Welcome Back!

We have had a nice week back after vacation!  It was nice to see all the children.  Everyone was happy to see each other.

Literacy:

We have been reading a ton this week in first grade!  We worked on  "smoothing out our voices," so we don't sound like a robot, when we read.  We also worked on partner reading.  We learned how to help our partners when they are stuck.  Keep up the good work!

In writers workshop we continue to work on our small moment pieces.  We have started working on adding more detail to each page with words and pictures.

Math:
This week in math we really worked on noticing patterns when working on combination problems.  We learned how to organize numbers and turn-around facts.




We were so excited about getting more snow this week!  Perfect for snowballs and snowman. Its important to send your child to school with appropriate  clothing.  We go outside everyday, unless the temperature is less than 10 degrees.  Please send your child with a jacket, snow pants, mitten or gloves, a hat, snow boots.

We have had another great week in first grade.  We read some Halloween books, made some fun projects and even made a yummy spider snack on Halloween.

 Literacy:
We have started reading groups this week.  In reading groups and when I conference with children I  will teach children strategies that they can use when reading.  We continue to work on what it looks like and sounds like during this time.  We learned two new reading habits this week, Taking a sneak peek before you start read and that Readers do something at the end of their book (reread the whole story, reread your favorite part, retell your story).

Math:

In math we are starting to wrap up our first unit.  We have been practicing all skills mixed together: representing numbers in an organized way, comparing two sums, solving story problems (addition, subtraction, and combination and adding numbers in the number line.  We even had time to learn a new game!

                   

     

We read the book, The Rainbow Fish, a book about the value of being an individual, a couple of weeks ago and finally got our shiny new scales on our fish!

Dates to Remember:

• No School, Friday, 11/19
• 12:15 dismissal, Wednesday 11/14
• Parent/Teacher Conferences, Monday 11/19 (More info to come)
• Thanksgiving Break-NO School Monday 11/19(conferences) - Friday 11/23

 The children did a really good job with their guest teachers both days that  I was out.  I am really proud of them!

Reading:
Together we read books around individuality and kindness, "Be Who You Are," and "Try a little kindness." We made poster and did some writing around both books.

We continue to work on finding "just-right" books  and partner reading.  All the children are working really hard on this!

We also began a social studies unit on growth mindset.  Having a growth mindset means you take on challenges, try your best, and learn from mistakes.  We started by watching a few short videos about how the brain helps and learn and grow.  Make sure to ask you children about it!

://youtu.be/g7FdMi03Cz

This week the JFK heart monitor was full.  We celebrated on Thursday by wearing comfy clothes and watching the movie "Rio" in the Performing Arts Center!  We had a blast!

Dates to Remember
*Early Release Wednesday 10/17 at 12:15
* NO SCHOOL Friday 10/19
*Picture Re-Take Day 10/26

Have a great weekend!

What a great week we had! We filled our heart jar again. This time we celebrated by watching"Wild Kratts" and eating popcorn.

Thank you to the parents that were able to join us for Morning Meeting. The children were so excited to share with you what our mornings typically look like and sound like.

Literacy:

We read two books this week. "I am Human "and "Only one you." These two books were about individuality and what makes us unique. We talked about how we make a difference everyday. We made our own rocks that illustrated the style in "Only one you."

We also did some writing with a fun project, Me, Myselfie and I.

During readers workshop we have been working on independent reading for a longer period of time. We were able to sustain 12 minutes! We've also been working on partner reading.

Math:
In math we continued to work on story problems and focused on telling the difference between "put together" and "take apart' language.

Welcome Back!

Hello Families,

Throughout the first six weeks of school, we focus on community building, classroom and school wide routines, and develop our class room and individual goals. We've had a great start getting to know each other, beginning some fun projects, and learning more and more about one another.

We have filled our HEART jar again!  The children voted on dress up day!  We had a blast!

Reading:
        *We read Mouse Paint.
         *We read Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes. In this book Pete does different                things in different parts of the school.  We took a tour of our school and talked about                  what we do in those places.  We made a big book, The Charron Team Rocking in Our              JFK Shoes!

                                            
         *We read Two Eyes, A Nose, and a Mouth and noticed how we are all unique and                    make our classroom a beautiful place to be.  Stop by the classroom to see the self-                  portraits the children made.
          *We read one of my favorite books this week!  One by Kathryn Otoshi.  This book is                    about realizing that everyone counts and how to deal with a bully.  We watched a                      video, acted it out (a lot), and completed a project.
         




Math Focus:
We have been working on counting strategies.

How do mathematicians organize collections in order to quickly count?
How do mathematicians write equations and represent their thinking? 

This is a HUGE concept.  We have been counting collections, or large groups of objects.  The mathematicians need to figure out a way to organize the objects in order to count them accurately and efficiently.  We have figures out the we can group the objects by 5's and 10's to make it easier to count.

We have just started working on,  How to read and solve a story problem

We special visit from Nurse Liz this week.  She taught us to be germ busters with proper hand washing.  She sprayed "germs" on our hands and we had to wash out hands completely(Sing ABCs) in order to get all the germs off.  The students got to check their hand washing skills with a special glow light.

• Dates to Remember
• Early Release Wednesday 10/17 at 12:15
• No School Friday 10/19
• Picture Re-take Day 10/26

Yeah, Science!

Important Dates

February 14th- Valentines card exchange. Early dismissal, 12:15.  NO After School Programs

February 26th-March 6th- Winter Break

This week we started our science unit about sound.  The children have been exploring and building knowledge of sound and how it is produced.  We observed a bee buzzing in a flower, we noticed sounds in the classroom and in the hallway, listened to different materials to see how we could make them vibrate and tested different materials to make the best kazoo!   

    

Literacy~
We continue to explore  nonfiction materials.   The children are having a blast and learning so much.


Math~
Our measuring unit will be coming to an end next week.  The children have been working hard perfecting their measuring techniques; making sure to go end to end, no gaps, and in a straight line.  We also worked on comparing lengths of objects, noticing what is longer and what is shorter.

Happy New Year

January 10th- Early dismissal, 12:15
January 15th- NO SCHOOL

It was nice to see all the smiling faces returning to school after a long and cold winter break. I'm excited for all the new learning and fun we will have in 2018!

Although it was a short week back we still fit in a ton of learning  that the children were very excited about!

Literacy
We finished up a unit on "Small Moments" during our reading and writing workshop.  Make sure to look for a yellow folder that will be coming home, which is filled with your children's small moment writng pieces.  
We've begun to focus on features of Non-Fiction books during our readers workshop.  To get this unit started we compared fiction and non-fiction books and sorted them into two piles.  We then added some non-fiction books to our book bags so we can use them as we develop new reading habits. The children were super excited!  We'll use what learn and apply it to non-fiction writing.

 Math
Before vacation, in math workshop, we had our end of unit test, or as I call it our "Celebration of learning" This went great!  We did lots of fact power this week, which the students love! 

Also this week we started a new unit: measurement.  Throughout this unit, students will be using nonstandard units of measure to compare lengths of various objects.

*We filled our class heart bucket and dumped the hearts into the heart monitor on Thursday, January 4th.  We planned on having Pajama day and hot chocolate, Friday, January 5th as our celebration.  Due to the snow day this didn't happen and will be rescheduled for this Tuesday, January 9th.