Happy Holidays!

As I write this, children are eagerly anticipating our all school Sing-A-Long. It seems like such a fitting and cozy end to our days together before winter break. I hope to see many of you there!

This week, we have been finishing up several units of study, including our guided reading work with the novel Santiago's Silver Mine. Today you will find a purple folder in your child's back pack. This folder contains much work your child has done in response to the reading of this story. Ask them to go through it with you. We also completed a project in which we compared and contrasted Cinderella with the Mexican version, Adelita.

Children have been engaged in a unit on measurement in math. We borrowed scales from the upper division science class which was a lot of fun! Kids have been learning about units that measure length, width, height, and weight.

In other news, two students have finished their Haiti service learning projects! Both Mira and Sascha brought in the money that they have collected for Haitian students to attend Ecole Soleil in Gonaives. Mira sold cupcakes at a local club, while Sascha collected cans that she returned to Shaw's for the refund. Together, these girls raised enough money to send three students to Ecole Soleil for a year! We are so proud of their efforts! This evening, along with Mr. Felix and Mrs. Gaudet, I will travel to meet with the board of the One Laptop per Child organization to see if we can join with them to get remote-access computers in the hands of the children at Ecole Soleil. Wish us luck!

I hope you all have a safe, relaxing, and JOYFUL holiday season!

Be well,

Lee

Mexican Fiesta

It was fantastic to see so many of you at our Mexican Fiesta! I thought the kids did a wonderful job. They certainly were excited to share their hard work and learning with you all! Culminating events like this are a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the integration that occurs here at Friends Academy. I hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as I did! Thank you to all the parent volunteers who helped with this event. A special thanks to Aaron Derego for donating his time and the delicious food we all enjoyed!

Upcoming Events:

• Next week, each student will pick another classmate's name out of a hat. That person will be their "Secret Friend" for the week. Each child will send two notes to their Secret Friend. At the end of the week, each student will pick a gently used book to give to their Secret Friend. You and your child do not need to buy a new book. Instead, you might peruse your shelves and select something.
• On Friday, we will enjoy a special snack with our companion classmates. Our All-School Holiday Sing-a-long will take place at 1:30 in the Commons. Families are invited to attend!
• Tuesday, December 14th is Pizza Day.
• Winter break begins at the end of the day on Friday, December 17th. Classes resume on Tuesday, January 4th.

Have a great weekend!

El Rancho Grande!

On Tuesday we had a fabulous field trip to El Rancho Grande in Providence. It is a family owned Mexican restaurant that prepares authentic Mexican dishes. We were warmly welcomed by owner Maria and her son. After they told us about the history of the restaurant, the food, and their hometown in Mexico, they answered kids' questions. THEN, they started bringing out platters and platters of delicious food! I think everybody had a wonderful and educational time.

On Thursday, we had a SBS holiday party where we combined efforts to wrap all the Holiday Hope presents you have generously donated. THANK YOU. I am sure that your efforts are helping to make somebody's holiday season a bit brighter.

Students have been busy preparing their culminating research projects in anticipation of the Mexican Fiesta next week. Each student is doing an amazing job making a physical representation of what they have learned, as well as writing accompanying information to display. In addition, we have learned how to make Ojo de Dios or "God's Eyes" using sticks and yarn. They are beautiful! Finally, we continue to read Santiago's Silver Mine and learn about answering comprehension questions in writing.

Upcoming Dates and Events

Tuesday, 12/7: Sub Day

Wednesday, 12/8: Mexican Fiesta (11-12:45)

Friday, 12/17: Winter Break Begins at Dismissal

Tuesday, 1/4: Classes Resume

Have a great weekend!

Inspiration

What a wonderful week of arts and culture! Not only was it Authorfest week, but we had a special visit from a group of Mexican visiting artists. On Thursday, the library became a workshop and gallery for Ventura Fabian, his partner, Norberto, and their translator, Nina. For over an hour, we learned about the ancient Oaxacaan art of wood carving. Our visitors shared the process, the tradition, and the ways that they get inspiration for their work. In addition, we learned about their home village in Oaxaca, Mexico, their families, traditions, and way of life. It was an amazing experience!

On Friday, we had the opportunity to listen to author and illustrator, Erik Kraft, share about his crafts. He told us about his life-long interest in writing, how he gets inspired, and the process of his writing. It was reaffirming to hear that he goes through much the same process that we do, including the generation of ideas, brainstorming, editing, and publishing.

Students are continuing to research their Mexican topics. Next week we will begin to plan our research projects, which will demonstrate what we have learned.

Thank you for the thoughtful planning you are doing with your children around our Haiti service learning project. I want to share with you all that Friends Academy is being recognized this weekend by the UMASS Haitian-American Student Association for our ongoing support of Ecole Soleil. I shared this news with the students and they were surprised and excited. I am so proud of their compassion, empathy, and integrity.

Coming Up . . .

Next week will be a short one as Thanksgiving Break begins on Wednesday, November 24th. We'll look forward to being back together in school on Monday, November 29th.

We will be taking a Field Trip to a traditional Mexican restaurant, El Rancho Grande, in Providence on Tuesday, November 30th. We can have one parent chaperone for this trip. Please let me know if you are interested as soon as possible.

Our Mexican Fiesta will take place on Wednesday, December 8th from 11-12:30. Children will demonstrate their learning and then we will enjoy a buffet-style Mexican meal together. Please save the date!

Enjoy the photos, and have a joyful weekend.

