Welcome to first grade
CHECK OUT WHAT WE'VE BEEN DOING! ITS PRETTY AWESOME.
I hope you all had a great winter break and stayed warm during FeBURIED! Now.. let's see what "spring" has in store for us. The daylight savings time change always messes with me the first few days afterwards, but I do love the extra daylight in the afternoon! Hope you all are adjusting as well:)
Check out what the first graders are up to during these first few weeks of March... In Reading... After spending a lot of time on comparing and contrasting in our last unit, we are moving back into summarizing. This time, we will be using story elements to help drive our summaries and add more descriptive language. First, we will focus on the characters of the story, pulling from our last unit with comparing and contrasting characters and their experiences and then we will move into problem and solution with a focus on how the characters actions contributed to the problem and/or solution. In Writing... We are in the process of wrapping up our Opinion Writing Unit. We have been really focusing our writing goals on creating supporting reasons. So, we will end this unit with an emphasis on supporting our opinions with well developed reasons and examples that expand on these reasons. Helping us make connections between our reading and writing goals. In Math... We just completed our Mid Module Assessment, which means the end of Module 4 is sneaking up quickly! During the second half of this Module, we will be using all that we have learned with place value in the first half of this module to add two digit numbers when there is more than "10 ones in the ones place." To start, we will be using the quick ten drawing model that we have been practicing to introduce us to this concept and then as we move forward quicker strategies will be introduced. As always, I encourage each individual to use whatever strategy they feel most successful and confident using, there is no strategy that I absolutely require them to do- I just want them to feel confident and successful however that may look! In Science... We are starting our new Science Unit! Our new unit will focus on Light and Sound. During this unit, we will be spending a lot of time being introduced to the concept of light and sound and experimenting with the different mediums. To start the unit, we will be introduced to sound through a telephone experiment and an exploration into how different sounds are created/used. Dates to Look Forward to!... Monday, March 9th: School Wide Community Meeting Tuesday, March 17th: St. Patty's Day & Picture Day Friday, March 20 & Monday March 23rd: No school Wednesday, March 25th: Risk Watch Presentation
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Happy love week! Spreading some love to you all and your families! Thank you for helping your kiddo find an empty box and supporting our Valentine's party this week. It was a hit! Next week is our Winter Break and since this will be our last newsletter before then, I want to wish you all a safe & happy time off together. Best Wishes!
In Reading... As we are getting further and further along in the school year, our reading groups are going to be getting more intense as we make the final push to get us where we need to be at the end of first grade. I wanted to update you all on the strategies that we are using in small group to help us problem solve unknown words. As our texts get more challenging, many of the words we see, cannot be "sounded out" anymore. So, we have been coaching the first graders to use meaning within the context of the story/sentence. In order to do this, they should be rereading the sentence and/or skipping the word and then going back to try and figure it out again, and/or breaking the word apart into chunks to find familiar words/patterns within the word itself. Our goal is to get our readers using these strategies independently without prompting. So, while you are at home reading with your child or before they do independently, remind them of the strategies they could be using instead of just "sounding the word out." This will help encourage their independence and create a good home to school language and connection to help them be a successful reader. In Writing... Our Opinion Writing unit is still going strong! We have been having fun writing our opinions to serious and some silly prompts. This past week and into next week, we will continue practicing the paragraph structure for opinions. Our goal within this unit, is to be able to state our opinion in an introduction, then list reasons and support those reasons with examples throughout organized paragraphs. We are also pushing to get our first graders writing neatly. Our handwriting has come a long way, but still needs some work! Any writing practice at home can count towards reading minutes. A good way to do this would be to have your child respond to the book they read for their reading minutes (favorite part, summary, favorite character, etc.) In Math... The past few weeks, we have been working with place value to set the