plant and animal relationship – how plants and animals help each other to live and grow.  

Social Studies

Students will continue our unit on geography.  We will explore how geography influences where people live.  

Upcoming Events

October 1, 2021 – picture day

October 11, 2021 – No School 

SEL/Equity Corner

Second grade classes will continue to get to know each other.  We will learn more about our peers, as well as, our teachers.  In addition, we will continue to monitor our emotions and learn different strategies to help us be our best self.  

THIRD GRADE

Reminders

• Check your child’s homework folder daily
• Please bring in one healthy snack per day
• Please send in any missing supplies

Reading Workshop

We are starting the school year with the unit Building a Reading Life. In this unit, we are focusing on setting routines and tracking our reading habits with reading logs. During this unit, students will be focusing on developing their literal skills and inferential skills such as monitoring for sense, envisioning, retelling, predicting, and basic theory work. As the unit progresses, we will work on skills and strategies to understand hard words and parts.  We will also begin our second unit, which is an informational unit called Reading to Learn: Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures.  We will focus on strengthening our nonfiction reading skills across different types of informational texts, including expository and narrative nonfiction.

Writing

The third grade is making their way through the writing process to develop true small moment stories.  Students are learning how to form a seed idea and develop it into a story that has a beginning, middle, and end.  Students will learn how to go through the writing process of (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing). Additionally, students will learn how to incorporate writer’s craft into their writing. Students will add craft by making their characters come to life, and by adding dialogue, action, feelings, and tension.  We will also begin our second writing unit, The Art of Information Writing.  Students will be learning strategies to help them write nonfiction books on different topics and strengthen these writing skills.

Math

Students are learning many different strategies for solving multiplication problems such as repeated addition, using a number line, and creating an array. Additionally students will practice fluency with their multiplication facts. Besides working on key skills and strategies throughout the week, students will strengthen their problem solving skills through math discussions.

Science

Scientists and engineers have figured out a way to build a train that actually floats on air as it goes cruising down the track at high speeds. Using similar principles, engineers have created a hoverboard—a device-like a skateboard that floats above a track rather than rolling along the ground. In the Balancing Forces unit, students work to investigate and then explain how these inventions seem to defy logic. Over the course of the unit, through firsthand experiences, discourse, and reading and writing informational text, students will come to understand how forces can cause stability or change in an object’s motion. They will discover how magnetic force can be used to counterbalance the force of gravity. They will create physical models, diagram models, and write, and present scientific explanations detailing how the maglev (magnetic levitation) train appears to defy gravity by floating.

Social Studies

Students have been learning about the study of World Geography. Students will learn how to identify oceans and continents. Additionally, students will learn about compass directions and map skills. We will learn how to use compass directions to describe the different locations of continents and oceans.

Upcoming Events

October 11 – Italian Heritage Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, schools closed

SEL/Equity Corner

In honor of our Homecoming Theme, Our Identity and Pride of “Self,” and our 9 Days of Love, we have been engaging in many read alouds, activities, and discussions that allow students to get to know each other and to show each other pride of who we each are. Students are also becoming quite familiar with the mood meter and how to use it in order to identify our emotions, as well as how to regulate our emotions.  We have also been working on creating our classroom charters in order for us to have a mutual class understanding and agreement on how we want to feel and what behaviors we can exhibit in order for us to feel these ways.  We are really enjoying all of the SEL/Equity work we are engaging in throughout each day!

FOURTH GRADE

Reminders

• School starts at 8:00 A.M. Please have your child in the building at 8:00 A.M, ready for 1st period to begin.
• Students receive homework Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. No homework on Fridays! 
• Please fill out the School Policies Google Form LINK, found on Konstella, as soon as possible (digital).
• Please sign and return the Media Consent Form (sent home in backpack).

Reading Workshop

Right from the start, the students will focus on comprehension strategies such as monitoring for sense, envisioning, and inferring. We are excited to place some brand new books in the hands of our students! Students will work towards understanding character traits, motivations, and struggles.  They will also strengthen their reading stamina and fluency.  As the weeks go by please take a peek into their Reading Notebooks for evidence of their thinking!  

Writing

We will begin our writing unit by giving the children a quick pre-assessment to see what writing skills they have maintained since third grade.  Then, we will quickly move into the writing process with our first unit, narrative writing.  The students will use past strategies, as well as learn new ones to generate ideas for realistic stories.  We will teach the children to nurture their writing ideas with lots of detail including dialogue, thought, and action.  After drafting, the students will learn revision and editing strategies to make their writing pieces appealing to their readers.  Finally, they will end the unit with publishing the piece and celebrating their hard work!

