Week of January 30 - February 3

Dear Parents,              

January is coming to a close and students are learning, creating, and doing amazing things!  This time of the year flies by with fun hands-on lessons and interesting units!  Our Animal and Opinion Writing units are the topics of discussion throughout the day as students make thoughtful connections between what they are learning and the world around them.

Here is a look at what we are working on next week:

Reading: We are wrapping up our assessments and we will be continuing in our reading groups and centers.  Everyone is working so hard and doing a great job accomplishing tasks independently.  Next week, students will explore the strategy of inferring.  This is when students combine their background knowledge (or schemas) and the clues from the stories to make thoughtful and educated predictions about the story.  We will define what it means to infer before, during and after our reading.  Students will practice inferring through games, riddles, and picture books.

Word Work/Handwriting: Next week, students will be practicing number and letter formations.  We will look at numbers 1-10 once more, as well as letters S, A, I, J, and T.  In word work, students will be investigating synonyms.  The lessons will generate some creative word choices for writing!  We will also be making new words with the ones we already know and changing endings of words to make new words.

Writing: Students are having a great time writing persuasive letters and speeches to the people in their lives!  We are in our collecting phase this week and will be ready to choose and publish next week.  We will revise and add more persuasive details and “hooks” to get our audience interested in what we have to say.  We will then edit for uppercase letters, punctuation and neat handwriting.  Students will then use their address books to mail their letters.  We will be excited to read the responses we get in return!

Math: Students have enjoyed measuring this week!  They are doing a great job using different units of measurement to problem solve.  We have also been practicing telling time to the hour.  We use analog and digital clocks to determine time and daily schedules.  Next week, we will continue our measurement unit.  Students will measure distances using “kid steps” and “jumps”.  Towards the end of the week and into the following week, we will investigate halves and fourths.  Students will use circles and squares to explore fractions.   

Science: Science is still a favorite among students!  We are learning so many things about the living creatures around us!  Next week, we will explore amphibians.  Students will look at videos and books to define and classify amphibians.  We will investigate where amphibians live, what they eat, how they move, and what adaptations they have to help them survive. 

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend!                                                         

~Your first grade teachers: Miss Field and Mrs. McIntire

Week of January 23-27

Dear Parents, 

Hats off to all of our students!  We had another wonderful week of school, with even a little snow on the ground.  Students are working hard to learn about writing persuasive letters.   Great news....our final math assessment for unit four was very successful and students are eager to continue onto unit five, focusing on measurement.  Students have started to measure collections of objects and understand the meaning of “length”.

Here is a look at what we will work on next week:

Reading: We have been working on our January assessments and will continue to show how much we have grown as confident readers.  We will pick up where we left off by reviewing schema and bring our own personal experiences to what we are reading. Students will practice using schema before, during, and after reading to gain a deeper understanding of what we have read.  Our week will conclude by making connections to character's actions and events that are occurring in the story.

Word Work/Handwriting: Next week, students will recognize spelling patterns in words and begin sorting words that have similar spelling patterns.  Games and activities will be introduced to help teach different spelling patterns and write words with similar patterns.  We will end our week with handwriting practice of letters ‘S’, ‘A’, ‘I’, and ‘J’ and review of our first grade sight words.

Writing: We will take what we learned about persuasive writing to start collecting pieces of writing.  The children have a long list of topics to choose from and are eager to begin creating their own pieces.  We will use our Post Office-style writing center to select paper for our letters, to address our letters, choose envelopes, and stamp our work before it is sent.  To address our letters, we will use the address books we put together last week.  If students have not finished and returned their address books, please do so by Tuesday, January 24th. Students are very excited to mail their persuasive letters and see who will be able to change the minds of their readers.

Math: Students have been excited about measuring using different units in math this past week!  Next week, we will take a close look at both digital and analog time.  Using our daily schedule we will begin to tell time for what we are doing throughout the day.  A revisit of story problems will take place along with comparing and contrasting measurements.  We will begin looking at measurement vocabulary that we can use when explaining the length of objects.

Science: Once again, our animal unit continues to be our favorite topic in science.  We have learned many different things about mammals, including their physical characteristics.  Students compared a fish and mammal to see how they are similar and different.  We even learned the definition of warm-blooded and cold-blooded to better understand how fish and mammals are different in how they adapt to their environment.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend!

~Your first grade teachers: Miss Field and Mrs. McIntire

Week of January 17-20

Dear Parents,              

We had another wonderful week!  Two fish have joined each of our classes this week to go along with our science unit and students have been very excited to make observations in their journals!  Students have also been creating some excellent “How To” stories!  We will be sending home our class “How To” books soon!

Here is a look at what we are working on next week:

Reading: We are continuing to work in our reading groups and centers.  We will be discussing how to make thoughtful connections to what we read.  We will explore the different types of text connections; text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text.  We will also be uncovering a new vocabulary word; schema.  We will engage students in discussions about how our schemas help us to understand what we are reading and how readers bring different experiences to reading.   

Word Work/Handwriting: Students will continue exploring different consonant clusters (such as “sh” and “tr”) while paying close attention to the “s” family and the “r” family.  Students will have opportunities to play different games that reinforce these consonant cluster families; such as the Cluster Lotto.  We will also be learning about our names and initials by using labels and drawings.

