Weekly Update

 

Hello Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed the time with family and friends. Five days seems like a long time to be away from school. I’m excited to be back with the kiddos tomorrow. J

Math

We finished our introduction unit on subtraction. The assessment was given on Wednesday before break. Because it is the end of the trimester, we will be reassessing this topic and changes will be shown in trimester 2 on the report card. It’s important that students be able to add and subtract based on the information in story problems as well as pay attention to the addition and subtraction signs.

Reading Workshop

We have finished with our retelling unit. This is a skill that should be practiced every time a child finishes a book; whether it is read to him or her or read independently. A fiction retell includes characters, setting, problem, solution, beginning, middle, and end. A non-fiction retell includes the main idea and facts that go with the main idea.

We are beginning our unit on schema this week. Our schema is a file cabinet in our brains that holds everything we know and all experiences we’ve had. Reading comprehension can be directly related to the amount of schema we have. We always want to be building our schema. This is best done by reading, reading, reading!

Good Fit Books

Most children at this age have trouble identifying good fit books independently. Please be sure your child is reading good fit books at home. If they are hard to find the little books that come home every few days are perfect! J

***Look for the following characteristics when helping your child find a "just right" book: It is read not too fast, but not too slow. He/she knows all or most of the words. The topic is age appropriate.***

Writer’s Workshop

We are working on drafting our personal narrative story. This week we will record our characters, setting, beginning, middle, and end on a story mountain.

 

This Week I Really Learned!

I hope you’re enjoying your child’s T.W.I.R.L. journals. We love reading your letters each week.  Students are more motivated to write when they know they will receive a letter back. Even a short letter is better than no letter at all. Thank you for taking the time to write each week. J

Word Workshop

We reviewed beginning and ending blends last week. Ending consonant clusters were difficult for many children. Watch for words ending in nk, ng, ft, lp, lt, and mp when reading with your child. Ask him/her to say the ending cluster with and without the vowel before it. This week we will start learning about three letter beginning clusters.

Grammar

We continued talking about plural nouns. Regular plural nouns add an s to the end of the word; dog = dogs. Nouns that end in s, x, ch, sh, and z require es to be added to the end; church = churches. Nouns that end with fe need to be changed to ve and add an s: knife = knives. Some nouns don’t change at all: deer = deer, and some nouns completely change: die = dice. Watch for these when reading with your child and point them out.

 

Volunteers Needed

If you have a super duper pencil sharpener at home and are willing to sharpen classroom pencils for us, please let me know, and I will send them home with your child. There is no hurry, and would help us out a lot!

I would like to do a 3-dimensional snowflake project. The snowflakes are easy to make once you learn, but would be difficult for first graders to do it all by themselves. I’m wondering how many parents we could get to come in on Thursday, December 19 from 10:00 – 11:50 to help our little hands cut, fold, and tape. Please let me know if you could help out. It would be great to have one adult per child if possible. (Aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas are welcome to, but please no other children.)

Enjoy your week!