I hope that everyone had a great holiday weekend and found some time to spend with family and friends! It's hard to believe that as we end this week we will find ourselves in the month of April - just CRAZY!!
I forgot to post pictures from our March celebration, so here they are! Thank you to all those who were good sports with our leprechaun "photo booth"! I know the kiddos had a lot of fun and I hope you did too. A BIG thank you to everyone who donated food items for our celebration. These events are not possible without your help. The students and I are very grateful!
Our Traps
Here's a look at what's in store for our class this week:
Phonics: This week we will wrap up our study of bossy r. We will introduce the -ur sound as in "burn" and "turn." We will also review the -ar, -ir, -er, and -or sounds. Please note that our spelling homework will be a bit different this week. After finishing our weather unit last week, the students really wanted to use some of these words for their spelling test. We brainstormed all of our weather words together and each student independently chose his/her spelling words for the week. These words should have gone home on Thursday. If you need another copy of your child's words, please let me know and I will send another one home. Because many of these words are tricky, we will not be adding sight words to our lists this week.
Reading Workshop: All of the students are really enjoying our biography unit! They are learning so much and are growing as readers in their comprehension and understanding. As we read, we are digging deeper to gain more understanding and we are stretching our thinking as we compare & contrast , as well as make text-to-self connections. This week we will continue our study of influential women as we study Juliette Gordon Law, Harriet Beacher Stowe, Annie Oakley, Georgia O'Keeffe and Michelle Obama. Next week we will explore famous male inventors.
Math: We will wrap up Topic 9 on Monday with another "show me" activity. We do not use the word "test" during math instruction in 1st grade - it's simply a way to show me what you learned and what I need to re-teach. Along with some reteaching, we will also move onto topic 10 - adding with tens and ones. Here are the essential understandings that we will cover throughout the unit:
1. Adding groups of 10 is similar to adding numbers less than 10.
2. When adding tens to a two-digit number, only the tens digit changes.
3. There is more than one way to do a mental calculation. Techniques for doing addition mentally involve changing the numbers or the expression so the calculation is easy to do mentally.
4. The traditional algorithm for adding a two-digit number and a two-digit number starts by adding ones. Sometimes 10 ones needs to be regrouped as 1 ten. Then the tens are added.
Writer's Workshop: Last week the students finished up review writing by publishing a favorite piece. They did a phenomenal job and I am so proud of them! This week we will start a fun poetry unit. We will explore many different types of poetry and I'm sure each writer will grow stronger as their thinking will change throughout this unit. This week we will learn about 5 senses poems and acrostic poetry.
Science/Social Studies: Last week we finished our Weather unit by making our own weather reports. After viewing several local weather reports throughout our unit, each student was given an opportunity to become a meteorologist! They were SO excited! Their forecasts show creativity as well as a knowledge of weather vocabulary. After writing the reports, they made a fun craft by placing themselves inside a television. Our tv's had "bunny ears" and as you can imagine, the antenna needed a bit of explaining! They must think we grew up in the dark ages!! We will take a break from formal science instruction and move into a social studies unit on maps. We will learn about different types of maps, how to read them and even make our own maps. We will begin this unit by learning about our community and discussing citizenship.
I hope you all have a great week!
Kerry
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