foundation for adding and subtracting two digit numbers. Diving into place value, we have been learning how to break a two digit number into tens and ones. In exploring this concept, we have been using pictures, blocks, and quick ten drawings to help us visualize what a two digit number is really made up of and what that number means. After break, we will be moving into more addition and subtraction with two digit numbers. In Social Studies... This past week was really exciting for us because we were able to experience our very own "First Grade Marketplace. " This project has been a culmination of focuses on our learning about goods and services, needs and wants, saving and spending. For the Marketplace, the first graders each got to choose whether they wanted to sell a good or service, then they used some Makerspace time to "build/create" their good or service. Last Wednesday, we got to set up our "shops" and we were each given 20$ to "shop around!" It was such a hit! Next week, we will start our final project for this unit. This project is such a fun experience as well. The class will "pretend adopt" an animal from the Summit County Animal Shelter and then they will have time to "shop around" a "pet store" (in our classroom) where they will decide what they need to buy for their pet. They will be required to budget, being that they will only have 25$ to spend, and have to wisely determine what their pet really needs vs. wants. Upcoming Dates to Remember... Wednesday, Feb. 19th: Risk Watch Presentation Thursday, Feb. 19th: Last Junior Achievement Presentation Friday, Feb. 21st: Mother Tongue Day & our End of the Month Celebration (details will be sent out by the PBIS team soon) Monday, Feb. 24-28th: Winter Break As we approach February, we are setting some new goals. This month, we are really going to be focusing on being responsible learners. We are going to be practicing this by being independent problem solvers, following directions, and showing perseverance, even when our work is challenging for us.
We will be doing a small classroom Valentines party on the 13th instead of the 14th because I will not be at school on the 14th. I will send a letter home next week with more details in regard to the party! Check out what we've got coming up as we roll into February!... Reading... Our current focus in reading is on the comprehension strategy comparing and contrasting. This week and into next, we will be practicing using a Venn diagram organizer to compare similarities and contrast differences between two texts. We will also be working towards taking our Venn Diagram Organizers and transferring that information into a paragraph format that responds to the reading response prompt of: "Compare and Contrast the following two texts." Writing... We have started our Opinion Writing Unit and it's been going really well so far! During this writing unit, we will be working on using an OREO organizer to help us set up our Opinion Writing Piece and focus on paragraph structure. Using our OREO (Opinion, Reason, Example, Opinion) organizer we practice stating our opinion in our introduction, stating our reasons and using examples to support our reasons, and then restating our opinion for our conclusion. Math... This week we are wrapping up our Measuring & Data Unit. Our End of Module Assessment was on Wednesday and we were very successful during this unit! Our next unit, Module 4, focuses heavily on the concept of place value. We start the unit by building 2 digit numbers using tens and ones manipulatives and then working our way towards identifying the tens and ones in a 2 digit number, then adding two digit numbers, using the tens and ones place to help us understand what we are doing by adding. Social Studies... With "Our Nation" unit completed, we have moved on to our new unit "How the World Works: Needs & Wants." In this unit, we explore the difference between needs and wants and how that differs on a global perspective, savings versus spending and the why behind this idea, earning money, profiting, selling/bartering, businesses (which we usually keep local) and we work with coin values. During this unit, we also have Mr. Brinkman coming in weekly to teach an extension called Junior Achievement, which is a program that expands on the exact concepts that we are learning in this unit. He will also be taking us on a field trip to the First Bank in a few weeks to explore the world of "banking." Thank you, Nick! Dates to Look Forward to! Friday, January 31: End of the Month Celebration (Snowman Building & Hot Coco!) Monday, Feb 3: Community Meeting Tuesday, Feb 11: First Bank Field Trip. Keep an eye out for permission slips that will be coming home shortly Thursday, Feb 13: Valentines Party Wednesday, Feb 19: Risk Watch Presentation Friday, Feb 21: End of the Month Celebration (activity tbd) February 24-28: Winter Break!! Welcome back and a big Happy New Year to you all! I hope you and your families had a great holiday and enjoyed the time together. 2020 is going to be an awesome year, I can feel it. Cheers to that!
