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!