​This week with our Wonders program we will focus on the Essential Question:  How do animals’ bodies help them? We will be reading folktales about a beaver and a bat.  What are some other features that animals have to help them?  We will continue this discussion all week long.
 
Our phonic focus is Long Vowel Aa with the spelling patterns of:  ai and ay.  Your children are getting really good at spotting long vowels when they end in “magic e”.  They understand that the “e” makes the vowel say its name.  This week they will learn about “two vowels walking...with the first one doing the talking”.   The spelling words for the week are:
mail, rain, chain, way, play, day
Sight Words:  our, carry - - with exposure to:  about, animal, eight, give
 
We will be learning about the past-tense verbs:  was, were.  We will continue reviewing contractions.
 
Has your child told you about Scrolling?  This is a great number sense activity - - we have several children already up into the 1,000’s.  Scrolling also helps to discover the pattern and ease of counting by 10’s. 
 
Ms. Baines organized such a fun Jump Rope for Heart day. We cycled through four highly-engaging (and challenging) activities.  A huge thank you to Ms. Baines, Ms. Kjellander, and Mrs. Chalson - - we had so much fun and the school raised $8,000 for this wonderful cause.
 
Last Friday we spent time learning about Monday’s holiday, President’s Day with a focus on two great presidents:  George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  Be sure to ask your child which President they investigated.

​This week will be a review and assessment week for us.  Our spelling words will be some of the tricky Sight Words: 
 
was, from, some, why, today, all, when, what 
 
We had a fun day celebrating the 100th day of school.  We are more than halfway through the year.  The time has flown by so quickly. 
 
Thursday will be a very busy day for us.  We start the day with our Friendship Brunch and end the day with Jump Rope for Heart.  Remember to send your child to school with sneakers on Thursday.  We will be doing lots and lots of movement activities in the gymnasium. 
 
On Friday we will focus on two important presidents as we celebrate Presidents’ Day:  George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We will share our projects with our Reading Buddies. 
 
Did your child tell you about our “surprise” Fire Drill on Friday?  The drill caught us off guard (which is the plan because you just can’t predict emergencies).   Some of us had a hard time remembering our procedures and the importance of practicing Fire Drills - - TO KEEP US SAFE IN CASE OF A REAL EMERGENCY.  What does safe look like?  Quietly lining up at our back classroom door.  Quietly walking outside to the front of the building.  Quietly standing still and listening for me to call your name to insure that everyone has left the school safely.  And, quietly remaining in line until we are given permission to return to the school.  After we came back inside, we practiced this important drill again.  The results:   amazing!  I knew we could do it! 

​​Two of our classmates rocked it at Community Meeting with their stories “When it gets cold outside...”.  Three other classmates will have their stories published in the school Newspaper (coming out soon). 

This week with our Wonders program we will focus on the Essential Question of:  How do we get our food?  We will be reading about where some of our favorite foods come from…chocolate…honey…sugar.  Yum!  Shelley Rotner and Gary Goss share pictures and facts about these foods in their book, Where does food come from?
 
Our phonics focus is the long vowel sound of Uu, which is spelled:  “oo”. 

Our spelling words are:
book, look, cook, took, hood, wood
Sight Words:  buy, done with exposure to these additional words:  after, every, soon, work.
 
We will be reviewing contractions with “not” and learning about “inflectional endings”. 
 
We will continue practicing our Opinion Writing  with another topic:  Should First Graders have homework every night?  I can’t wait to hear their reasoning on this one! 
 
We have finished up Unit 5 in our Everyday Mathematics program.  Wow – your children are amazing with their understanding of place value and expanded notation. 

Did your child share their knowledge of the Big Dipper with you?  See the pictures below.  We will continue our study of The Spinning Sky this week as we look at the North Star and answer the question of:  How can stars help you if you get lost? 
 
We wondered if the groundhog would see its shadow?  March 20th seems so far away...we are ready for spring - - how about you?
 