Our student led conferences will take place on Monday (1/20) and Tuesday(1/21) night. The conferences will be in an “open-house” format. For example, your child will be assigned either the Monday or Tuesday date with a time frame and anytime within that frame you are welcome to come in. Once you arrive, your child will take their quarter 2 portfolios, find a spot in the room with you and lead you through their work this past quarter. It’s such a great opportunity for your child because it really makes them feel responsible and proud of their learning and I can’t wait for you all to have a change to experience it. The letter (It is bright pink) with your open house date & time was sent home yesterday (Tuesday)- if you did not get it, please reach out to me and I will email you the date! Reading… This past week we reviewed our reading workshop expectations and then have been reviewing writing summaries, while expanding on finding the author’s message. This upcoming week, we will be moving into comparing and contrasting different texts, as well as the experiences and characteristics of characters from two different texts. Writing… During our writer’s workshop time, we have started to introduce journals! Journal writes will be different than our published stories because unlike our published stories (which need to go along with our current writing unit), our journals can be used for choice writing time, quick writes, and practicing answering to writing prompts. We love them! They are definitely a great way to see writing in different “lights.” We will continue to use our journals for the rest of the year and they will go home with us at the end of the year! Next week, we will be starting our new writing unit: Opinion. During our opinion unit, we will practicing stating our opinions and using supporting details to convince our readers. Math… Coming back from break, we were able to start fresh and start new with Module 3. Module 3 is a quick module and focuses just on measuring and data. More specifically, we practice how to measure accurately, units of measurement, comparing lengths, how to record data, and how to interpret data. You will not see much homework coming hoe during this unit, because a lot of it requires using tools that we have in our classroomJ Social Studies… We are wrapping up our Social Studies Unit: Our Nation this week. For our final assessment for this unit, we have been working on researching & creating a diorama that depicts a civic holiday that we have randomly chosen. Once our diorama’s are finished, we will be presenting them to teach one another about Civic Holidays in America. Our Next unit will be another Social Studies Unit: Needs & Wants. This unit is focused heavily on economics! Dates to Keep in Mind! Monday & Tuesday, January 20 & 21: Student Led Open House Conferences (times have been sent home) Friday, January 24: Talent Show (9:00-11:00) This will be our last newsletter of 2019! First and foremost, I want to wish you all the most wonderful Holiday break! I hope that it is filled with lots of joy, love, and laughter (and all the cookies, of course...). Last week was a big week in first graders; we wrapped up all of our math and reading winter state testing! It was a lot for us to do in a short amount of time, especially with all of the excitement going around:) BUT we worked really hard and did a great job! I am so proud of our class and now we definitely deserve to have a little fun around here ;) The beginning of this week we will be wrapping up a few leftover pieces to some of our units before Quarter 2 ends (this Friday) and then closing 2019 out with some partying! Whoop Whooooop! In Reading... Last week we used a storyboard to help us organize our retelling to better understand the story. In the storyboard, we had to identify the main idea, the key details form beginning, through the middle, to the end, and then think about what the message of the story was. This week, we will be working through a story board as a group for the book "Tops and Bottoms and then independently writing a summary for the same book. This is the first time we will be practicing writing a summary in paragraph format! In Writing... Our first nonfiction teaching books were awesome! We wrote 4 chapters about an animal that we chose to research and for our very first time writing and researching nonfiction, I was so impressed! We can't wait to show you during our student-led conferences in January. After we finished these, we started to journal write about traditions and celebrations in our families, which aligns with our new Social Studies unit. Our last nonfiction teaching book will be describing traditions that our families celebrate and sharing our with our classmates. In Math... Tomorrow we will be taking our Module 2 assessment, which works perfectly so that we can start Module 3 fresh when we get back from break. Module 2 will assess us on our growth in working with addition and subtraction within 20. In the Module we mostly focused on taking away from teen numbers and adding on to get to teen numbers. We also practiced using friendly numbers to help us solve more efficiently, determining what operation to use when solving word stories, and breaking apart a teen number into tens and ones- all skills that support our number sense within 20! In Social Studies... Our new Social Studies unit started last week! Our unit started off with a focus on US symbols and monuments, where we discussed what a symbol/monument means and then moved into researching their importance and history. This week we will talk about traditions and celebrations around the world and how that symbolizes who we are and how we express ourselves. After break, we will still be continuing with this unit and it will be a great opportunity for us to reflect on some traditions/symbols as well. Dates to Look Forward To! Wednesday, December 18: Holiday Lunch 12:00-12:30 Wednesday, December 18: Risk Watch with RWB Friday, December 20: End of Quarter 2 (report cards will be sent home after break) Friday, December 20: End of the Month Celebration 8:45-9:15ish (We will be celebrating our Governor's Growth Achievement Award) Friday, December 20: Classroom Holiday Party 2:00-3:00 Monday, December 23-January 7: Holiday Break! Welcome back and welcome to December- holiday season is officially upon us:) I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and had some time off to enjoy your family and friends! With Thanksgiving being so late this year, we are already into December and really only have 3 weeks until our Holiday Break! I can already feel town getting busier, as we will be in our classroom. Our Winter Testing window will be opening soon so that we can get our state reading and math testing done before we head out for break. Also, Quarter 2 will be ending right before break as well so we will be working these next few weeks on wrapping units up to have grades in before break.
