The Gift of Giving

As 2014 approaches, we are so very thankful for our students-your children.  Reflecting on the season of giving, we are appreciative of our 21 "gifts." Room 13 has been talking about how not all gifts cost money.  In fact, we have discovered that some of the best things in life are free! Read on to find out what special and unique qualities our children possess.  

"21 Gifts"

Jamie- Inquisitive nature and thirst for knowledge
Avani- Kindness and compassion to all
Matthew- witty sense of humor
Kyle- Sweet words and his interest in getting to know people personally
Samantha- Bright smile and love of everything we do
Brooke D. - A good friend and a golden heart
Zachary-  Always helping others with a happy face and positive attitude
Jared- Eager to participate in all we do and make the best of every situation
Oliver-Making us all laugh and smile each day
Neha- Giving her best effort in all she does
Jordan- His love of playing and creating
Lainey- Fun-loving personality and seeing the good in everyone and everything
Jessica-Her knowledge and sweet smile 
Eshal- Delightful personality and ability to work well with others
Alex- For being a happy go-lucky kid who brightens everyone's day
Kamil- Taking every opportunity to learn and grow
Daniel- For questioning and examining new information 
Dirgha- For always putting forth her best effort in all she does
Brooke T.- For her loving and bubbly personality
Hannah- For giving compliments to all and making everyone feel special
Emily- A bright spot in everyone's day and a lovable personality

We would also like to acknowledge another gift we feel grateful for... Ms. Carey! She helps all students and teachers each and every day. We are SO lucky to have her as part of our team this year! Thank you Ms. Carey!

During this season, we have read, discussed and designed the gifts of giving! Check out how we have incorporated this across the curriculum! What gifts do you give that don't cost money? Ask your child to share what is on their "Giving Tree."

We wish you all a wonderful vacation and a happy and healthy New Year.  See you all in.....

December 2, 2013

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend with your family and friends.  We truly enjoyed our time with our loved ones and came back rested and ready to start off the month of December right.   

Bar Model Mania

We just finished our unit on Bar Modeling and were so impressed with the children's skills.  They really got the "hang" of it. Although the bars can be challenging to draw, visually, they helped the children to decipher the correct operation to use when solving a word problem.  They also aid the students when solving a two-step word problem. We are extremely proud of our mathematicians in Room 13!

Poetry

We are currently deep into the revision phase of the writing process.  The children generated SOOOO many amazing poems using a variety of poetic elements during the collection process. They were then asked to select three poems that they would like to work on for the rest of the unit.  As part of the revision process, they will be using a checklist to enhance their writing pieces. The checklist contains many elements of poetry and will help the children to produce interesting and creative poems.  We can't wait for you to see our finished final published pieces because we know they will be awesome!    

Reading

Connecting, Visualizing, now Inferencing- OH MY!

Our Reading Workshop skill this month will be inferencing.  Our students have already had an ample amount of exposure to this important skill due to our Shared Reading experience each morning.  We know inferencing is an important skill that develops strong readers who draw conclusions and come to ideas that are not stated explicitly in the text.  Ask your child about the formula we use to make inferences in our classroom!

Communities

Our class has spent a lot time learning about the three different kinds of communities.  We used this knowledge to generate two kinds of writing; informational and persuasive.  We truly feel they have a strong understanding of the importance of the different kinds of communitites and the need for all three.  We also had an impromptu speaker from a rural community (thanks to Mr. Sinanis' friend on Twitter).  He told us what life was like in a farm community and answered all of our amazing questions.  He even told us that in 12th grade, the seniors get to drive their tractors to school one day of the year.  How cool is that? We wonder what community each child will choose to live in when they grow up!

Our trip to the Queens County Farm was a huge success! We learned the importance of the sheep's covering. A bumpy hayride around the farm was the highlight of the trip! Thank you Mrs. Hazen and Mr. Danzig for joining us and helping keep the kids in a straight line for Mr. Marty (our farm guide)! LOL

Scientist of the Week

We had some fantastic experiments this month! Thank you to Jessica, Kamil, and Alex Na. for some awesome experiments! We really appreciate all their efforts in expanding everyone's knowledge on a variety of science topics.  

