Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We have almost completed our second week of school.  Time flies already!  I hope your children are still coming home excited about our learning together and making new friends on Team Harmony.
This week saw many changes to our young learners as math classes began in full and our spelling classes began to take form, with beginning of the year assessments.

In math, first grader mathematicians continued to explore geometric patterns through pattern blocks and polydrons.  The students learned about "repeating patterns" and how we can use our language to "justify" our mathematical thinking to prove our mathematical ideas.  Ask your child to define what a repeating pattern is and what attributes make it repeat.  Also ask your child to explain how we use "Private Reasoning Time" in our math classes.  We have talked a lot about the importance of sense-making in math and private, quiet think time allows all of us the opportunities we often need to make sense out of a mathematical problem.  The students are so kind and respectful of each others' thinking.  The love to contribute to the group and share their observations with each other.  Please visit our math blog for more updates.  Thank you.

In reading, the students began to participate in our guided reading groups, which we call Book Clubs.  Guided reading groups are small groups of students that meet with the teacher (me) several times a week to read and discuss books that are on an instructional level of the child in terms of text complexity, vocabulary and sentence structure. The students in the group take turns reading to each other and me and there are several different comprehension tasks associated with each book.  Your child will take home his/her book bag on Monday.  Book bags always come home on Mondays so please make sure you check your child's backpack.  Inside you will find one "just right" book from our Book Clubs.  You will recognize this book by its colorful, circular sticker on its back.  These books belong to our school library and your child is borrowing this for the week.  Please make sure your child brings this book bag on Thursdays when the book bag returns to the classroom so other children can read the book too.  Thank you.  Your child will also bring home a choice book or two.  Please discuss these choices with your child.  Are these books "just right" for your child? In other words, can your child read and make sense of it? Are the words easy, or hard to read? Are there pictures to help with the comprehension?  In the next few weeks, the students and I will discuss more in depth what makes a book a "just right" book and we will share our strategies with you.  For now, simply having the conversation at home and experiencing knowing what a "just right" book looks like will help your child immensely in the future.

In writing, the students continued revising their stories by adding details to the pictures and words.  This week, we focused primarily on COPS.  COPS is an acronym that encourages the students to approach their own revision as detectives, searching for clues that need fixing. C stands for capitalization.  The students learned that in 1st grade, we say "good-bye" to capital letter writing, except for in certain situations, such as when we start a new sentence, use names of people and places and use the word "I".  O stands for organization.  We focus on finger-spacing between words.  P stands for punctuation.  We learn not to write tun-on sentences.  Periods are there to indicate a complete thought and allow the reader to breather.  S stands for spelling.  We learned to tap all sounds out, so all letters are represented.  We always do our best spelling.  If we do not know how to spell a word, we try and we do our best.  The students learned these strategies as a quick introduction this week because we will publish our first books tomorrow.  We are so excited.  We are all authors and we write to share our wonderful thinking with others in our classroom, at home and the world.

Our schedule changed this week as well.  Library was moved to Wednesdays to allow for an extra 5 minutes of lunch time for the students on Team Harmony.  I will email the updated schedule to you so you have a copy.  Please remind your child that library books are now due on Wednesdays.  Thank you.
In other Related Arts news, I wanted to ask all parents to send in an art smock to our classroom.  The students need one for art class, on Thursdays.  The smock will stay in your child's cubby for the year.  Thank you.

On Tuesdays, the students rotate their classes between art, music, guidance and PE.  For the first several weeks, my class has art. 

Have a great rest of the week.
Regards,
Maria