Week of October 26th

We had a great week last week - complete with a visit from the local fire station. The boys and girls had a great time checking out the various fire trucks and they even had a chance to sit in the driver's seat and jump out the back! Our very own Miss Hall even dressed up in uniform! Below are some pictures that I took of their smiling faces! We spent a lot of time discussing fire safety and what to do in the event of a fire. I did notice that some of the students did not know where their family's "meeting place" was. It may be helpful to review your family's plan with your child.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




The countdown is on to the big day - HALLOWEEN!!! I'm sure the students will be very excited as the week nears an end, but we will do our very best to maintain a focused learning environment. You are all invited to come help us decorate haunted gingerbread style houses on Thursday at 2:25. We hope you can make it and look forward to a fun and messy time! This week we will also discuss some important Halloween safety tips. At Eagle we do not dress up in costumes for Halloween, but the students are encouraged to wear orange and black.

Last week we had fun writing "I can" statements. I was so proud of how quickly each one of the students was able to come up with all of the many things they CAN do! Below are pictures of their very special statements. You can also check them out on the bulletin board in our hallway.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 


On Friday I sent home a list of all of the kindergarten and 1st grade sight words that the students will be responsible for by the end of the year. Please keep these in a safe place and take some time to review them each night. These words are important to practice as they are not words that can be sounded out and are words frequently found in our books. The students have been working hard during guided reading groups. I will continue sending home their reading bags every Friday. Please remember to celebrate your child's reading by having them read to you. These are books that they should be able to read fluently. Also please note that these books must be returned on Monday. I will not be sending home new books until the old books are returned. Thank you for your cooperation! During reader's workshop, we have been practicing retelling stories. We are learning to retell a story with full detail and how to pick out the BIG ideas. 

This week our word work will consist of talking about short o word families (-op, -ot, -og, -ock). We will read many short books that focus on these sounds. The students will also work in various word work stations throughout the week to practice. 

We are nearing the end of our first writing unit on personal narratives/small moments. In the week ahead, the students will choose one piece from their folder that best showcases all that they have learned throughout the unit. Once a piece has been chosen, they will edit their piece before publishing. This is always a fun time for all of our authors because they love adding color to their illustrations and making a cover. We will showcase these pieces in our classroom library before sending them home. 

The students will also take their chapter 2 math test on Monday. I will send these home once they are scored for you to view and sign. Please return them once they are signed. Our next chapter in math will focus on five and ten relationships.  The students will learn that numbers to 10 can be represented on a ten-frame, that the number 10 can be broken into parts of the whole in different ways, and a missing part of a whole can be found when the whole and the other part are known. We will do a fun activity learning all about "Friends of 10." This is a short chapter, so we may have another "show me" (test) some time next week.

Last week we continued our seeds unit by learning all about pumpkins. We cut open a real pumpkin and explored pumpkin parts, made our own pumpkin diagrams and learned words like circumference and height. The students used yarn to guess the circumference of our pumpkin. Most of our guesses were either too short or too long. However, we did have to lucky friends whose guess were "just right!!" This week, we will learn all about bats and spiders.

I hope you had a great weekend! As always, thank you for all you do at home to support your child. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me.

I hope to see you all on Thursday!
Kerry

Week of October 13th

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend! The weather today was absolutely perfect!! I placed the Scholastic book order this morning and it should arrive in about a week. A HUGE thank you to all of the families who purchased books - you helped us earn several new books for our classroom library! Please note that Friday is an early dismissal for conferences. I will send home a reminder tomorrow letting you know what day/time your conference is. If for some reason you cannot make your conference, please let me know as soon as possible as I have limited spaces left. I look forward to meeting with each of you to discuss all of the great things that your child is doing so far in first grade. I will also have a chance to show you some rubrics that I will be using to grade your child's writing this year.

Here's a peek at the week ahead:

PHONICS: Last week we became experts at short a. The students learned many word families and did a great job chaining words to make new words. This week we will jump into short Ii. We will listen many books that are filled with short i word families to help us with our learning. We will practice reading, building, sorting words and using them in our writing. The students will also be reading some books and passages on their own. We are working on fluency as we practice accuracy, expression, attention to punctuation, pace and comprehension. We have been practicing this by reading for 1 minute (several times throughout the day) and marking where we stop reading. This helps the students see how their fluency is growing. I'd really like to have the students do this independently in the classroom with a partner, but could use your help. IF YOU HAVE ANY EXTRA SAND TIMERS THAT MAY BE LEFTOVER FROM AN OLD BOARD GAME, AND WOULDN'T MIND DONATING TO OUR CLASSROOM, I WOULD BE VERY APPRECIATIVE!

READER'S WORKSHOP: This week we will dig deeper into understanding the texts we read as we discuss the concept of retelling. Although this skill was taught in K, first graders will be asked to dig deeper into the text to answer questions that may not be directly found in the text. This concept will continue throughout the year. By the end of the week, the students will make a story retelling rope to help them identify important story elements that should be discussed when retelling a story. This week we will begin with some familiar stories such as The Three Bears, Caps for Sale, and The Three Little Pigs.

