Weekly Update

Hello Families,

I hope you’re all surviving the cold! We’ve had two consecutive days of indoor recess, and we’re feeling a little restless. Hopefully some warmer weather will come our way next week, so the kids can enjoy the new snow. J

Math

We reviewed topics 1-4 and had an assessment on all of the material. These will be coming home next week. An “M” means your child has a solid understanding of the material and is on target for understanding upcoming math skills. A “P” means that your child has a partial understand of the material. A “D” means your child is struggling with the concepts in these units and does not meet expectations. While I work with small groups daily, I’m not able to get to every child every day that needs extra help. You can help at home by: reworking missed problems on assessments and in class work, making up similar problems, add, subtract, and compare numbers in everyday situations, and use math academic language. (greater than, less than, in between, subtract, addition, addend, difference.)

Reading Workshop

We are learning about our schema and how good readers use their schema to help them think about and understand what they read. Our schema helped us understand a story about a little girl trying to deliver a package in a winter blizzard. We know that we were able to imagine how Irene felt in the story, because we have a thick schema file on snow and winter! J 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 hard on our drafts of our stories. We’re still working on identifying a story instead of something we like to do. Practice telling stories at home about funny, sad, or scary things that have happened.

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. Next week we will start learning about three letter beginning clusters.

Grammar

We learned how to identify and capitalize proper nouns. This is a skills that needs to transfer to real writing. Encourage your child to write letters and thank you letters and challenge them to capitalize all proper nouns.

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 weekend!