Dear Parents,
The first few weeks of March have gone by quickly and students are enjoying every minute! Our writing and science units are huge hits. Students are enjoying collecting, organizing and researching information about their animals.
The Student V.I.P. (Very Important Person) program is off to a great start. This Friday, a new student from each class will be randomly selected to be our V.I.P. for next week. A reminder of the V.I.P’s responsibilities will be sent home with their poster when it is their turn. Every student will have their own week to be a V.I.P. !
This weekend, a little leprechaun will visit our classrooms. We have set up our traps and are eager to see if we have caught the mischievous guy. We have many questions to ask him!
Here is a look at the week ahead:
Reading: Students have enjoyed reading books by our three authors; Cynthia Rylant, Arnold Lobel, and Lois Ehlert. We have charted the characteristics of all three authors, compared and contrasted their pieces, and used their books to make connections and sensory images during and after reading. Next week, we will review asking questions before, during, and after reading. We will also revisit author’s message, as well as, inferring how characters can change through a story.
Word Work/Handwriting: Students did a wonderful job sorting words by common word families and built, spelt, and explored many new words. Next week, we will discuss adjective, nouns, and verbs. Students have noticed these word categories while exploring non-fiction text. Hands-on activities, games, and writing will be used to teach each group of words and how they can be used to enhance our writing. In handwriting, we are ready to begin lowercase letters! Students have shown wonderful growth in writing uppercase letters and are eager to begin writing the lowercase. We will begin with lowercase letters “a”, ”d”, and ”g”.
Writing: Children are benefiting from our writing unit, Informational Text, and have enjoyed selecting many topics! We visited the library this week to collect information from books and “safe” web sites. Students have used “World Book”, “Animal Planet”, and “Discovery Education” to collect many facts about their topics! Next week, we will continue to collect pieces on different topics and visit the library when necessary. Students have utilized books from the library that will remain in the classroom to aid in their writing. We will also practice setting up a table of contents and continue to divide and organize our information into chapters for their books. We will continue to remind students that this is a lengthy unit so we need to take time to carefully collect and organize our information as we need to focus on attention to detail.
Math: Students have been eager to review “True or False” addition and subtraction situations, fractions, and telling time to the half hour. Next week, we will spend a day to review “unknown numbers” then begin pattern review, skip counting by two’s, and extending the number sequence. Students will be introduced to new games in Unit 7 to practice what we have learned. The game “Penny Jar” will be our first game to teach number sequence and counting by two’s. We will also build staircases out of cubes and record number sequences.
Science: Students just love their science projects. We spent this week beginning our research and using graphic organizers to organize the information we found. Next week, students will continue to collect information on their animals. We will follow the same procedure that students are familiar with from our writing unit to collect information. We will also begin talking about how they envision their projects in the final stage. The children have begun sharing ideas and are eager to start creating their end products. Different technology programs will be explored to show how they can be utilized for their projects.
Have a wonderful weekend!
~Your first grade teachers: Miss Field and Mrs. McIntire
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