In Reading... before break, we finished up our Story Elements comprehension unit, by independently finding and describing the character, setting, problem and solution in the book Knuffle Bunny. I was impressed with how far we have come in this unit! In these next few weeks, we will be working again on main idea and key details to help us prepare for summary writing. In Writing... We published our first nonfiction teaching book right before break! We worked so hard on these researching and writing and we are incredibly proud of them! I will be keeping these books in a portfolio for them to share with you at our winter conferences. These next 3 weeks, we will be working on responding to a prompt. With so much going on in three weeks, this is a perfect opportunity for us to practice fine-tuning some of our writing skills, such as: capitals vs. lower cases, simple sentences and period. It also is a great way to practice writing structure and organizational writing. In Math... the end of Module 2 is nearing! We are continuing our hard work with subtraction in module 2 as we prepare for the end of the module assessment. Before our break we were working on using 10 as a friendly number to help us add and subtract more efficiently. We were also working closely with subtraction and how to model subtraction to provide a visual representation of what it means to subtract. Moving forward before the end of this module, we are working with various types of number stories that will initiate the discussion of the connection we see between addition and subtraction. It is also an opportunity for us to take responsibility as a math learner and use a strategy of our choice to help us solve successfully. In Science & Social Studies... Our science Classifications unit is complete! Before break, we wrapped the unit up with our final project, which asked us to solve a human problem by planning and then building an invention that was inspired by an animal adaptation. While it definitely required us to use a lot of creative thinking and problem solving techniques, it was amazing to see these skills being worked in our first graders. Our next unit is a social studies unit. This unit will start this week and then go for a week or so after we get back from our Holiday Break. The theme of this unit is: Celebrations; How We Express Ourselves. In this unit, we look at different cultures around the world and their celebrations/how they express themselves. It's a perfect unit for this time of year because it helps keep us open-minded and curious through all of the excitement :) Upcoming Dates! ... Wednesday, December 18: Risk Watch with RWB Friday, December 20th: End of Q2 + End of the Month Celebration + Holiday Party (more information to come in the next week!) I hope you all are having a great November! This month we have been spending a lot of time talking about gratitude, being thankful, and what we are thankful for:) Since this will be our last newsletter before break, I want to wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving and my hope that it's spent in gratitude - however that may look or feel for you and your family! In Reading... We have started a new comprehension unit. In this unit, we are focusing on the story elements (character, setting, problem, and solution) but this time around, we are practicing to add character traits, describing the setting, and explaining the problem and solution with detail. In Writing... Our first- nonfiction teaching are in the works! Last week we researched an animal of choice, using "read to me" texts and planned out our chapters. This week, we will be transferring our "notes" to our chapters. We are learning to organize information into chapters/topics and how to stick to one topic throughout that chapter. Our goal is to write two nonfiction teaching books this unit! In Math... We are already half way through Module 2! This one is a short one:) We finished this week by taking our mid-module assessment and will move forward with the second half of module 2 at the start of next week. So far in Module 2, we have been working with using 8 and 9 to "make 10" to help us solve more efficiently. This is definitely a higher level thinking strategy, so it has been a bit of a challenge, but a good challenge. It is also our first time working with this strategy so it's understandable that is has been a little frustrating. We have continued our work with number stories and pushing ourselves to discuss our strategies and solutions with partners. This is a good opportunity for us to learn what it looks, sounds, and feels like to disagree & agree successfully and next steps to further discussion and learning from peers. In Science... Our adaptations unit has been so much fun! Last week we got to explore some animal adaptations through experimentation and exploration projects. This week has been really exciting too because we have been preparing