This will be a very busy week at school with picture day on Monday, spelling words, reading and math homework, evacuation drill on Thursday, and science. Wow!
With our Wonders program, our Essential Question this week is: What do you do at your school? We will have our first spelling words...and spelling test. Our spelling words are Short Vowel Aa word families: man, can, nap, tap, cat, hat We will also focus on four new Sight Words. Two of these words will be included on our spelling test. Be on the lookout for your child’s spelling words in their Monday folder. does not school what Please practice these words with your child all week long. On Friday’s they will have their spelling test on eight of these words. Very exciting - - we will begin reading groups this week. Every week your child will work in a small group with a few of their friends. All week long we will focus on various reading comprehension strategies and reading techniques. Beginning on Tuesday, your child will be bringing home their book to share with you (use this book for some of the 20 minute nightly reading). Writer’s Workshop has begun. Did you get a chance to look at the writing that went home on Friday? Using the Six Traits to guide us, we will focus on what writing looks like in First Grade. We will be writing for a variety of reasons during the course of our day. With our mathematics focus we will look at ten frames, tally marks, continued practice with turn-around facts, number sense using our Rekenreks, and problem solvers. We have finished up our study of insects using Julie Brinckloe’s book, Fireflies. Check out the bulletin board with your child’s work. We will start Mystery Science this week with the question of: Why do birds have beaks? We will be doing some hands-on investigations to help us answer this question. Has your child told you about their Reading Buddy? On Friday’s we get together with Mrs. McNish’s fourth graders for our Reading Buddy time.
0 Comments
Four more painted lady butterflies left our classroom today. We released these butterflies in the garden – wishing them safe travels.
Some children are a little confused with what is “snack” and what is “lunch” in their lunch boxes. Could you have a quick conversation with your child and make sure they know which is which. Thanks. We have a new class name: Cool Cat Bobcats.
We will continue with our study of insects – reading lots of books and doing more problem solvers. We learned about tally marks last week and will continue practicing. Tally marks are also a great way for us to practice counting on from multiples of five. Last week during Writer’s Workshop your children created and shared their first stories. What a great job they did. I can’t wait to see what happens this week! Have your heard about the “Golden Whistle”. When we show outstanding Bobcat Behavior (Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible) in Gym class with Mrs. Winchell, classes earn the “Golden Whistle” to hang outside their classroom door. For the second week in a row we have earned the whistle. Yahoo! Directly translated, rekenrek means calculating frame, or arithmetic rack. Adrian Treffers, a mathematics curriculum researcher at the Freudenthal Institute in Holland, designed it to support the natural mathematical development of children and to help them generate a variety of addition and subtraction strategies - including doubles, plus or minus 1, and making 10’s.
The rekenrek looks like an abacus, but it is not based on place value columns or used like an abacus. Rekenreks have two rows of 10 beads, each broken into two sets of five. One set of five is red and the other set of five is white. They help support our students with the visual models needed to discover number relationships and develop automaticity. We loved using this math tool today in class. Ask your child to tell you how they used a rekenrek today. Very exciting! We have gotten into our groove here at school! Routines are falling into place, expected behaviors are occurring, and many smiles and laughs happen during the day.
More Painted Lady Butterflies (caterpillars) have arrived and we are taking on the role of Scientists. Scientists ask lots of questions and make lots of observations. We will be learning more about the life cycle of the Painted Lady Butterfly: egg, caterpillar (larva), chrysalis (pupa), and butterfly. Using our Science Journals we have begun recording our observations. This week our learning will take us deeper into the insect world. What is an insect? What is not an insect? We will continue to observe and record in our Painted Lady Butterfly journals and then take this knowledge and apply it to other “bugs”. Are they insects, too? During our Numeracy Block we have learned some fun math games. The directions to these games were sent home for you to enjoy with your child. This week we will learn about Rekenreks? These are fun math tools that we use to help us add and subtract numbers. With our Wonders program we will continue to review letters and sounds – as well as Sight Words. A list of the First Grade Sight Words was given to you at our Back-to-School night (they were sent home if you were not able to attend). Since these words usually can’t be sounded out, your child needs to know them quickly and with accuracy. We practice our sight words daily but reinforcement at home is necessary. Here are this week’s words: are, me, she, with, for, and, have, see, said, was During Writer’s Workshop we will focus on sentence structure (beginning with a capital letter, ending with correct punctuation), developing ideas for our writing, and adding details to our writing. Our new handwriting program has started: Size Matters. Your child will soon be producing “star-worthy” letters and words. Get ready for your child to tell you all about this. Gerald wanted to dance like all the other jungle animals. He just wasn't ready YET. He learned an important lesson... ”We all can dance...when we find music that we love."
As we discussed at Back-to-School Night, we will be talking a lot this year about the importance and power of the word YET with your children. Mrs. Buckley and I were so impressed with what your children shared with what they couldn't do YET. We heard, I can't...
We met our Fourth Grade Reading Buddies from Mrs. McNish's class. We will be getting together with our buddies on Fridays to read together and do projects together. We had our first Indoor Recess today. Indoor recess is a wonderful opportunity to explore different areas of the classroom. Although it's not as much fun as our playground, friends found great activities to do together.
Ask your child to tell you about our two butterflies today! As one child said, "They are on their way to Mexico."
Today our caterpillars arrived and a butterfly emerged from one of the three chrysalides in our classroom. This butterfly climbed out of the split chrysalis with soft, crumpled wings. It was so cool to watch it spread out its wings inside the butterfly cage. Tomorrow we will release this butterfly outside on our playground.
We are Scientists that stay curious and make wonderful observations. So much has happened in our first four days of schools. Routines have been established, wonderful and kind friendships have formed, and smiles are constantly appearing on all of your children’s faces.
This week we will continue reviewing the Kindergarten sight words that your children learned last year. This week’s words are: this, is, my, look, little, where, here, play, the, week We have been doing a lot of Literacy/Numeracy Enrichment activities. This week we will learn about and continue to focus on the “Power of Yet”, kindness and filling our friend’s bucket, the letters in our names, and caterpillars. Last week we practiced for a Fire Drill. These can be “scary” when the alarm goes off. As Mrs. Buckley and I told your children, our job is to keep them safe. By practicing these drills over and over and the expectations that go along with these drills we will all be safe. I’m looking forward to Monday night’s Back to School night at 6:05 in our classroom. Already your children have some exciting work to share with you. |
Archives
June 2020
Categories |