Dear Families,
Here is our week in review:
Social-Emotional Learning:
This week, we practiced active listening. We reviewed what it sounds like and looks like to be an engaged learner. This is important for knowing what to do and for building a deeper understanding of our different needs and preferences. We practiced paying attention to our peers when they shared their understanding or questions in our different classes. We also played some games together practicing following different directions. Some of these were given to different groups of kids at the same time! It was so fun, but also challenging.
We reviewed expectations around having safe bodies at school. This is particularly important during Covid as we are all required to stay socially distant and safe. Please review these expectations at home with your child. Every once in a while, we all benefit from reminders around these safety expectations! It is important that we are not getting complacent and relax these rules now when we are so very close to returning to a more traditional/normal school environment.
Reading:
We continued meeting in our guided reading groups this week. Mr. Alex also met with some students! We are so excited that Mr. Alex is taking on a bigger teaching role in our classroom. While we continue to read fictional stories in our guided reading groups, focusing upon story elements and character development, the students are also being exposed to more nonfiction books. They are encouraged to recognize various nonfiction text features which also help us make sense of the stories we read.
We continued our book scavenger hunts, looking for these nonfiction text features in magazines. This week, we found captions, charts and diagrams. Encourage your child to identify these when you read together at home too. Ask your child how these features help us understand the texts more deeply.
We continued reading from our new chapter book about Balto this week. The students love learning about the Iditarod and these amazing dogs.
Writing:
We started our animal research books this week. The students picked their own polar/Arctic animals to study. Some students will research polar bears. Others chose to learn more about narwhals, orcas, wolverines, musk oxen and the Arctic fox.
We created our Table of Contents. The students will write about what their animal looks like and they will also research its habitat, diet, babies and include some special facts.
The students accessed pebblego to get some information about their animals. We will use that again next week. Please make sure your child’s chromebook gets charged over the weekend. We will need them on Monday for our writing. Thank you. The students will also use books and magazines to get more animal information. Lastly, we learned that we cannot copy the words down from the books/magazines. We learned that we must revoice what we read and write our own words.
First Grade Math:
This week, we continued learning about telling time to the hour and half hour in our Number Corner component of math class. If your child did not get a chance to complete the telling time activity on SeeSaw, I encourage him/her to do so.
First grade mathematicians also used their triple 10-frames to add two and three one digit numbers together. We practiced bridging to 10 or 5 instead of relying on counting all, or counting on. In other words, if we added 8+6+4, the students were encouraged to “see” 6+4” as a group of 10; a group to which 8 can be added more easily and more efficiently. Some students also discovered that finding familiar facts and double facts help us do these types of problems more efficiently and more correctly.
Lastly, the students were also encouraged to make a connection to our understanding of equality when solving problems adding three digits. They were encouraged to see that 8+6+4=10+8
News and Reminders:
As the weather turns warmer and the snow starts to melt, we are noticing that the students return from recess with muddy and wet clothes. Please send in an extra plastic bag, or recycle bag, for your child’s wet mittens, snow pants and hats. We have outdoor recess every day, but it is hard for the children to pack up their gear at the end of the day as their outdoor clothing is wet. We don’t want to place the wet snow gear inside our backpacks since we keep our chromebooks, headphones and folders in there.
We are also asking parents to send in extra pants and socks to keep inside the lockers. Many children get wet all the way through and need to change out of their wet clothes. Thank you.
Our parent-teacher conferences are right around the corner! I am excited to see you online and share about our learning and your child’s progress at school. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do so here. If the remaining time-slots do not work for you and your family, please let me know and I will do my best to accommodate. Thank you!
Here's a link to this week's Bell
Have a great weekend,
Maria
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