ourselves for our summative project, which will be next week. To prepare ourselves, we have taken our learning about animal classifications, characteristics, and connected that to adaptations that help them survive in their habitats, and further that learning this week by talking about biomimicry. We define biomimicry in first grade as a design/structure that has been created due to an inspiration in nature. Our summative project will ask us to solve a problem by creating a structure inspired by an animal characteristic/adaptation. This project is so cool, our creativity really shines during the design thinking process! Upcoming Dates.... Friday, November 22: End of Month Celebration November 27th- December 1st: Thanksgiving Break Hoping you all had a fun & safe Halloween- we definitely “partied hard” here in first grade;) (ha!) Thank you to all the families that helped contribute/volunteer with our Halloween party and/or parade! I really appreciate it and it makes the kiddos day.
We are now heading into Quarter 2 and I am excited to see where this next chapter takes us. As I told many of you at our parent-teacher conferences, I am really impressed with the amount of growth that our class has made in just two full months. We’re totally going to rock this quarter! *Quick reminder: Now that winter is officially upon us, I just want to send a small reminder that snow/winter gear needs to be brought to school for recess time. Your child is welcome to leave boots and/or gym shoes at school in their cubby area, as well as snow pants or any other gear that you don’t mind them leaving at school. I also would advise writing names or initials on any or all gear. Our first graders tend to “loose” a glove or hat… really any of it… pretty frequently. If there are names or initials, it is easy for us to identify whose is whose and we can help to return these items to your child when we come across them. Now… let’s check out what’s happening in Quarter 2! In Reading… While we are moving into a new unit in reading comprehension, we are always working on our retelling skills. If you are reading with your child at home, or even if they are independently reading, you can always extend their reading skills by asking them to tell you what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of their story. Our new reading unit will be: problem and solution. In Writing… We are starting a new writing unit this upcoming week- Non-fiction “Teaching Books.” We like to align this unit with our Science unit, because it gives us a perfect opportunity to make those cross-curricular aims by relating subject areas versus them standing alone… Real world connections! Yay! J Our class will start using research on animals and plants to help them plan for their nonfiction teaching books. In this unit, we focus on determining text importance (which relates to our reading too), sticking to a single topic in order to create “chapters” and what a topic and concluding sentence are. In Math… We also just started our new Module in math this week! Module 2 is much shorter than 1. In Module 2, we introduce the concept of place value and relate that to addition & subtraction within 20. This is a foundational module where we leave what it means to be a “double digit number.” Subtraction has been a little intimidating for us, but I know the more we practice and see the connection between addition and subtraction, we will begin to grow more confidence in this area! *Reminder: I do send home math homework from our lessons day to day- it is not required, but, hey, if there is time and they are willing to, or maybe it’s a nice switch-up to do math instead of reading, I am okay with that! In Science… Our “Inherited Traits” science unit is going really well. The zoo mobile was a BIG success and it was great way to lead us into talking about animal characteristics (traits). We have already introduced the word inherited and have done some exploration with this topic, but now we are moving into specific characteristics that certain classifications of animals have. We will explore the different classifications of animals, touch a little bit on habitats, and how these inherited characteristics help animals survive in their habitats. Upcoming Dates… Sunday, November 3: Daylight Savings! Monday, November 4: Community Meeting Friday, November 8: 4th Grade Wax Museum Wednesday, November 13: Risk Watch Presentation The end of Quarter 1 is Friday! Can't believe it's already here! With the quarter coming to a close, next Monday & Tuesday (21st & 22nd) we will be having our quarter 1 conferences. Last Thursday, I send home a letter with your child's conference date + time. If you did not happen to get that letter, please let me know and I will send another home or contact you personally:) Thank you for making time to come meet with me to talk about your kiddo and all the great things they've been accomplishing!
