Hello First Grade Families!
Benchmarking season is upon us! I apologize for the lapse in posts! This time of year has kept us very busy! In between demonstrating all that we have learned this year, we are working hard to prepare some wonderful projects that will be on display during the Ed. Fair on June 6th. By the time the 6th rolls around, we will be absolute experts on our NH Animals! We can't wait to share with you! Ask Me About.... Literacy...As Mrs. Hunton has been benchmarking students and assessing High Frequency Word mastery, our literacy focus has been on our independent work with our texts. We know that our stamina as readers has grown incredibly this year, but there will also be a higher demand for independence and stamina in the second grade! We divide our independent time between reading to ourselves, listening to books using RAZ Kids or iPods, and reading with a buddy. We have even taken on the independent challenge of finding examples of vowel teams, especially, magic e, in our texts. Word Study...Magic e has been our biggest focus! We worked our way up to magic e by studying the variety of other long-vowel combinations. We know that magic e is one of our most common word study principles. We can find magic e everywhere and it has so much power. As we add it, it can change a word like tap into tape which completely changes the meaning of the word. Math...We have continued our study of geometry. Our work with partitioning shapes into equal pieces has not only lead us to discuss the fact that smaller shapes can make up larger shapes, but also served as an opportunity to incorporate the quarter as a money concept and fraction concept! This week we will focus on shape attributes. We know that shapes can be described by their names, number of sides, number of angles, and number of vertices. Writing...We are plugging away at our NH Animal Reports! We did a lot of work with a graphic organizer to condense all of the wonderful information we gathered. Because most nonfiction texts begin with a table of contents that lists headings, we have labeled each of our four sections with a specific heading. Our reports will consist of the headings, Introduction, Where it Lives, Predators/Special Skills, and Other Facts/Conclusion. We will also make sure to add other nonfiction text features to our reports! Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
Happy Monday! I hope everyone had an enjoyable Mother's Day weekend celebrating all of the special role models in our lives! The kids worked hard on their presents last week and were so excited to share them with you! Last week kicked off our study of NH Animals and now, this week, things will be in full swing! Stay tuned! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week allowed us time to not only classify the animals in our nonfiction group texts into the categories or mammal, fish, reptile, amphibian, bird, or insect, we also used facts and photographs to identify the main traits of those categories. One group's text was about poisonous creatures. We noticed that only fish, reptiles, and insects were included in the book! We know that we can tell how to classify an animal by looking at whether it has fur, feathers, skin or scales, gills or lungs, and how it gives birth to its young! Word Study...This week, we learned the new vowel team, -aw and -au. Both vowel teams produce the same sound like in saw and August. We also studied two more suffixes, -ing and -ed. We can add -ing to the end of a word to show that an action is happening now and -ed to the end of a word to show that an action happened in the past. Math...This week our focus was on beginning a geometry unit! We reviewed basic shapes by exploring pattern blocks (though not getting into too much detail about attributes yet!) We also discussed fractions by completing a paper folding activity. These discussions will continue on this week! Writing...This week we worked on writing "How To" pieces which are designed to teach the reader how to do something that we are good at. This helps us organize our information under headings so the reader can easily understand us. A "How To" is just one style of nonfiction text. Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
I can hardly believe how close Team 210 is to becoming second graders! We have so many fun things planned to round out this wonderful year and I look forward to seeing, not only the growth these students will make in these final months together, but also being able to look back and see a year's worth of growth in action! Here we go into the homestretch! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we dove fully into studying nonfiction texts in our literacy groups. We have reviewed common text features such as bold print, the table of contents, photos, captions, labels, headings, the glossary, and an index. As we read nonfiction, we are simultaneously studying nonfiction writing as our final unit of the year. All of this is tied together as we are exposed to nonfiction texts in order to write our own about our NH animals! Our books this week also helped us classify animals into the categories of mammal, reptile, fish, amphibian, bird, and insect. Word Study...This week, we learned the new vowel team, -ue, which has two sounds. -ue sounds different in the word rescue and blue. We have almost learned all of the vowel teams that make the long vowel sounds. Along the way, we have also been discussing the rule that an -e after a vowel and consonant can make the vowel long. Math...This week our focus was on the language in addition and subtraction word problems and solving word problems using both base-ten blocks and an empty number line. We created two charts where we highlighted the language we should be looking for in word problems to let us know whether we should add or subtract. For example, we listed that if we read "in all," "all together," "more," or a word like "gets" or "earns," then we will be adding. But if we read "fewer," "left over," "loses," or phrases like "gives away," then we will most likely be subtracting. Writing...As we dive into nonfiction writing, we began by asking ourselves the question, "Why do writers write nonfiction in the first place?" We answered that nonfiction writers have information that they want to teach to their readers. Each of us has at least one thing we can teach to someone else, so that is where we began our journey with nonfiction this week. We brainstormed and began our very own "how-to" writing pieces. We chose one thing we felt like we were experts at and listed what materials we needed, what the steps were that needed to be carried out, and also added some diagrams and labels to help out our readers. We also divided our information into sections with headings. All in preparation for writing our animal reports! Upcoming Events!
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AuthorMusings of a Grade 1 teacher. Outlet for exciting "goings-on" in the classroom. Archives
May 2018
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