Math

For the months of September and October, the students will work on Topics 1 and 2 in Envisions 2.0.  These topics focus on place value, number relationships, addition and subtraction strategies, as well as mental math strategies.  Please encourage your child to complete the daily homework and to advocate for themselves if there are any misunderstandings. We will go over the homework in class the following day and we value participation. 

Science

In the Energy Conversions unit, students take on the role of systems engineers for Ergstown, a fictional town that experiences frequent blackouts, the anchor phenomenon for the unit. They will explore reasons why an electrical system may fail. Through firsthand experiences, reading, writing, and digital simulations, students make discoveries about the way electrical systems work. Students will apply what they have learned to choose new energy sources for the town, using evidence to explain why their choices will make the electrical system more reliable. 

Social Studies

We begin unit 1 of our Passport program focusing on the Geography of New York State. Students study different kinds of maps as well.  Students will then learn the different features of New York including its geographical regions, waterways, mountains, and population.  As always, we will teach important non-fiction reading skills while students are navigating through social studies resources and texts. 

SEL/Equity Corner

We are here for our students!  It has been a long time since we have all walked the hallways of PS173, but we’re back. We will work hard this year to build classroom community and support each other’s emotions and uncertainties through books, community building activities, morning meetings, and videos. We will talk to the children about their feelings and how we can make this year the best it can be!  We encourage you to talk to your children about their feelings each day. 

FIFTH GRADE

Reminders

• Please check Konstella for important messages from the school and your student’s teacher.
• Students should have sharpened pencils daily.
• Students are encouraged to bring a sweater or sweatshirt if they are cold and a water bottle daily.  

Reading Workshop

For the months of September and October, students will read series books to support them in the foundational work of studying characters and growing ideas.  We know that series reading can help to develop a lifelong love of reading and support reading with increased volume and engagement.  Please help students create a reading environment at home so they can read 30 minutes. 

Writing

For the month of September, we will launch the Writing Workshop by writing personal narratives. The focus of this first unit will be to help students be reflective of their own lives and write about what matters to them. Through this unit, the students are encouraged to be independent with their writing and to use strategies they’ve learned in previous years.  

In October, students will continue to draft their personal narratives, in addition to expanding their repertoire of strategies and working with independence. Students will be challenging themselves by going through the writing process (drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) with strong story structure.  

Please encourage your child to add various entries into his/her Writer’s Notebook. 

Math

Topic 1- Understand Place Value 

Students will learn about place value- the idea that the value of a digit depends on the place in a number- for whole numbers to hundred millions and decimals to thousandths. Students will also learn that a digit in any place has 10 times the value it would have in the place to its right and  1/10 to the value it would have in the place to its left. 

Topic 2-Add and Subtract Decimals to Hundredths 

Students will develop proficiency with adding and subtracting decimals. These skills will enable your child to solve mathematical and real-world problems efficiently. These skills will also help your child estimate sums and differences in order to determine the reasonableness of solutions. 

Topic 3- Fluently Multiply Multi-Digit Whole Numbers 

Students will learn to explain patterns in the number of zeros of the product when multiplying a number by powers of 10. Your child will also apply his or her understanding of place value to estimate products. 

Science

In this unit, students take on the role of astronomers, helping a team of archaeologists at the fictional Museum of Archaeology. Students are asked to figure out and explain the significance of the illustrations on a recently discovered thousand-year-old artifact with a missing piece, the anchor phenomenon for the unit. Students observe and investigate patterns in the sky by day and by night with kinesthetic models, as well as using a digital simulation, and informational text. They learn that stars are all around us in space, develop an understanding of scale and distance in the universe, and discover how the spin and orbit of our planet causes us to observe daily and yearly patterns of stars. Students apply their understanding of why we see different stars at different times to explain what is shown on the artifact, and what might be on the missing piece.

Social Studies

Unit 1: Geography and Early and Societies of the Western Hemisphere 

This unit provides students to explore various early civilizations of Canadian region, Inuit society, and early Americans. Students will learn how early people adapted to their environment and how they contribute to the development of the Western Hemisphere. 

Upcoming Events

10/1/21 School Picture Day (Including Class Photos)

10/11/21 Columbus Day- No School

SEL/Equity Corner

Latinx Heritage Month

Social Emotional Learning

1. Create a welcoming and affirming environment
2. Getting to Know each other
3. Learning each other’s names and what they mean to us