Same as last year, we will be having "Breakfast Halloween Parties" first thing in the morning and then the parade following after! I will be sending out an email next week with more information about times for these celebrations, as well as a google doc attachment asking for help with the party! Stay tuned:) Lastly, next week, in connection to our new PYP unit, the Denver Traveling Zoo will be coming to Breck El to do a presentation on animal characteristics with the first graders! It is going to be such an authentic and exciting experience for these kiddos! Just a heads up, first grade will be sending home a letter asking for a small fee to help cover this experience. As always, if there is any problem with this, please don't hesitate to contact me. Keep a look out for this letter as well! Thank you! In Reading... We are still in our Retell unit, focusing more so now on organization to make sense of sequence and expanding our sentences to add those key details! We have moved away from verbal retell and now are just working on writing our retells, to connect reading and writing. This unit will go for about another two weeks, ending with an independent retell assignment that will show all we've learned! Hopefully we will have this to show at conferences:) If there is a time when you are reading with your child at home, after a chapter, after a few pages, or when the book is finished, ask you child to retell the story to you- this would be a great way to extend their learning at home (and if they want to write one, bonus!!! Have them bring it back to school, I'd love to share it to the class and hang it up!) In Writing... We are still in our Small Moments Unit and we will be for about another 2 weeks as well. Our first story was a good start, but as we move into our second small moments story, we are really going to focus on adding those details to stretch our stories across multiple pages, as well as bringing our characters to life (making them talk, feel, etc.) to help give our stories personality! We still are working on slowing down to write in our best handwriting, sentence structure, and organizing our thoughts into a sequential pattern. Our writing stamina is still pretty low, but we are working on persevering during our writer's workshop time and staying focused. We are hoping to have these stories finished by our conferences too, so that we can share with you were our writing is at! In Math... We finished our Mid-Module assessment last week and for our first Math test of the year, it went very smoothly! This was a great indicator or where our number sense is at and where we need to go from here. I will share these tests with you all at our conferences! Moving forward in Module 1 (I know, it's a long one) we will start relating addition and subtraction by working with number stories that require us to find the missing part. In these stories, we can see that there are two different ways to solve and that we can get the same answer, whether we use the addition or subtraction strategy. We are continuing to work at building our communication skills to help drive our math discussions, partner work, and using our creativity to prove our thinking with math drawings that match the number story at hand. In PYP... Last week we finished our summative project for our Good Citizens Unit. For our summative, we were randomly assigned a "famous historic leader" whom we then researched to hep us leader our Poster Presentation. In our research, we were asked to find the role of our leader in their community, what characteristics this leader possessed in order to make them a successful leader, and what they did to help change the world/community. After our research, we created life sized posters of our Leaders and presented our research to the class, acting as that leader. It was awesome! I was so impressed with our research and posters! This week, we are starting our new Science Unit: How the World Works- a look into Characteristics. Our central idea for this unit is: Animals and plants have different characteristics that help them survive. In this unit, we look into the world of plants and animals, their classifications, what are inherited characteristics?, habitats, and how certain characteristics help animals/plants survive in their habitats. We are excited to start this unit off with a visit from the Traveling Zoo too! This will give the first graders a hands on learning experience and hopefully drive their curiosity and interest as we dive into this unit! Important Dates.. Friday, October 18th: End of Quarter 1 Monday & Tuesday, October 21st & 22nd: Parent- Teacher Conferences Friday- Monday, October 25th- 28th: No school Thursday, October 31st: Halloween Breakfast Party & Parade & End of the Month Celebration (more details to come about this crazy day!) And just like that, we're moving into October! Fall here has been beautiful so far and I hope you all have been enjoying the weather and the last of these later sunsets as much as possible. I know I have! and.. to be honest.. I'm hoping that we can hang on to this Fall weather for a little while longer:) Update on Kickboard: your child should have the same login information as last year- sweet! If you have trouble logging in or need the access code again, please let me know and I will re-print it and send it home. As for the "Kickboard Dollars," in order to participate in our End of the Month