Warmly,

Lee

A Short Week

This was a short but productive week. We:

*Chose our topics for our Mexico research projects and started formulating our research questions.

*Watched a video about Mexican life and made a Venn diagram comparing our days with those of the children featured in the video.

*Finished chapter one in Santiago's Silver Mine.

*Completed our writing about our Day of the Dead altars.

*Learned about renaming in subtraction.

*Began thinking about our Haiti service learning projects.

Dates to Remember:

Monday 11/15-Friday 11/19:

Book Fair

Thursday 11/18, 6:30-7:30:

An Evening with Sports Journalist and Author Steve Krasner

Friday 11/19:

Authorfest and Luncheon

11/24-11/28:

Thanksgiving Break

Have a wonderful, LONG weekend!

:)Lee

Small Moment Stories

Happy Friday everyone! We have had a wonderful week here in SBS 3. Children have been busily reading, writing, and computing.

In writing workshop, students have published their first personal narratives. This is the culmination of lots of work and creative inspiration. Each of these stories is based upon a "small moment" in the children's lives. Each student identified the setting, main characters, the wish, the problem, the turning point, and the message in these small moments before beginning to write. Using the computer program Kidspiration, they webbed their ideas and then sequenced the story from beginning, to middle, to end. After editing and expanding their sentences, children illustrated the story using another computer program called Kid Pix. Finally, each student recorded their narration of their small moment story on their laptop. Soon we will post this work to our blog. In addition, take a moment to look in your child's writing folders in the classroom to see the various stages of writing and editing.

In reading workshop, we are in the middle of the first chapter of Santiago's Silver Mine. This novel is set in Mexico in an old mining village. The main characters of the story are two boys, Santiago and Andreas, who are trying to help their families make ends meet due to a poor harvest year. In their attempts, they encounter much adventure and become embroiled in a mystery that needs solving. As we read the story, we are answering comprehension questions in writing. This process can be tricky and I am doing a lot of modeling. For each question, we highlight words in the question that we need to include in our answer to make it "complete." I have been very impressed with the kids work!

In math, we have continued to work on addition with renaming into the hundreds place. Next week we will begin subtraction with renaming.

This week we also began our Read Naturally program. While the main focus of this program is to build oral reading fluency, we will also use the stories to build reading comprehension by answering questions about the passage read, as well as to build vocabulary. This week and next, we will be practicing the steps involved in our Read Naturally program. Eventually, students will be bringing their ipods home to work on this each night as part of homework.

Dates to Remember

Tuesday 11/9: Pizza Day!

Thursday 11/11: Veteran's Day (No School)

Friday 11/12: Faculty Professional Day (No School)

11/15-11/19: AuthorFest and Book Fair

11/24: Thanksgiving Break Begins

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!

:)Lee

Halloween Parade

Happy Halloween Parade Day!

This morning we celebrated Halloween in traditional Friends Academy fashion: with an all school Halloween parade! I LOVE the community feeling of this celebration! Our very own Ean McGonigle documented this morning's events.

This week our class jumped into our study of Mexico. Learning how to navigate expository non-fiction has been a big focus during reading workshop. This skill will help us as we choose and research a topic relating to Mexican culture in the weeks to come. We have been learning about the traditional Mexican holiday, Days of the Dead. In social studies groups this week, children began constructing altars for loved ones who have passed away.

In writing workshop we have been learning about how to write powerful and descriptive sentences. We are using this knowledge to inform the editing of our small moment stories. Next week, kids will use the computer program "Kid Pix" to illustrate their stories.

In math we have been learning how to regroup in addition. Using the Stern Structural Arithmetic blocks, kids are gaining a true understanding of the concept.

Last week, we enjoyed a wonderful field trip with the LLoyd Center to catch, tag, and release Monarch butterflies. We tagged 6 butterflies in total! It was a beautiful day and I think we all learned a lot about butterflies, scientific research, and the natural connections we have with other parts of the world.

Dates to Remember

Friday 11/5: Lower Division in the Limelight

Thursday 11/11: Veteran's Day-No School

Friday 11/12: Faculty Professional Day-No School for Students

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

A Good Week

This week children have been busy as readers and writers. As we continue to practice the strategy of visualization for comprehending text, students are beginning to understand why they must provide vivid details in their own writing. This realization is helping them to inject their "small moment" stories with subject describers and predicate expanders. This is very exciting!

Using the mentor text Aunt Flossie's Hats (and Crab Cakes Later), students listened to and read a scene without seeing the illustrations. Over two days, they created drawings of the scene, revising and adding details until they were satisfied that they had accurately represented their mental images based on details from the text. We shared these drawings with each other, noticing that each drawing was unique yet they all shared common elements. Finally, we reread Aunt Flossie's Hats with the illustrations showing. It was amazing to compare our drawings to those of the illustrator, James Ransome.

This week we also finished our Judy Blume author study and our first guided reading books, Freckle Juice and The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo. Please look for red folders in your child's backpack this afternoon which house some of the work that they have done in their group. Learning how to respond in writing to questions is a difficult task and one that we will be working on this year.

Dates to Remember

Tuesday 10/19: Third Grade Field Trip to The Lloyd Center

Friday 10/22: Parent/Teacher Conferences (There is NO SCHOOL for students. However, we do include the students in the last 15 minutes of the conference. They can go to the library and be with the ASP program during the first part of the conference).

Thursday 11/11: Veteran's Day-No School

Friday 11/12: Faculty Professional Day-No School for Students

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!