Hello First Grade Families!
We are already coming up on Valentine's Day, and pretty soon it will be February Break! We have tried to pack a lot into this short month and still have a lot to come! I'm going to be testing out a new format of blog post that is a newsletter/blog hybrid. This will give you more specific information about what we are studying each week in literacy, word study, math, and writing and will be written from the perspective of your student in order to spark some conversations about school at home! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we began discussing the differences between fiction and nonfiction texts. This will be the focus of our small reading groups this upcoming week. We have also been reviewing the strategy of flipping a vowel sound from long to short when trying to decode a word. Word Study...This week we were introduced to four new glued sounds, -ing, -ang, -ong, and-ung. We know that these letters stand together to make one sound. We also studied the new trick words, why, by, my, and try. Math...We have been navigating the hundreds chart this week exploring jumps of +/- 10. We have done this on the chart itself and also in isolated pieces. We have practiced +/- 10 on a "tens ladder"(imagine removing a single row from the hundreds chart but given one number in that row to orient yourself), and we have practiced +/- 10 and +/- 1 with a "cube puzzle" where a selection of five squares from the hundreds chart have been removed and you are only given the center number! To support this, we learned a new game called Tick Toc Tac Toc Toe! Writing...In writing we have begun our third unit! We are studying fiction writing! We know that any fiction story needs original characters, a setting, and main events. We have focused on creating our own characters, deciding a setting, and next week we will get our characters "in and out of trouble" with a focus on problem and solution! Upcoming Events!
Special Events of the Week
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Our final week of January has come to a close and it was a blast! Excuse all of the space references!
This week, our time was spent rotating through the 5 space-themed centers taught by 5 of the first grade teachers in preparation for our field trip to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center. In these rotations, your students learned about the phases of the moon, the changing seasons, night and day, the orbital relationship between the sun, Earth, and moon, and about constellations in the night sky. Each lesson culminated in a hands-on activity which I'm sure you've already seen come home! We also were responsible from recording the information we learned throughout the week in our Space Systems Journal (very similar to our Light and Sound Journals from earlier in the year.) These are on their way home this coming week as we add our finishing touches! We had so much fun at the Discovery Center and it was just wonderful to see the students making connections to topics discussed throughout the week while exploring the exhibits that were present. In addition to general exploring of the Discovery Center, we also got to go into the Planetarium to watch a presentation called, "Tonight's Sky" where the anticipated Thursday night sky in Concord, NH was projected onto the dome. This allowed us to examine the position of the moon, constellations, and planets, in our corner of the world! In addition to preparing for our field trip, we also celebrated the conclusion of our second Lucy Calkins Writing Unit: Reviews. We had been adding detailed illustrations to our typed and published reviews all week in order to share them with our friends in Mrs. Galvin's class! We got to read our story to a buddy and share a sweet treat together! Please enjoy the photos below and be on the lookout for report cards coming home this week! |
AuthorMusings of a Grade 1 teacher. Outlet for exciting "goings-on" in the classroom. Archives
May 2018
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