Be on the lookout for an email (Sign Up Genius) from Tori Johnson about our Friendship Celebration Brunch on Thursday, February 14th.  I’ll be sending home information on Monday about exchanging cards and creating a box to hold them.

This week in our Wonders program we will focus on the Essential Question:  How is life different than it was long ago?  We can’t wait to hear what your children think “long ago” means.  How are schools different?  Transportation?  Food?  We will be reading Gordon Titcomb’s book The Last Train.  This book is based on a song by Mr. Titcomb.  Wendell Minor’s illustrations help to make this a wonderful book.
 
Our phonics focus will be Long Vowel Oo and Long Vowel Uu, with the following spelling words:
hope, nose, note, rope, cute, cube
Sight Words:  ago, people 
We have been doing a lot of writing in class with a focus on generating ideas, organization our ideas so they have a beginning, a middle, an ending, and adding wonderful words to help describe our writing and make it more exciting.  The last two weeks we have been learning about a new type of writing:  Opinion Writing.  We have learned how to state our opinion about something and back up our writing up with two reasons that support the opinion statement.  Ask your child about which they preferred:  Big Toy or Fairy Village....Cats or Dogs.  We will practice this more over the next couple of weeks.
 
With our Everyday Mathematics program we will continue working on our Number Sense, balancing equations, place value (a favorite activity), and measurement.
 
In Science we will continue our investigation with the Spinning Sky by focusing on the following questions:  Why do the stars come out at night?

This week with our Wonders program we will be talking and reading about folktales. We will connect one of our Wonders’ stories, The Nice Mitten, to The Mitten (versions by Jan Brett and Jim Aylesworth) that we read a few weeks ago. The phonics focus will be difficult.  Soft “c” and “g” as well as “dge” will be introduced.  The spelling words for the week will not have any of these spelling patterns.  Instead, we will practice them in the classroom all week.  The spelling patterns this week will continue with Long Vowel A and Long Vowel I.
      made, take, same, like, fine, pine
      Sight Words:  was, so 
“I have a dream...” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man filled with hopes for all people.  He believed that you could peacefully work for equal and fair treatment for all Americans.  He dreamed of a day when people would not be judged by the color of their skins but by the content of their character.  We talked extensively last Friday about Dr. King, one of America’s greatest leaders.  Getting together with our Reading Buddies, we listened to James Taylor’s song Shed A Little Light – a song honoring Dr. King and read a Scholastic News featuring Dr. King’s granddaughter.​
 
Did your child tell you about our investigation with shadows?  Using their knowledge of the sun and the path that it takes across the sky, they were able to move a light source (a flashlight) to change the shape and length of the shadow on an object. This upcoming week we will be looking at the patterns in the sun’s movement across the sky and then create a Sun Finder which will show the sun’s movement across the sky.  

Our basket is filling up...but there is still room for more!  We are collecting items up until Friday - at which point Jordan Reardon will be working with the PTA to assemble all the classroom baskets.  Thank you for your participation in this fundraiser.

This week with our Wonders program we will focus on the Essential Question:  How do plants change as they grow?  Interesting question with snow on the ground and below freezing temperatures outside!!  We will be reading several books about plants and how plants grow.  Our phonics focus will be Long Vowel Ii, with the spelling pattern of i_e. 
 
Everyone did a great job last week on their spelling test.   Between blends, digraphs, and long vowels the words are getting more difficult.   I will be adapting the spelling words for this week.  This week’s spelling words will contain three long vowel Aa words (a review from last week) and three long vowel Ii words (the new spelling pattern for this week):
 
made, game, late
ride, bike, mine
 
We will be reviewing all of the long vowel words and sight words that our Wonders program has suggested, but your child will only be held responsible for the above six words.
 
Last Friday we had so much fun in Science.   Our task…to define and test the simple problem of:  Why don’t trees blow down in the wind?  Our investigation started with the help of Mr. Bridle, Mrs. L’Heureux, and Mrs. Queen creating the wind that trees would experience in a Tropical Storm.  The next question was – could these trees sustain the winds from a hurricane?  Now came the time to rethink and possibly change the design of our trees.  Mr. Bridle, Mrs. L’Heureux, and Mrs. Queen then created hurricane force winds.  Be sure to ask your child about this fun activity and if their tree stayed upright.
 
