Dear Families,
Thank you for taking the time to meet with me online for our parent-teacher conferences this week. It was wonderful to see you all and share about your child’s learning and progress at school.
Here is our week in review:
Social-Emotional Learning:
This week, the students participated in new games to practice active listening skills. One game is called “What’s missing?”. The students have to carefully look at another participant in the game to figure out what is missing when this latter person returns to the circle. The players take turns guessing. The students really enjoyed this game.
The students continued to find mindful moments throughout the day, not just during our scheduled times. They are encouraged to relax their bodies and voices to focus on breathing and positive thinking. This is important for all sorts of activities in our classroom.
Another focus this week was on taking turns speaking and lowering our voices. We have noticed that the noise level has increased in our classroom. That makes it hard for everyone to learn. The students are encouraged to “listen the first time” and “read the room” before calling out or interrupting a friend/teacher. Many times we can simply slow down and take a moment to reflect before starting a new task more independently. Ms. Nicole joined our classroom to help the students create strategies and techniques for doing this. Thank you, Ms. Nicole!
Reading:
The students continued working on building their independence during our readers’ workshop classes. This week, they were encouraged to practice their trick words (words readers cannot sound out) in addition to their decodable words. They are doing a fantastic job applying the skills and strategies learned in Fundations to our reading classes. We hope you see this at home too. We are so proud of these first grade readers!
We used the Piggie and Gerald books, written and illustrated by Mo Willems, to discuss the importance of the setting in telling a story. The students discovered that these books do not include a setting at all in the pictures. Most other books we read in first grade have a clear setting. They created different settings using pictures for the characters in Mo Willems’s books. Ask your child to explain where we placed them. They are very creative (hint: Pigeon was on the moon and in a big city).
Thank you for reading with your child daily. While it is challenging for us to share decodable/just right books with families, we hope your child will share his/her library books with you. We also hope your child will access raz-kids for daily reading at home. This online resource addresses reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension, which will help your child build confidence as a reader. It is a highly engaging platform. Let me know if you need help accessing this. I am happy to share the log-in information again.
Writing:
The students are adding more pages and details to their personal narratives. They are currently learning different ways to “wrap up” their stories. This week they also learned to add dialogue in the form of speech bubbles (and thinking bubbles) to their conversations in their stories.
The students are practicing their trick words weekly. They are encouraged to look at our word wall in the classroom to help spell these words since writers cannot sound these words out. They are doing a great job recognizing these words.
The students are also practicing tapping out the sounds they hear in the words they wish to write. Their independence and willingness to try their best spelling are improving every day!
First Grade Math:
First grade mathematicians continued working on number sense and building their understanding of parts of numbers this week. They are working hard! We applied our strategies using dominos this week. The students were encouraged to use various addition strategies when playing different domino games. For example, they “counted on” from a larger number to find the value of a whole domino. In other words, we hope that first grade mathematicians feel comfortable starting at a larger number to count on rather than counting all the dots on the domino from one. The students also noticed “double facts” within the dot patterns on the dominos. Recognizing double facts help us break the numbers into more manageable parts; thus, helping us solve our math problems more efficiently.
First grade mathematicians also learned and practiced that equations can be written vertically.
This month’s Number Corner Calendar introduces the students to fractions. In first grade, they will learn about “wholes’ and “halves”. They will learn that fractions must be equal parts. Next week, they will apply these concepts using various paper shapes to create “wholes” and “halves”.
Science:
We have created our own apple trappers to “pick” apples from our class orchard. We followed a mystery science and engineered are own pickers to collect apples.
We learned about structures, objects, and materials this week. We built our own bridges using index cards after reading Iggy Peck: Architect written by Andrea Beaty.
Additionally, we did a scavenger hunt around the room to find different objects and figure out what material that object is made out of. We learned about un-sturdy and sturdy structures during a scientist meeting while exploring what materials are best for creating a strong or sturdy structure.
News and Reminders:
Here's a link to this week's Bell.
It is getting cold outside. Please make sure your child comes to school with a warm jacket. Sweatshirts and smaller fleece jackets are not enough. Thank you.
Ms. Emily will conduct another solo week next week. I will support our small group work throughout the week as well.
Have a great weekend,
Maria
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