Week of February 29th

Dear First Grade Families,
I cannot believe that this week marks the beginning of March! Yikes, the year is certainly flying by! I hope everyone had a chance to go outside today and enjoy the fantastic weather! Sure felt a lot like spring!

We had a GREAT week last week celebrating the 100th day of school and meeting Nibbles! Who would have known how much excitement a small little hamster could bring to our classroom! The students are enjoying checking on him each morning and the big perk is when your table gets to eat snack at his table. Although he is nocturnal, we do try to wake him up around snack time because the kids go absolutely CRAZY when they see him running on his wheel. I'm sure they are going to remember this for a while, which makes me so happy!

Here are some pictures from our 100th day celebration...

Here's a peek at the week ahead:

Reading Workshop:  This week we will meet some silly characters by reading many Dr. Seuss books. His birthday is on Wednesday and we have lots of fun activities planned to celebrate this wonderful children's author. On Wednesday, we will kick off our Dr. Seuss fun with "Wacky Wednesday!" The students may choose to dress 'wacky' if they choose (backwards clothing, wacky socks, two different shoes, be creative!).

Phonics: This week we will continue learning about nouns, but will take it one step further by learning about plural nouns. There will be spelling this week! We will learn the rules for adding -s, -es and -ies to the ends of singular nouns.

Writing Workshop: This week we will continue writing our reviews by adding small moment stories as a means for persuasion. We will also learn how to hook our readers by crafting catchy introductions and conclusions. The students will also spend some time working with their partners to help each other give their writing check-ups.

Math: We are in the middle of our place value/base 10 unit. We are learning that sets of 10 an be perceived as single entities. In a standard numeral, the tens are written to the left of the ones. They also discovered that decade numbers to 100 are built on groups of ten. When there are only tens, counting by 10s can be used to find out how many there are in all. When counting objects are grouped in sets of 10 and leftovers (ones), counting the groups of ten and adding ones tells how many there are in all. We have also learned that numbers greater than 10 can be represented as the sum of the tens and the ones. Numbers greater than 10 can be named in more than one way and have the same value.

Science: Last week we took a small break from our Weather unit as we focused on President's day. This week our study of weather will resume as we explore clouds.

Week of February 8th

I hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying some Super Bowl festivities! This is a shorter week with another half day on Thursday for parent-teacher conferences. Please note that there is no school next week for February break! Whether you are traveling or staying close to home, I wish everyone a restful time with family!

Here's a sneak peek into this week's learning:

Reader's Workshop: This week we will continue working in our small guided reading groups. I will be out of the building on Monday so I will not see my reading groups on this day. All K-1 teachers will be out of the building to preview a new reading program that the district will be using next year. I am looking forward to learning all about this new program and incorporating new ideas into my instruction! We kicked off our character traits unit last week and the students are having so much fun reading about new characters and discussing their various traits. We are documenting a lot of our thinking in our journals. The students are doing a great job of "proving" their ideas by providing evidence from the text. We will also focus on friendship and love as we prepare for Valentine's Day!

Phonics: This week we will focus on long u spelled ue/ew. The students will engage in various activities throughout the week to help us learn this spelling pattern. We took a pre-test last Friday and your child will receive his/her new spelling words tomorrow. Please look for these words in their folder tomorrow!

Writing: The students are really enjoying writing about their collections. Last week we finished writing about our own collections and started judging other collections. We talked about how we can agree and/or disagree with a particular collection but we need to state our reasons. We are using the OREO approach to our writing.

This week we will wrap up writing about our collections before moving on to publishing our "best in show" piece and writing other types of reviews.

Math: This week we will finish up topic 7 - numbers to 120 and skip counting. The students will engage in various games and activities to reinforce the skills learned within this unit.

Science: We are having a ball learning all about weather! The students are learning so much and are incredibly engaged in all of our learning activities - especially our experiments! Such great scientists! This week we will wrap up learning about the water cycle. We will read many great books and engage in some fun crafts and experiments to bolster our learning.

DON'T FORGET: Our Valentine's Day celebration will take place on Friday. I did send home a pink note last week with details about the mailbox project that should be completed at home. If you could send these in as soon as they are completed, that would be great! Also, please note that all students are invited to bring in Valentine's for the other students in class. I do ask that you refrain from sending in any candy/treats to be attached to the Valentine's as we do have allergies in class. Although our celebration will be for students only we are looking forward to a day of friendship and sharing!

A HEAD'S UP: Our 100th day is quickly approaching! If we don't have any snow days between now and Friday, then we will celebrate on Monday, February 22nd. Last year the K students dressed up as if they were 100 years old - SO much fun! This year we will be asking students to design a 100th day t-shirt with 100 items. I understand how very busy you all are, so if this seems overwhelming, students can simply wear a shirt with a number on it (soccer jersey, baseball t-shirt, etc.). A note will be going home about this project by the end of the week. 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask! Take care,

Kerry