Week of May 7 -11

Dear Parents,

May is here and we are looking ahead to a busy month!  Buddy Study has begun and students are eager to participate in the process.

                                           

A few reminders for the month of May:

·        PTO meeting will be held on May 7 at 6:30.  (GCS)

·        Budget meeting will be held May 7 at 8:00 p.m.  (Wamogo)

·        K-3 Concert rehearsal will be held May 8^th at 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. 

·        Board of Education meeting will be held May 9 at 7:00 p.m. (GCS)

·        Cinco de Mayo Celebration will be held May 10 at 2:00 in the gym.  Students will sing and dance to celebrate the Fiesta.

·        Friday, May 11 is a half session day; students are dismissed at 1:20.

·        K-3 Music concert will be held in the gym at 11:00 on May 14. 

·        Grade 1 and 2 Trip to White Memorial will be on May 15.

·        Grades 4-6 Music concert will be held in the gym at 2:30 on May 22.

·        May Sharing Assembly will be on Friday, May 25 at 2:15 in the gym.

·        No school May 28 in honor of Memorial Day.

           

Here is a look at next week:

Reading: Students really enjoyed exploring and discussing Fairy Tales!  We learned what makes a story a Fairy Tale, shared some of our favorites, and even started collected ideas for our own Fairy Tale.  Next week, we will continue to discuss and share Fairy Tales.  We will continue to examine the different elements of Fairy Tales such as “Once upon a time…”, magical powers, good vs. evil, and characters in threes and tie in reading strategies and concepts as much as possible for practice.  Students will also begin creating their own Fairy Tales. 

Word Work/Handwriting: We have started our Buddy Study spelling program and students are very excited to have their own spelling lists.  Students are beginning to participate in the routines independently.  Students have created their own spelling lists and are learning their words through a variety of activities.  Students also brought home their list of words to share and practice at home.  This week all of our words had silent ‘e’ in them, like ‘white’, ‘write’, ‘shine’, and ‘note’.  Next week, we will begin our week by testing our knowledge of the first set of words and then moving into our second list.  For the second list, students will be learning words that have “r” with a vowel.  First we will learn about words with “r” and a vowel structure and then create a list of words together as a group which students can choose their spelling words from.  Gaining independence through this learning process is highly desired. 

Writing:  Our Cross- Genre writing unit is almost complete with only a few students left to publish.  Next week, we will finish up any publishing that is needed and then be ready to start our new unit, Informational Writing about Science.  For this unit, the two first grade classes will come together and review Information writing.  We will explore Science focused Informational text as a group to spark ideas for our own writing.  Then using the net-books, we will have a chance to explore in groups digital storytelling tools that can be used when creating Informational text.  By the end of the week, students will be placed in groups to select topics they are interested in writing about. 

Math: Students have enjoyed skip counting activities, playing new games with combinations of 10, and did an amazing job on the ‘End of Unit’ assessment.   Next week, we will be moving into session four of unit eight.  In this session, students will be introduced to adding and subtracting with 2-digit numbers.  Games and activities will be introduced during workshop time to practice.  Students will be required to do a lot of comparing amounts and apply what they have learned earlier in the year regarding addition and subtraction strategies. 

Social Studies:  Surveys have been compiled and a large list has been created of careers students are interested in learning more about!  Next week, we will continue to explore different careers and the skills needed for each.  We will also evaluate our own talents and likes to think about what career we might like to have when we grow up.  At the end of the week, we will have two visits come in to share their career.  Both first grade classes will come together prior to our visitor attending to compile some questions we would like to ask.  This will not only help us learn more about the careers but also on creating question sentences.  We will give students clues next week on our visitor’s career choices; however their occupations will be a surprise until the day before! 

Have a wonderful week!

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