Queens County Farm Museum

Our first class trip to the Queens County Farm Museum was on October 25, 2012.  We boarded the buses with smiling faces and high expectations.  Boy-were they met!

We had such an amazing tour of the farm and learned about the different animals and crops and how important they are in our daily lives. The trip ended with a fun hayride, which was bumpy and exciting!  We truly enjoyed our day.  Life in a "Rural Community" is interesting!

Enjoy the pictures below of the newest "farmers" in a rural community.



Ethan and Alex enjoying the hayride!




Our tour group!



Tess, Skylar, Sadie, and Maytal in front of the cornstalks!

Sam and Serena enjoying the sounds of the ducks!

David getting ready to feed the goats!

Max, Vishnu, and Ashispal feeding the VERY friendly goat!

Lauren and Katie observing the pigs eating pumpkin scraps!

Ethan, Logan, and Nick after feeing the goats! (They still look happy!)

Max and Dylan learning about the chickens in a coop!



Sam, Ashishpal, Zack, and Skylar checking out the cows!



Thank you to Mrs. Jaffe and Mrs. Spector for joining us on our journey! You were truly a big help and a pleasure to have!

HW- Please have your child post a comment about something he/she learned or enjoyed about our trip to a Rural Community!

October 26

What a week in Room 13! The children were productive and positive this week, as we continued to learn and have fun!  Two amazing things that happened in our class were the "We are Buddies" activity and Scientist of the Week starring...Nick and the Green Gak! Check it out!

Nick and the Green Gak!

We are Buddies!

We had the opportunity to get to know our classmates even better! We paired up randomly by using fun cards that had complimentary items.  For example; peanut butter and jelly, Bert and Ernie, or even Mickey and Minnie!  We then used a previously filled out survey about ourselves to find out if we are more alike or more different than our partners.  We used the information to fill out a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting ourselves. We had so much fun working with our buddies and finding out our likes and differences. Our finished Venn Diagrams are hanging in our classroom.  We are ALL buddies in Room 13!

We would also like to introduce two of our newest members to Team Marsen.  Room 13 welcomed (with smiles and warm hearts) David and Mrs. Levy!



COMING SOON....

QUEENS COUNTY FARM FIELD TRIP PICTURES!

October 19

Happy Friday to all! We had an exciting week here in Room 13! The children were hard at work and enjoying every minute of it.  Two things we would like to spotlight this week are our experience at the Book Fair and our Shared Reading of the week- Phases of the Moon! See below to find out more about these happenings! Enjoy the "view" into Room 13!

Phases of the Moon
Each week as part of our morning work, the class participates in the Shared Reading experience.  For five days, we read the SAME text! Each day we read for a DIFFERENT purpose! The five days consist of the following:
Day One- Preview and Prepare
Day Two- Monitor for Meaning
Day Three-Envisioning
Day Four-Infer and Interpret (WOW!)
Day Five-Synthesize (Double WOW!)

This week, we read a non-fiction piece entitled Phases of the Moon.  The children greatly enjoyed this piece.  We were able to indentify the genre, make connections, and even re-enact the phases of the moon with a globe, flashlight(thanks to the flashlight app. on the iPhone) and a paper-cut out of the moon!  The children were truly immersed in this Shared Reading experience!  Look below to see the snapshots taken of the sketches some children drew during Envisioning. In addition, we took a gallery walk around the room to see what everyone was visualizing.


Lauren's Sketch!



Ethan N.'s  Sketch

Ashishpal's Sketch



Text on SmartBoard!



Gallery Walk

Gallery Walk

Gallery Walk

Scholastic Book Fair
The Marsen's visited the Book Fair on Wednesday this week! We had a great time selecting books and chatting about what we love to read.  Thank you to all the parents that came and donated to our classroom library! We truly appreciate all your involvement!

