Dear Families,
I hope you all had a relaxing and fun Winter Break from school. It was great to see the students again and hear about all the fun activities and adventures they had.
Here is our week in review:
Social-Emotional Learning:
This week, the students continued to learn more about, and practice positive self-talk to calm down and continue productive learning. Through a series of classroom activities and discussions, they completed a classroom poster with speech bubbles reflecting the different positive statements students can practice in times of frustration. It is hanging in our locker area for all to see. They are very proud of it!
Reading:
We continued our focus on fluency in our guided reading groups this week. As you may recall, fluency in first grade primarily emphasizes pace, expression and phrasing. In other words, the students are encouraged to make their reading sound like spoken language and to reflect the plot and punctuation in the text. In order to learn this efficiently, the students practice reading the same text many times. They are also encouraged to to practice their trick words to build word recognition and speed. The students also used our classroom “read-a-phones” to hear themselves more clearly when reading in a whisper voice. Our read-a-phones are small tools used for reading that resemble little telephone receivers. They did an amazing job reading with fluency!
We continued our new author study and listened to a few more read alouds. This time, we are enjoying the books written by Helen Lester. This week, we learned more about “Tacky, the Penguin”, a very interesting character, filled with silliness and creativity. Ask your child to explain more.
Writing:
First grade authors continued building their understanding of how to craft an opinion writing piece with less scaffolds and teacher support. Their growing independence and confidence as writers show! This week, they learned how to plan their writing piece using a graphic organizer, which later served as a guide as their writing pieces were crafted.
We started a new unit again in Fundations. This time, the students will learn about glued sounds and word endings such as -an, -am, and -all. Try rhyming at home with these endings and see how many words your child can write down! We call it “BOGO spelling”-Buy one, get one free–If you know one word/word family, you automatically know another one!
First Grade Math:
We have a new March Number Corner Calendar. It introduces the students to clocks. In first grade, mathematicians learn how to tell time to the whole hour and the half hour. They also learn the differences between telling time using an analog clock and a digital clock. The students will play many new interactive games learning about clocks.
First grade mathematicians also continued to build a deeper understanding of equality this week. They continued to use math tools and representations/drawings to justify and reason why the two expressions are equal (or not).
First grade mathematicians also used SeeSaw, an online classroom tool, to show their understanding of mathematical equality.
Ms. Bianchi also visited our room again this week and helped us in our small group work. Thank you!
Science:
This week, the students planned and built their musical instruments as part of our ongoing science unit on light and sound. The students met in small groups with Ms. Clark to choose materials needed for this engineering task. They did a terrific job planning and building their instruments. Thank you Ms. Clark for providing this wonderful opportunity!
News and Reminders:
Here is the link for the upcoming parent-teacher conferences. I have added the google meet link for all of these meetings. If your family needs to find another time slot, please let me know and we will try our best to find another time.
There is no school on 3/18/22 due to parent teacher conferences.
Our fabulous intern, Ms. Clark, will do her solo weeks, starting on 3/14/22. She will be the lead teacher for two weeks. I will be in the classroom, but in a supporting role. We wish her luck but we know she will do great! We are so lucky to have her in our classroom.
Have a great weekend,
Maria
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