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
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