GOOD NEWS! We have an extention to our family starting Monday!We are looking forward to two new additions to our classroom!!!!  Room 13 is happy to announce that a boy named David will be joining our class, as well as a new teacher aide, Mrs. Levy! We know they will be received with many smiles and warm wishes as they begin their experience at Cantiague and in Second Grade!

COMING SOON... our field trip to the Queens County Farm on Thurs. October 25th! Get your "Jericho" t-shirts up and ready to go!

October 12 Blog

If you are reading this blog, our "Blogging 101" was successful, and we really peaked your interest! Read on to learn about two exciting activities that took place this week in Room 13!

Tuesday-Our Compliment Party

Since Day 1 of school, our students worked together to earn compliments from teachers and staff members around our school. Whether it was walking quietly in the hallway or working nicely in teams in the Science Lab, we are proud of the 15 compliments received. To celebrate, students brought in games from home. Everyone took turns playing games and filled each other's buckets with smiles, laughing, sharing, and good sportsmanship. Enjoy these snapshots...they tell it all!

Thursday-Scientist of the Week

Katie kicked off our Scientist of the Week program by conducting an experiment called, "Sandwich Bag Bomb!" The children greatly enjoyed her experiement and learned how vinegar and baking soda make carbon dioxide.  When the carbon dioxide could not escape the bag, it caused an explosion! Wow! Katie really blew the class away! See the video below! Katie is "da bomb!" LOL



Sandwich Bag Bomb!



We hope you enjoyed this edition of our Blog! We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Have a great weekend!

Team Marsen

Blogging 101 with the Marsens!

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. September's newsletters are posted under the October 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. Martin+Mrs. Rosen=Team Marsen



October 10 Newsletter

Dear Families,

         

As we come to the end of a FULL week of school, we continue to be amazed and impressed with your children.  They have been extremely hard at work, and we are so proud of them!

          In math, we began a new unit on addition.  The children learned how to line up their numbers like a “ladder” when solving 3-digit addition problems.  We also practiced using base-ten blocks to support our addition skills when adding.  Finally, the children learned to “tackle” a word problem by identifying and underlining important information to help them solve a word problem.

          In reading this year, the children are going to learn how to “Code the Text!” Ask your child about the three codes they have learned so far and what each code means.  We also read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.  We chose this book because our shared reading for the week was about the author, Kevin Henkes.  We learned that Kevin Henkes worked very hard to be a successful author, and when we work hard, we can be or do anything we put our mind to!

          Writing Workshop has been amazing in Room 13! The children have collected so many personal narrative entries about their own lives.  Ask your child about memories they chose to write about, strong emotions they feel, or about how “doing nothing” always means “doing something”.  We finished up this week by writing about our 5 senses. Students wrote about what they are seeing, hearing, touching… at that moment.    

As a culminating activity for our All About Me unit, we created books about ourselves.  We hope you enjoyed the folders that contained information all about your child.  Adding technology into this unit was enjoyable. Hopefully you saw that piece that came home separately. We truly enjoyed getting to know them and their interests. Next up….Communities!!!

          We hope everyone enjoys their three day weekend! Happy Columbus Day! Look for our “Class Blog” coming soon…

Team Marsen

September 28 Newsletter

                                                                  

Dear Families,

          Wow! It is hard to believe the month of October will be here when we return to school on Monday! The first month of school has been amazing.  We have learned so much about your children and feel we have truly become a classroom family!

          The last two weeks have been extremely productive in Room 13!  We have begun to immerse ourselves in our first unit of Writing Workshop.  We read books by several authors in order to inspire our own writing. Some books we read were: Let’s Do Nothing by Tony Fucile and Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe.  We also wrote several entries in our writing notebooks this week.  We thought about special people, places, and “nothing” moments in our lives. It was wonderful to see the children working hard and sharing their experiences with the class. This has helped enhance our classroom connection.  Room 13 LOVES writing!

          We also started our weekly shared reading.  Each week, the children will be studying and analyzing one text per week.  Each day, we will be focusing in on a different reading skill with that same text to dig deeper into that text.  This week, we read “How to Make Lemonade.”  Ask your child about this recipe and try making some “brisk” lemonade this weekend!

