April Newsletter

As April vacation approaches, the students in the Croziannino Class (get it?the Rachel
Crozier/Jen Giannino Class!) have been working hard and learning a lot! With Miss Crozier
taking full control of the class, we have done everything from investigating how shadows are
formed, to becoming authors of series.
Here are the highlights from the past month ~
Fundations:
o We have shifted our focus from closed syllable words or words with a vowel enclosed
by a consonant, giving the vowel a short sound to words that follow a
vowel-consonant-e pattern. The children have practiced marking, spelling and reading
these words. They understand that the silent E, or magic E, makes the inside vowel
say its own name.
o Ask your child to help you spell a word with the v-e spelling pattern, like kite and
grape.
Reading Workshop:
o The past month has been dedicated to an in-depth character study. Your children were
paired together and given a series that contained a strong main character. We have been
practicing the skill of conversations, and all of the students have had conversations with
their partners about the characters in their books.
o The character in our books have interesting feelings, internal and external character traits,
relationships, and they go on very exciting adventures. We have created class charts to
share our learning, and each student created a poster with an illustration of the main
character in his/her series.
o Ask your child about the series that they read with their partners, and ask about character
feelings, relationships, lessons learned, and external and internal traits when you are
reading together!
Writing Workshop:
o We have become published authors of our very own series! Our class is thrilled to finally
publish the stories that weve brainstormed, planned, written, revised, edited, and colored
over the past month. We learned the structure of a story, how to approach a realistic
fiction story (one that is pretend but could really happen), the parts of the first book in a
series, how to add tiny realistic details and dialogue, and MORE.
o The Croziannino class is officially publishing each series on Friday, April 15th, by reading
each collection of stories to the students in our buddy class. These series will be sent
home in the weeks after April Vacation.

Math:
o We continued to learn about numbers through 40, by studying how to add and subtract
numbers with two digits. An incredible discovery that our students made was how to
subtract when the # in the ones place isnt large enough; we learned how to borrow from
the tens, break it apart so it becomes ones, and then subtract.
o Once we understood addition and subtraction, we jumped right into multiplication and
division. The language of multiplying and dividing was our focuswe want our children
understanding the concept of what multiplying truly is, before expecting them to
memorize facts. We teach that a number sentence like 3x5=15 is read as three equal
groups of five makes 15.
o We also learned the meaning of halves and fourths and learned the basics of telling
time.
Science
o We investigated forces and movement, and experimented with many objects to learn how
they moved, and the force needed to make them in certain ways. Each science team of
three students was responsible for creating a poster and teaching the class about one
specific movement, i.e. Rolling, Bouncing, etc.
o The Shadow Knows special guest, Mr. Brad, taught us more about shadows than we ever
expected to know. We learned that a shadow needs three things to exist: a light source, an
object, and a surface. Ask your child about this experience!
After this vacation, we will be focusing on reading non-fiction books, learning about past and
present traditions and communities in Social Studies, and much more.

The past months, and particularly the past five weeks, have been a wonderful teaching
experience for me. I will always remember this class as being the class that taught me how to
teach, and I am beyond grateful for the questions your children asked, the times they told me I
made a mistake, the moments they showed each other kindness, and the laughs we shared.
Have a great vacation!
Love,
Miss Crozier and Ms. Giannino