Mind-Up

Once again, Mrs. Colucci reminds us how important it is to be a "mindful" person. Every Monday for 40 minutes, Mrs. Colucci comes to our classroom and discusses important strategies on how to pay attention, look at the speaker, reduce stress by breathing deeply, keeping calm, exercising, and staying positive. We listed many important jobs that students felt being "mindful" is important. Look at the picture below to see what your child came up with in class. We can't wait for next Monday to see what Mrs. Colucci has planned for students in Room 13!

Holidays! Celebrations! Family! Gifts! Yummy Food!


Jared's family wanted to "kick-off" the holiday season with jelly donuts and potato latkes to help celebrate Hanukkah. Some students were introduced to these traditional Jewish foods. Everyone who tried it....loved it! Thank you Goldberg Family for thinking of us during this special time in your lives. If anyone else would like to share your holiday traditions with us, please feel free to email us to set up a time to celebrate. We are all special and unique and enjoy learning about all customs and traditions. Room 13 is always up for partying! 

October in Review

What a fantastic month in Room 13! 
Read on...to hear about some highlights.

20 Compliments=Class Party

#we-did-it!

Our class has been working together to earn 20 class compliments from teachers and other staff members outside of our class since the first day of school.  We are so proud of how far we have come!  Whether it was walking nicely in the hallway, good behavior during specials, or impressing Mr. Sinanis with our knowledge when he visits our classroom, we were able to earn 20 compliments in just 35 days of school.  To celebrate, we will be having a special party in our classroom. Keep your eyes out for a special notice coming home today about our celebration.  Our 

                                                      next goal is to get 50 compliments for another party!

 #we-can-do-it-if-we-work-together!

Coding the Text
Our class has been learning about a variety of reading skills.  Whether we are in our Shared Reading experience, Reading Workshop, or working in small groups, we are working on an awareness of the reading skill, while we are reading.  To help us, we started "coding the text."  Ask your child about a code and what reading skill it stands for. In addition, ask what that code means! You will be impressed with our little detectives! As we continue learning more reading skills, we will learn new codes and add them to our growing chart!

Round One in Writing.... 
Personal Narrative
Writing in our classroom has been truly impressive so far.  It is clear that the students have a background in Writing Workshop and it shows.  We were able to generate ideas, draft, revise, edit, and publish.  The writing was impressive, and we can already see growth in the children's writing from September until now.  We are currently immersing ourselves  in Poetry and will begin to collect ideas next week.  The students are excited, and so are we!  We told them, "You're a poet and you didn't even know it!" 




Math! Math! Math!
Addition and Subtraction to 1,000 were two units the class met with success.  By using manipulatives, songs, and visual aides, we were able to add and subtract three digit numbers with and without regrouping, up to 1,000.  Next on the agenda, using Bar Models to help us truly understand and solve math real world problems.  Bar models are truly essential in demonstrating an understanding of mathematical concepts. Our class already had a head start because of our knowledge of what's to come next. Everyone will be drawing Bar Models to all words problems in the next unit! GO MARSENS!


PARP 2013

The week long celebration of PARP was an outstanding one.  We kicked off the week with a teacher swap.  Our guest reader was Mrs. Aloe (a fifth grade teacher). Students had so much hearing spooky Halloween stories.  She was so awesome, and our class truly had a great time. On Tuesday, we had our special assembly.  Many family members were able to join the assembly and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  We loved the magic show! Later that same day, was PARB.  Having many adults here to read with their family member was a true pleasure.  We loved reading all the Text-to-Family connections. Thursday was "Dress like your favorite character." We had Winnie the Pooh (Ms. Carey), Dr. Seuss (Mrs. Martin and the adorable Jared), and a princess (Mrs. Rosen).  In addition, many kids came dressed-up and we loved seeing how creative families can be with costumes! On Friday, we had a surprise guest reader- Mrs. DePasquale.  She read the class a fantastic story about Thanksgiving.  Thank you Mrs. DePasquale!!!!! We hope all the parents, students, and staff had a truly memorable PARP week.  We know we did!


