Talking About Writing!

On Tuesday, February 19th, Cooper School faculty had the pleasure of welcoming Carl Anderson, one of the nation’s leading experts on teaching writing to students in grades K–12, to our school. A former longtime New York City elementary and middle school teacher, Carl now coaches teachers in schools all over the United States. In the morning, Carl visited each classroom and conferred with student writers. After meeting with students across grades, Carl delivered a wonderful presentation to teachers around the parts of effective writing conferences, strategies for teaching writing and conferring with students, and how to individualize writing feedback and instruction to meet the needs of all writers and to boost student engagement around writing.

Singers AND Songwriters

In Writing Workshop, students are getting ready to jump into poetry! Leading up to that, we have been studying songs that we already know all the words to, such as popular nursery rhymes and songs we use in our classroom throughout the school day to emphasize routines or deliver directions. Then we spent time re-writing these lyrics. We started by stringing together words that fit into a rhyming pattern and then moved on to adding meaning to tell about feelings or events. There may be a young Paul McCartney among us!

Time to Celebrate!

At The Cooper School, we celebrate each student’s birthday with a Birthday Circle. During the birthday circle, the birthday child walks around a model of the sun, holding the globe to represent each year of his or her life. As he or she walks, one of his/her parents (or teachers) shares a story about his/her life. Afterward, students may play a game of the child’s choice or listen to a read aloud. This could be a birthday book or a book special to the birthday child’s family.  Families may choose to bring their child’s favorite treat, donate a book to our library for all students to enjoy, or to bring a favorite game to play with the class. This week, we celebrated two birthdays in 1st Grade!

Important Dates:

March 4th & March 5th- Half Days/Student Led Conferences

March 25-29: Spring Break