Week of April 23-27

Dear Parents,

A lot of fun learning happened this last week in first grade!  Our new units are going very well and students have been eager to complete their science projects to share at home, stay tuned shortly for their release on our classroom website and blog!   We attended the Spelling Bee this week where we had a chance to learn new vocabulary words and cheer for other students in our school competing.  The program was very motivational as students left eager to spell challenging words and even tried to spell a few words spelt in the Bee! 

           

A few reminders:

·         Next week, Monday, April 16 through April 20, is Spring break! We hope you have a fun and relaxing week. We look forward to our return on April 23. 

·         The week of April 23 is TV Turn Off Week.  There will be many activities held afterschool. Check the school website for more details. 

·         Budget Hearing will be held April 23 at 7:00 p.m. at Wamogo. 

·         The Learning Fair will be on Tuesday, April 24 at 5:00 p.m.  Many students will be presenting and we are eager to see all the great projects!

·         The District Spelling Bee will be held at Wamogo on Thursday, April 26. 

           

Here is a look at the week of April 23:

Reading: Students have been working hard explore characters, comparing and contrasting characters between books, and making inferences on characters and their motives!  When we return, we will review what we have been working on in reading: discussion of characters across books will continue and we will use familiar books as well as new books to explore characters.  Main character and supporting characters will be defined and discussed during this review. 

Word Work/Handwriting: Spelling has been going very well!  Students are eager to show off the sight words they know and have learned how to check their spelling and the spelling of others.  When we return, we will review spelling, activities to help us learn our sight words, and begin a spelling program called “Buddy Study”.  In “Buddy Study”, students begin creating their own spelling lists, work with spelling words in a variety of activities to begin to learning new words.  Words on their list will come from sight words, word wall words, spelling patterns (like –ake, -ite, -in,-at), and other words that are appropriate for their level, which they show interest.  Students will be creating their own list and will gain independence through this process of learning.  We are eager to begin and will send home more information when we return!

Writing:  Students have felt empowered to move around the genres we have explored thus far in our Cross-Genre writing unit!  When we return, we will continue to collect pieces.  Students will be encouraged to use mentor texts to help inspire their own writing.  We will revisit the different genres by reading examples for favorite authors.  By the end of the week, we will be ready to choose a piece to revise and add more details to “hook” our audience!  We will then edit for uppercase letters, punctuation, neat handwriting, and to make sure sight words as well as other words we know are spelt correctly.  The following week we will be ready to publish and share our pieces!

Math: Unit 8 has been off to a great start.  We have completed our first assessment in this unit and students demonstrated a great understanding of counting on and counting backwards from 100!  When we return, we will take a day to review counting to 100 and beyond along with story problems focusing on counting by 2’s and 4’s.  Then we will be ready to move to counting and combining objects that come in groups of 1,2,4,5, and 10, counting by numbers other than 1, recognizing and using strategies for counting and combining, along with beginning to develop fluency with 2-addend combinations of 10.  We will finish the week with an assessment to show what we have learned so far regarding strategies, counting and combining things that come in groups of 1, 2, and 5, as well as showing our work! 

Science: When we return, students will have a chance to catch up and work on anything that needs finishing.  We will wrap up our science animal projects, catch up on some very interesting weekly readers, and continue to explore the season of spring through fun activities, books, and videos.  We will begin planning our next social studies unit the week of April 30, which will revisit maps and begin talking about workers and their basic needs.  Map symbols, a look at our own school and neighborhood, and reading maps independently will completed the week. 

We hope you have a wonderful weekend and a relaxing break!

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