Weekly Update - Week of November 12th

Dear First Grade Families,

We had a very busy 3 ½ day week!

We changed up our schedule a bit this week, so that we have writing in the morning instead of after lunch.  It was a bit of a change for all of us, but I think it will be a positive one!

We are also trying to roll out centers and small group work during reading workshop time.  This week, we did a word sort as a group.  We each got a different color crayon to “scribble” on the back of our sorts.  We also learned how to do a “speed sort.”  We also did a “roll and write” with sight words.  The students will get individual word sorts in the future when they are more familiar with the process of sorting words.  We will also learn about our listening center, poetry center, and special activity or art center.

This week in reading…

*We continued our Word Detective unit.  We have been on the look out for “unusual suspects” (i.e., contractions and compound words) and vowel teams.

*We will start our next unit “Readers Have Big Jobs To Do” after Thanksgiving break.  The focus of this unit is decoding, fluency, and comprehension.

This week in writing…

*We continued working on our non-fiction unit.

*We learned the steps to writing a non-fiction book.  Think of a topic, plan (say the information across your fingers, draw), and write the words.

*We’ll continue working on writing non-fiction when we come back with a focus on teaching our readers more and more by adding details in our pictures and words!

This week in math…

*We used the number line to solve subtraction problems with unknowns. 

*We will continue working on using the number line to add and subtract, as well as skip count.

*We will have our unit 3 assessment after Thanksgiving break.

We read a lot of great books this week, including A Turkey For Thanksgiving, 10 Fat Turkeys, Thanksgiving is Here, and The Thankful Book.  We’re also reading the last book in the Tales from Deckawoo Drive series:  Eugenia Lincoln and the Unexpected Package.  (We’re only on chapter 2, so no spoilers!)

On Thursday, we had our field trip to the Seacoast Science Center.  Thank you to everyone who volunteered and made our fun day possible! The students had lots of time to explore and had a presentation where they learned about mussels, sea stars, lobsters, barnacles, etc. 

On Friday, we had a 2-hour delay.  We had a busy, busy day and didn’t get through half of the activities I had planned, but what can you do? It is fall in Maine! (Or is it winter?) The students enjoyed a PJ and Popcorn day! We also did lots of “ketchup,” played a math game, cleaned out our book bins, and put our poem “I’m Glad I’m Not A Turkey” in our poetry binder.  Our poem after Thanksgiving is called “Turkey Trouble” and it is about being sick of eating turkey leftovers.  I think all of the students will really enjoy it!

Some reminders…

*Book order was due today, but if you need more time, I can wait until Sunday to put the order in!

*No school next week! Happy Thanksgiving!

*PLEASE be sure to send your child with snow gear on days when there is snow on the ground.  Students are not able to go on the playground unless they are wearing snow pants and boots (if there is snow on the ground!)

*At school, students are asked to put their mittens on last so they’ll be able to zip their own coats.  Please try to reinforce this at home!

*During snow season, students will need a change of shoes EVERY DAY! Snow boots track mud and water into the classroom and they’re also hot and uncomfortable.  In the past, students have kept their sneakers in their cubby, so that they don’t have to pack them each morning.

*Please encourage your child to be independent with their snow gear.  At school, we don’t have a lot of time to get dressed for recess after special (~5 minutes).  So, students will need to be independent and efficient!

P.S. Thank you for coming to conferences! I was able to meet with everyone in one way or another and it was great getting to talk to you about your child’s progress! Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or concerns.

My daughter ran her first 5K this week for Girls on the Run! It was chilly, but fun!

Weekly Update

Dear First Grade Families,

We have finished up another busy week! Next week will also be another busy, short week! It's hard to believe we're approaching the 50th day of school!

We learned about Veterans Day.  We learned what a veteran is and why we celebrate Veterans Day.  We also learned a song called "See the Veteran."  The students really enjoyed this song and were singing it a lot throughout the school day! The students were eager to share about the veterans in their lives.  I shared pictures of the veterans in my family.  Two of my grandparents (my grandmother and grandfather) were in the Army and served in World War II, one of my grandparents was in the Air Force, my brother served four years in the Coast Guard, and my husband was in the Army National Guard for 4 years.  He was deployed to Iraq from March 2006-March 2007. 

Mary and Arthur Gallant - Army 

*Fred Fowler - Air Force

Matt in Iraq 

*A friend of Matt's was making a children's book for his niece's school.  Hence, the teddy bear!

This week in reading, we continued our Word Detectives unit.  We learned that Word Detectives...
*Break the ending off the word, solve the beginning, and put it back together.

*Look out for vowel teams (i.e., ee, ea, ai).  We learned that "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and it usually says it's name."  This works in words like steal, pain, and boat.  We also talked about how there are always exceptions to the rule like GREAT! Word Detectives have to be FLEXIBLE!

