Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had another busy and very productive week on Harmony.

In math this week, first graders continued working on different number sense activities, strengthening their conceptual understanding of number relations.  We worked on teen numbers, decades and counting by tens.  We used our number lines and practiced the numbers before and after a particular number.  We also started comparing numbers in different learning activities emphasizing the language of "greater than", "less than" or "equal to."  Many of these concepts were embedded in our domino games as well.  I hope you have had a chance to see your child's math work at home.
In math this week, we also discussed what it looks like and sounds like to work together in our math class.  The students shared that it is important to take turns, use our materials respectfully and listen to each other's ideas.

We have a math class buzzy jar now.  The students earn buzzies for working together responsibly, safely and using kind words.  When we fill our jar, we will have a special math celebration!
In math, we also started using our new math journals for Number Corner.  For now, the students record different number sentences for how many days we have been in school.  We practice writing our number sentences in different ways; vertically and horizontally.  We also practice addition and subtraction sentences. Can you see how many days we have been in school?  Ask your child to explain.

This week, we visited the Book Fair at WCS.  Thank you for talking to your child about how we select books and what we could purchase before we went.  We had a great time.  The kids loved looking at all the books-even if they did not buy any.  As a special treat, we celebrated in our classroom and read the new books we had bought.  We filled our buzzy jar again and the kids wanted to read our new books right away.  What a great celebration!
In writing this week, the students finished their first small moment stories.  In this unit, the students learned to stretch their stories out by adding details about the 5 Ws. (the who, what, where, why and when questions).  The students also learned to include details pertaining to their senses, such as how they were feeling, or what they were seeing.  We are ready to meet with our editing partners tomorrow and learn from each other through our partner's feedback.  After that, we will create our new covers and titles. We look forward to sharing these stories with you, and will keep you posted about how we will integrate technology to do just that.  Next week, we will start our new small moment stories and learn how authors can stretch their stories out by adding adjectives and dialogue, among other things.
In reading, the students explored different characters in a series of mini-lessons.  We learned that characters can be described both on the outside, ie in terms of their physical characteristics, but also in terms of their actions, thoughts and feelings.  These character traits we call "inside" character traits.  For example, we read "Miss Nelson is missing" and "Miss Nelson is back" by James Marshall and created character puppets to represent these characteristics.  We will hand them up in our kiva space, so please visit to learn more about the colorful characters in these books.  Please come and meet Miss Viola Swamp, Miss Nelson and Mr. Blandsworth.

Lastly, thank you for getting on KidBlog at home!  This week we had 49 comments!!  WOW.  I think this is a new record, but let's see if we can beat that next week.  Thank you moms and dad, brothers and sisters for reading and responding to our blogs.  We REALLY APPRECIATE your involvement.
Thank you!  Also, thank you for solving the math challenge.  I will post a new math challenge tonight, so please go to KidBlog to try to figure it out.  Happy Blogging!

Best,
Maria