          As you know, this week marked the culmination of our first math unit in the new program, Math in Focus.  We are thrilled with all the hard work the children put into their math skills and feel we are on the right track for a great year in math.  Next up….addition!

          Finally, we were able to visit the Science Lab as a class.  In Science, the children participated in an interesting experiment about the amount of sugar in different cereals.  They were asked to identify which cereal had the most sugar and which cereal had the least sugar.  The class did a great job using the Double Pan Balance Scale, and we look forward to many more science experiments this year!

          Overall, we had a fantastic two weeks and look forward to the month of October with your children.  Have a fantastic fall weekend!

                                                                                                                                                                                  Team Marsen

September 14 Newsletter

                                                                           

Dear Parents of the Marsen Team,

          The first full week of school was an exciting one here in Room 13! The energy from the children was high and their brains are truly warmed up! 

          This week, we continued our work in Reading Workshop.  We learned how to have a class conversation and share our thoughts and feelings with the class in a warm and safe environment.  We also read the story Sheila Rae the Brave.  We practiced making connections to the text and demonstrated an understanding of what we’re reading.  Our independent reading time continues to build in the classroom! We are now reading 10 minutes and know we will continue to work towards our class goal of 30 minutes!

          Math has been so much fun this week! We learned how to write a number in three forms (expanded, standard, and word) by working in three different stations.  The children did great.  We also learned how to compare numbers by using the symbols <,>, =!   The children again worked in stations to practice creating number sentences.  One station was a human number sentence where children physically used their bodies to create correct number sentences!

          This week in Fundations we continued to review concepts learned in first grade.  We now know the difference between a digraph and a blend and how to mark them up correctly.  We also learned when to use a “w” and when to use a “wh” by playing a fun movement game.  Ask your child to play with you!

          We want to thank all the families that were able to join us for Meet the Teacher Night.  We truly appreciated all the positive energy and support! Keep it coming! We hope everyone has a wonderful long weekend and a Happy New Year to all celebrating this weekend!

Sincerely,

The Marsen Team

September 7 Newsletter

                                                   

Dear Families of “The Marsen Team,”

          Happy Friday! We had an amazing start to school in Room 13!   We began our new math program in a fun and exciting way.  We worked on building numbers up to 1,000 using base-10 blocks! The children used place value mats and manipulatives to help them understand this new concept.   We also worked on reading and writing numbers up to 1,000! We are impressed with the knowledge they have at this point.  We know this new math program is going to be challenging, but fun!

         

We kicked off our reading workshop program by reading “McDuff Moves In” and two chapters from a “Poppleton” chapter book.  The children used experiences from their own lives to make powerful text-to-self connections.  By “turning and talking” to his/her partner, we learned which day of the week is a favorite and why.  Ask your child “What day of school is your favorite and why?”  In addition, everyone has gone “Book Shopping” for just-right books.  We will explain more about this on Meet the Teacher Night next Wednesday night!

         

Our current unit in social studies is “All About Me!”  We have greatly enjoyed getting to know your child! One book we read this week was called, “Today I feel Silly” by Jamie Lee Curtis.  This book identified different moods and feelings.  The children participated into different stations and worked on sharing their own feelings.  “Station teaching” is one co-teaching model that will be utilizing in Room 13.  We will talk more about the co-teaching model next Wednesday!

         

In Writing Workshop, we are preparing for our first unit, which will begin next week. We look forward to seeing all the finished Writer’s Notebooks. You should have received our letter with the directions on how to decorate the front and back cover of the notebook. We are busy making our own too. We know we will learn even more about your child when he/she shares his/her special book on Wednesday! Thank you for sending in the summer memories.  We are having a blast sharing them and learning about everyone’s summer fun! Next week, we will be writing about our special summer object. Look out for this hallway display very soon.   

We hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

Sincerely,

The Marsen Team