WRITING: WOW!!!! I can't wait to show you some of the awesome work that the students are doing! You will be amazed! This week we will continue with editing our pieces. We are looking to see if we included correct punctuation, capitalization and spacing throughout our pieces. They are also looking to see if they wrote their story like a 1st grader. They are checking to make sure their pieces have the following:
LEAD: My story has a clear beginning.
TRANSITIONS: I put my pages in order and I used transition words (and, so, and then, suddenly, etc.)
ENDING: After I wrote the last thing I did, I wrote about how I felt about it.
ORGANIZATION: I wrote my story across several pages.
ELABORATION & DESCRIPTION: I put the picture from my mind onto the page. I have details (movement and dialogue) in my pictures and text.

MATH: This week we will continue with our unit on subtraction. We will continue to practice comparing (ex. Sophie has 8 crayons. Jan has 5. How many fewer crayons does Jan have?). We will also continue working to find missing parts and start our learning about fact families (how addition and subtraction are related). I plan on another test some time next week.

SCIENCE: This week we will finish up learning about sunflowers. We even had a chance to take some from our Eagle garden to explore. In the week ahead we will extract the seeds for a fun math project. We will also learn about the largest types of plant - TREES! Now that the leaves are really starting to show their colors, we will also talk about chlorophyll.

Have a great week and if you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Kerry

Week of October 5th

Welcome to October! We are currently 17 days into our 1st grade year - hard to believe! The students  have been working feverishly to accomplish so many great things. We had our first Kindness assembly today and they were prime examples of a good audience! Our audio equipment had a glitch and many students had difficulty maintaining attention, but my "firsties" proved to be ready to listen and ready to be role models! I was SO proud of them! KUDOS!!!

Reading: Our sight words for the week are to, said, was, for, his, and they. Please take a few moments each night to review spelling these words, finding them in texts and using them in sentences. This past week we wrapped up Read to Someone and Word Work. The students were SO excited to get their hands dirty with some of our more fun tools for making words. Please note that the students are doing spelling/word work activities each day, but much of their work is logged in their Daily 5 notebook which stays in school. If you would like to see some of your child's word work, I am happy to show you before our conference or after. This week we had a lot of fun with syllables. We worked with the Smart Board to sort words and even sorted words in our notebooks. The students also had fun making words with stamps, wiki sticks, lego letters, letter cubes, letter tiles, IPad/keyboard programs, rainbow writing, magnetic letters, abc stencils, bumpy road, etc. Our supply of word work activities will extend as we branch out into our spelling program. More of this work will be pencil/paper activities and will be sent home when completed. In the week ahead, we will focus on short a word families. We will also begin our "informal" spelling program. All students will take a pre-test on Monday and a post-test on Friday. During the informal stages, all students will be given a pre/post test with the same list of words. The purpose of this design is to teach them how to prepare for a spelling test (getting their notebook ready and practice these words in class). Once we get through all short vowels (maybe sooner, depending on how we do), our "formal"/individualized spelling program will begin.

Also during Reader's Workshop we will begin a short unit on fluency. We will use the chart below to guide our reading. Please feel free to use this chart to help your guide your child when reading at home. I find it is often to helpful when the same language is used at home and school.

Writing: My writers have learned how to read our writing like we read our books. As writers we have learned to ask ourselves, "What else would my partner want to know?" and how can we incorporate those answers into our questions. My "firsties" have also have become familiar with the "1st Grade Checklist" which they will use to guide their writing and I will use to as a rubric to grade their final personal assessment piece. In the latter part of the week, the students learned how to unfreeze their characters and their writing. We compared this to the movie "Frozen." In the movie, Elsa was able to freeze all of Arendelle, yet the characters still showed movement, emotion and dialogue. This week we learned how to unfreeze our characters by making them move and talk. The students did a GREAT job of making their characters move in their illustrations and talk using speech bubbles. They are starting to use movements in their texts along with dialogue. Some writers have even tried using quotation marks - Yes! Even in 1st grade!!! What a great accomplishment! Next week we will learn how to tell our stories in tiny steps. The goal of this is to bring the inside out and make the characters think and feel.

Math: We will continue with our subtraction unit this week. We will continue to focus on missing addends. We are slowly figuring out how addition and subtraction are related. We have been working hard to identify missing part by naming the whole and the part we know. Our part-part-whole model is continuing to help us along with beginning subtraction. For example, if we know we are given 8 counters but know we have 5, how many are unknown? We have started this concept by using concrete objects and drawing pictures. Our goal is to move to a more complex addition/subtraction mindset. Some students are able to see that 8-5=3, while other students have used a "lock it in your pocket" strategy to take to part (5) and count on to the whole (8=3). We will continue finding missing addends and writing subtraction expressions next week.

Science: We had a GREAT time exploring seeds this week! Although our applesauce was a fail, we succeeded in having fun as scientists! Boy, to these kids love science - who doesn't?! We began our study of seeds by studying seeds in various foods we eat. We identified foods and predicted the size, color and number of seeds within various foods. We had MANY misconceptions which added to our learning! My scientists explored the seeds (shapes, sizes and amount) of pea pods, avocados, apples, peaches, melons,  peppers, and lemons. Just ask them - they are experts! In the week ahead we will explore how seeds grow and how they travel.

Thank you for sharing your special first grader with me! They are a great group!

Have a great weekend!

Kerry