*Look for parts of words or "chunks" they know.  We call this strategy "Chunky Monkey."  The students are excited to find small words within bigger words and word family chunks to help them solve tricky words!

*We also continued to look out for tricky beginning sounds -- blends and digraphs.  The students highlighted these in their poems AND were excited to see them in their math journal this week!

This week in writing, we took a couple of days to wrap up our small moment (narrative) unit.  We learned that small moments START, STAY, and END in the same place.  The students were also challenged to write two small moment stories this week that were easy to read.  It is great to see their progress since the beginning of the school year! We also started our non-fiction writing unit.  The students will be writing "all about" books or "teaching books" about topics they are experts in!

To break up the writing units, we did a SUPER fun project called "Disguise a Turkey."  We read the stories "Turkey Trouble" and "Turkey Trick or Treat."  The students were then given a turkey and told they had to disguise it to keep it safe for Thanksgiving.  The students could disguise their turkey to be anything they wanted using many different colors of construction paper.  Their creativity was amazing! We had lots of super heroes, princesses, Fort Nite characters, a pirate, a little brother, and even some Pokemon characters.  I'm told they're super strong....

Some of our turkeys in disguise.  I will need to get a picture of the other turkeys next week!

This week in math, we continued working on addition and subtraction strategies.  The students also were also given a large number of erasers and asked to estimate how many they had and then work as a group to count them and record the actual number.  The students also had to count all of the chair legs in the classroom.  This was a big task! We had counts ranging from 45-89.  The actual number of chair legs was 88! One students, Evelyn, was right on the nose!

This summer, I was on the hunt for these "hashtag" blocks in the Target Dollar Spot.  The other day, I stumbled upon some and bought FOURTEEN packs! Yesterday, the students had some time to experiment with the blocks at their table spots.  They had a lot of fun!

Looking ahead to next week...

*No school on Monday, 11/12

*Parent-teacher conferences on 11/14

*Field trip to Seacoast Science Center 11/15 (I will send home information for chaperones on Tuesday)

*No school week of 11/19

Weekly Update

Hello Everyone!

I cannot believe that it is already November! Sorry that it has been a couple of weeks since the last classroom update.  We have been very busy, having lots of fun, and working hard! 

Reading

A couple of weeks ago, we started our new reading unit.  It is called “Word Detectives.”  The students have been learning strategies to solve tricky words.  These strategies include all of the strategies they learned in the first reading unit (building good reading habits) and adding new strategies to solve “even harder words.”  First graders are learning to integrate meaning (what makes sense in the story?), structure (what sounds right?), and visual information (what looks right?). We have also used our knowledge of snap words (sight words) to help us read new words.  We’ve learned to look at a word and think, “Do I know a word that looks like this?” Students are also breaking words into smaller pieces.  One of the MOST important jobs word detectives have is to TRIPLE check a word and think, “Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?” Next week, students will be learning more about looking closely at the beginning of words, looking at the end of words, and looking out for “unusual” suspects (i.e., compound words or contractions).  Book bags will start coming home VERY soon! Sorry for the delay!

Writing

We have continued working on writing small moments.  We have been focusing on making our writing “easy to read” by writing neat, using spaces, and stretching words to include LOTS of sounds! Next week, we will focus on ZOOMING IN on small moments.  Students are very enthusiastic about writing, but some have been writing about BIG ideas rather than small moments.  When we wrap up our small moments unit, we will move onto writing “all about” books.  This is such a fun unit and I think the students will love it!

Math

We started a new unit in math.  We have been focusing on solving word problems and showing our thinking using pictures, counters, and number sentences.  A big part of first grade math is explaining our thinking in writing and discussions.  For example, “I know that 7+3=10, so 10-7=3” or “I started at 7 and counted up 8, 9, 10.”

Halloween

We had a wonderful time at the Halloween parade! After the parade, we enjoyed a special snack.  Thanks to everyone who donated and made our celebration possible! We also played Halloween Bingo and Pin the Nose on the Witch! We had a lot of fun with that! We also made a scarecrow that could move... many students had their scarecrow doing the "floss," watched “Cat-in-the-Hat Knows A Lot About Halloween” with Mrs. Yurick’s class.  On Wednesday, we wrote about our night Trick or Treating and watched “Room on the Broom” in the afternoon while enjoying Pirates Booty! 

Conferences

I sent home a Parent Conference Feedback form.  Please take a few minutes to fill it out and send it back! I look forward to meeting with everyone! Please e-mail me if there are any issues with scheduling.

Field Trip

We will be taking our field trip to the Seacoast Science Center on Thursday, November 15th.  Please remember to send the field trip form and money back by November 5th.  We are all set for chaperones at this point.  There will be other opportunities to chaperone throughout the year!

Book Order

I sent home November’s book order.  It is due back on November 16th.  Last month, I was able to get LOTS of new books for our classroom library thanks to bonus points earned! Thank you so much!