Halloween 
We had our first class holiday party, and it was truly fantastic.  We decorated pumpkins with stickers, paint markers, and googly eyes! They were festive and allowed us to get into the spirit of the season.  We also enjoyed delicious cookies, pretzels, and fruit snacks! Thank you to Mrs. Leftkowitz, Mr. Goldberg, Mrs. Cohen, and Mrs. Na for organizing the party, preparing the craft and snacks, and helping to make our celebration special and unique.  We can't wait to party again soon!

Scientists of the Month!

As our Scientist of the Week experiments continue, WE continue to be amazed! This month, we were wowed by Avani, Alex Na, and Jared.  They all taught us about liquids and what can and can not mix.  We look forward to all our scientists in the month of  November.  Check out some pics below to see our scientists in action!

September in Review!

New Beginnings

Wow! We can't believe one month of school has already past.  We couldn't be happier with our new classroom family. We started out the month establishing important rituals and routines, getting to know each other, and having some serious fun!

"Getting to Know You" Wheel of Fun

Mind-Up
We are so lucky to have Mrs. Colucci working with our class this year.  She will be joining us on Mondays, teaching us to be "Mindful" people.  We are learning all about the brain, and how we are in control of our bodies! This can help us to make good choices! We love "Mind-up!"

Amazing Mathematicians

Using our new math program (Math in Focus), for the second year, we truly feel the students have a stronger understanding of math and demonstrating knowledge of curriculum.  We have been using manipulatives, visual aides, and good old paper and pencil to demonstrate all we know!  Place Value, adding with and without regrouping, and solving challenging word problems, all proved that we are excelling in the area of math.  Go Team Marsen!




Wonderful Writing
We jumped right into writing workshop this year.  We decorated our notebooks and created heart maps to show important people, places, and things in our lives.  We learned that things that we love are the "watermelon" ideas for our writing.  Ask your child what the "seeds" are in writing?

Reading Rocks!

Wow! Reading in Room 13 has been a true adventure.  We established reading partners and reviewed how to "turn and talk" as well as "think, pair, share". Right now, we are working a very important reading skill- making text-to-self connections.  Ask your reader what a level 1, level 2, and a level 3 connection is and see if he/she can make a level 3 connection after reading a book! Relating the text to your own life and coming to the conclusion of the "big idea" is truly an important reading skill.

Finish Up Friday- "Word Hard, Play Hard!"

By now, we are sure you have heard about the opportunity for free play in our classroom.  We truly feel that students who finish their work and demonstrate a good work ethic should be rewarded.  Last period of the day on Friday is a special time when students can have free time in the classroom and work on team playing skills, such as sharing, taking turns, speaking appropriately, cooperation and cleaning up together.  They truly love this time!

Students enjoying free time!

"Each Kindness"To kick off the school year, Mr. Sinanis read the book Each Kindness to our class.  We found the book inspirational, and chose to do a follow-up activity.  We challenged our students to generate 21 acts of kindness.  See below on 21 ways you can be kind. 

Class Pledge

Following Constitution Day, our class decided we needed our own "Class Constitution".  Click on the video below to hear about what rules we generated from a homework assignment. We look forward to following these important rules this year!

We are so excited to be able to share our classroom happenings  with all of you.  Please post a comment to let us know your thoughts- something you liked or even something you would like to hear more about! Stay tuned for our next addition...  

Welcome to the launch of Team Marsen's blog.  A special place where you and your family (both near and far) can read, learn, and see what is happening in Room 13!  

When our newest blog is complete, we will send you the link in an email. However, you may always view previous newsletters by going into the archives. For example, old posts will be under the newest month's Archives. 

We would LOVE for you to read our blogs with your child.  This a great way to encourage the home-school connection.  Feel free to leave a post about how you feel about the information you read. We would love to hear what you think! Your post will NOT show up immediately, but rest assure, it will be up ASAP. 

In some blogs, you will see pictures, captions, and/or videos.  We will only be using first names, and we ask that you do the same when leaving a comment. 

Stay tuned for our first blog...COMING SOON!



Mrs. Rosen +Mrs. Martin= Blog Reporters