Celebrations, they need to have earned 20$ for the month (so 5$ each week). Also, in our class, if they earn their 5$ by the end of the week, I always give them a little "Friday Fun" Celebration in the afternoon (usually a little extra recess, craft time, or games). Unfortunately, if they do not earn their 5$ by the end of the week, or their 20$ by the end of the month, then they are not able to participate in the "celebration." I really try and "pump up the positives" with Kickboard dollars, though, and look for them to change their actions around quickly so I can give them back their dollars right away if they happen to loose one:) In Reading... As our comprehension unit shifted from story elements to sequential retell, we practiced combining what we knew about story elements to drive our retell. We focused on being able to retell a story, in sequence, by finding the most important details that happened in the beginning, stating the characters names, then summarizing the problem and supporting details in the middle of the story, and finally to state the solution and its supporting details in the end. We started by recording our retells verbally, then we transitioned into writing a short summary, listing these important parts. Our verbal retells were great! But now, we need to persevere through the writing in order to translate what we are thinking about our stories into a summary format. This is an ongoing process throughout first grade;) In Writing... Our Small Moments Writing Unit is still going strong! We started by having a rich discussion about what a small moment even is and how we find these in our lives. We shared stories with one another and planned out how we were going to write about these stories. Our stories are off to a slow start because we have been really pushing ourselves to write in our best handwriting, as we are incorporating handwriting lessons throughout the week. Our biggest focus in writing right now is taking our time- slowing down to write neatly, organize our thoughts, and stretch out our letter sounds to form phonetically correct words. This week we will be working on editing our writing to add more detail. Our stories are short right now, but I know that we have so much more to say about these moments! If there is ever time at home, I've been encouraging our class to write some stories at home (their choice on what type of story). I tell them to work independently on this and if they do not know how to spell a word, it's best to encourage them to stretch their sounds out slowly, versus telling them how to spell the word. This will not only help reinforce writing skills we are learning at school, but also promote their problem solving skills in reading. If your child has time to write at home, have them take our their yellow handwriting sheet to remind them to practice correct letter formation. I also have writing paper that I will send home! Let me know, or have your child let me know if they need more. In Math... We are about half way through Module 1. We will be taking a "Mid-Module Assessment" on Monday next week that will assess the skills we have been working on thus far. Before moving forward in Module 1, we need to make sure that we have the necessary foundational skills to build upon throughout the rest of the unit. We have been working hard at counting on to find totals within 10. We have also been working a lot with number stories that ask us to find the missing part or to find the total. When we work with number stories, we are asked to prove our thinking by drawing a picture and writing an equation that matches our picture and the number story itself. As we practice developing our pictures and equations, we start to incorporate more discussion with math buddies as to how we solved, explaining our pictures and thinking and then moving into writing sentences that prove "how we know we are right." In Inquiry (Social Studies Unit 1)... Our "Good Citizens" unit has been going really well. After having great conversations about different communities and what communities we are a part of, we moved into discussing our roles as citizens in these communities. We used a lot of comparing and contrasting skills, which was a great connection to reading. This past week we were able to explore community roles further with some research and then we got to do a small project on our "dream role/job!" This week, we are talking about the leaders in our community, their responsibilities/roles, the characteristics that good leaders possess, and relating this to being a positive role model. Next, we will dive deeper into leaders as we research and explore famous leaders from the past and the present. This will set us up for our Summative Assessment (final project) for our Good Citizens unit, which will be a "poster-esque" project. For this "poster" the first graders will each get (picked out of a hat) a famous leader to research, using a research outline/graphic organizer to help them guide their research and answer important questions, then they will be making a "life-size" poster of their famous leader and present their leader to the class! Important Dates... Thursday, October 3rd: Fire Prevention Presentation Friday, October 4th: Reading Log Celebration (Winners TBD tomorrow morning) Tuesday, October 8th: Chris Anthony Youth Initiative Assembly |
Hi, families!
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