This week in Science we will investigate shadows, focusing on what is takes to make a stationary object’s shadow move and what this means about the sun’s place in the sky. 
 
In Social Studies we will learn about Martin Luther King, Jr. with our Reading Buddies on Friday.  

​

​​This week with our Wonders program our Essential Question is:  How do we measure time?  We will be reading A Second is a Hiccup by Hazel Hutchins.  Understanding the passage of time can be a very abstract concept.  How long is a second?  A minute? How about an hour?  This book will help to explain these units of time with examples that we can understand and apply.  A second is how long it takes to hiccup...a week is seven sleeps.  We will start our mathematical exploration of clocks – both digital and analog - with telling time to the hour and half hour.
 
Our phonics focus is the long vowel Aa with the spelling pattern of a-e (“Magic E, Silent E”).  Last week we learned about the power of the letter “e” at the end of words with a focus on the spelling patterns for this week:  _ake, _ame, _ate).  We will be practicing a lot with this new concept.  Confusion creeps in when we start to sound out these words.  We have spent so many weeks on short vowels (words with a consonant-vowel-consonant such as rob, pin) and have mastered this concept.  Now we will be learning that with a “magic e/silent e” at the end of the word, the vowel now says its name...a new sound to apply.  So...rob becomes robe, pin becomes pine.  Our spelling words follow three a_e spelling patterns (ake, ame, ate):
 
                                                   make, take
                                       came, game
                                       gate, late
 
Our two new high-frequency words are: some, today.  We will also focus on these additional high-frequency words:  away, now, way, why.
 
Number Sense is so important and we will continue to focus on it. When children understand numbers and operations along with the ability to use this understanding in flexible ways to make mathematical judgments and to develop useful strategies for solving complex problems then they are developing number sense. Researchers note that number sense develops gradually, and varies as a result of exploring numbers, visualizing them in a variety of contexts, and relating them in ways that are not limited by traditional algorithms. Developing an understanding of numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers, and number systems are focus areas of our math curriculum.
 
First graders move from developing basic counting techniques to understanding number size and relationships, place value, and operations. They develop this understanding at different rates. First graders can easily count 32 objects, but they do not always see that 32 is three groups of ten and 2 groups of ones. Through repeated practice they will understand that they can group objects into tens and ones and recognize their numerical representation. So…we practice and practice and practice these skills.
 
This week with our Everyday Mathematics program we will investigate place-value concepts for tens and ones.  Last week before vacation we learned a new game.  Using manipulatives we will be playing the Place Value Game to help reinforce this new skill.  Here is some information for you about the Base Ten Blocks that we are using.
 
The Base Ten Blocks provide a spatial model of our base ten number system. The smallest blocks are units, these represent the number 1. The long, narrow blocks are called longs or rods and represent the number ten.  Eventually we will be getting to flats, which represent 100 and even the largest cube which represent 1,000. 

​As a result, your children will understand that the number 32 consists of three longs (30) and two units: 30 + 2 = 32 (Expanded Notation). This is also a great concept for adding larger numbers.  32 + 54 = 30 + 50 + 2 + 4.

​We will be reading and doing math extensions with some outstanding books that will help us with number sense.  A Place for Zero, by Angeline Sparagna LoPresti comes up first.  Stay tuned!
 
Last week we spent the three days learning how to Compare and Contrast similar stories.  Using Jan Brett’s version and Jim Aylesworth’s version of The Mitten we focused on the setting, characters, and events in both stories.  We looked at what was the same and what was different with the setting, the characters, and the events.  Ask your child which version they liked better - - we had a great class discussion! Next time you are in school be sure to check out your child’s outstanding work on our bulletin board.  

It looks like we will have a lot of rain on Friday. So.....we will be heading to the Food Pantry tomorrow at 9:15 (instead of Friday).