Writing: Our “How To” books are in the process of being published!  The students are eager to add their piece to our class “How To” book!  The class book will be sent home with a student each night so that your child can share them with you!  Next week, we will be starting a brand new unit; Opinion Writing!  We will introduce the genre and set up a new Post Office-style writing center as a class.  On Tuesday, students will be sent home with a blank address book.  We will be asking students to gather the addresses of friends and family and add them to their books.  Our goal for this unit is to have students write opinion pieces and send them to friends and family.  We will be eager to read any responses that come back to us!  We will be sharing different types of “Opinion” texts, such as the books from the “Don’t Let the Pigeon…” series.  Students will then create a list of opinion topics and will begin writing an opinion piece by the end of the week.

Math: Next week, we will be finishing Unit 4 with our assessment on Tuesday.  We will be jumping right into our measurement unit; Fish Length and Animal Jumps in Unit 5.  Students will begin using different means to measure the objects around them.  Students will use connecting cubes, paperclips, and tiles to help measure during math centers. 

Science: Students cannot get enough of our animal unit!  Our class fish added a wonderful hands-on experience for students and we are working hard to make thoughtful predictions and observations in our Fish Observation Journals.  Next week, we will be discussing mammals.  We will define and list what makes a mammal.  We will also use books, videos, and pictures to explore the different types of mammals in addition to how and where they live. 

Do not forget that there is no school on Monday, January 16th.  We hope you have a wonderful long weekend!

~Your first grade teachers: Miss Field and Mrs. McIntire

Week of January 9 - 13

Dear Parents,              

We had a great first week back!  Students shared great things they did over the vacation and worked hard to get back into routines. 

Here is a look at what we are working on next week:

Reading: We are continuing to work in our reading groups and centers.  We will be reviewing how to select a book that is ‘just right’, reading strategies, and how to participate in a book talk. We will review how to read with a partner and practice reading strategies and book talks as a group. 

Word Work/Handwriting: Our focus next week will be on word work.  Students will practice making words using consonant clusters, review uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as identifying and distinguishing consonant and vowel sounds.  Games, like lotto, and activities, like letter sorts and making words with magnetic letters, will be used to reinforce what we learn.

Writing: Students have been learning what a ‘How To’ book is and how to create their own.  We will continue to “collect” ‘How To’ pieces in our writing folders.   Students will continue to draw the steps and then translate each step into words.  We will practice picturing each step in our minds to help us draw and write with details.  Picture books and creation of class books will be used to guide student’s development toward their own pieces.  Students will begin to think about their audience for each piece and how they can make their steps clear for their audience.  By the end of the week, we will look at our collection of pieces and choose one to revise, edit, and then publish!

Math: Next week, we will continue sorting and classifying based on attributes and start conducting surveys and analyzing data.  Surveys will be completed as a group in class and students will be creating their own surveys.  We will learn how to collect, represent, and analyze data by answering questions about what they found.  By the end of the week, we will compare our ages by using connecting cubes as a tool to represent our ages and then figure out how many students are each age. 

Science: Students really enjoyed learning about living things and their characteristics.  We were able to talk about habitats and what each living thing needs to survive.  Next week, we will look closely at fish.  We will study their structure, habitats, and observe them in action.  Students will learn the parts of a fish and what they need to survive.  By the end of the week, students will be labeling a diagram of a fish and highlighting what they learned. 

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

~Your first grade teachers: Miss Field and Mrs. McIntire

Week of January 3 - 6

Dear Parents,                       

We had a great day back!  We hope you all had a wonderful holiday break!  Students were so excited to share all the great things they did over the vacation!  Everyone is doing a beautiful job getting back into our classroom routines, as well!

Here is a look at what we are working on this week:

Reading:  We are continuing to work in our reading groups and centers.  We will be reviewing how to think about our senses as we read.  We will also review characters, settings and character actions.  We will begin discussing how to create mental pictures using the words and the pictures on the pages.  Students will make inferences based on the words and pictures to think about what is happening “between the picture scenes”. 

Word Work/Handwriting:  During this time, students will be continue to work on handwriting and sight words.  We will also be practicing how to change and manipulate words to create new words.  Students will change beginning and ending sounds to make different words.  Students will also be playing a letter matching game at the end of the week. This game will focus on matching uppercase letters to their lowercase letters.  We are encouraging students to use lower case letters as they write unless it’s the beginning of a sentence or a special name or holiday. 

Writing:  Students have been learning about “How To” books.  We are in the “collecting” phase of our workshop and students have been generating many great ideas for their books.  This week, students will take their ideas and form them into steps via pictures and words.  An example is; “how to make a snowman”.  Students will think of the steps necessary to build a snowman, draw the steps, and translate them into words.  We are focusing on being very specific so that their audience can get a clear idea of the steps that need to be taken.

Math:  Before the break, we were discussing ways to sort and organize objects.  This week, we will review ways to sort objects based on their attributes.  We will be sorting buttons and playing “guess my rule” with objects and with people!  Towards the end of the week, we will begin investigating, recording and analyzing data through quick surveys and classroom discussions. 

Science: This week in science, we will pick up where we left off with our discussions about living things.  We will revisit our KWL charts (what we know, what we would like to know, and what we have learned) and we will begin investigating the different habitats of living things.

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

~Your first grade teachers: Miss Field and Mrs. McIntire