Week of November 24-28

Hello parents,

This is a short week for us due to Thanksgiving. We will not have new popcorn words, we will keep working on the list from last week.

In phonics this week we are working on blends with r, such as cr and br.  We will work on the blends with r next week too.

We are practicing retellings and we read Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats.  We discussed beginning, middle and ending of a story when we retelling it.

 

In writing,  We have moved on to a new unit called "Writing for Readers." We will keep writing small moments but our focus will shift. Our goal is to make our writing readable! We are working on using one finger space between each word. We are stretching out the longer words and writing what we hear. We are making sure the word wall words are spelled accurately. We are focusing on neat handwriting.

In math we have introduced the dime last week and this week we are counting dimes, nickels and pennies.  We played a game which is easy to play at home. You need dice and 10 pennies,5 nickels and 10 dimes but any combination will work.  A player rolls two dice then he or she picks up that number in coins. For example if you roll 7 you pick up 7 cents.  The game is played until the pile of coins is gone, then each player counts their coins and the player with the most wins.

We are also continuing to work on addition and subtraction. Tomorrow we will learn domino addition.

In science we will be starting to work with liquids, last week we learned the words: engineer, tower, flexible and rigid.  

In social studies we began making our time lines today. We read the book When I Was Little by Jamie Lee Curtis.  We discussed the concepts of past and present.  We put our pictures on the time line. If your child has not brought in three pictures please send them tomorrow!

A note came home about the Family Tree Project.  Please read the note and have fun making a family tree with your student. We will share and display the trees in December!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with your family!

Mrs. Scheck

The feast

Here are a few pictures from today's feast!

Tower building

We made towers today in science with our solid objects!

Week of November 17-21

Dear parents,

Brrr! It has gotten cold outside! Students will need to bring boots and their snow pants. It is hard to carry all of those things. If needed students may leave their snow pants in the coat closet. Please be sure clothing is marked with your child's name. 

This week in reading we are working on retellings, we have read the book The Biggeset Best Snowman Ever. Today we will retelling the story on a big snowman story map.  We will introduce a five finger retelling using a retelling glove too.  

In math this week, I'm teaching the students "Frames and Arrows". It is more practice with adding and subtracting using a rule and a diagram. Expect a homelink today.  We will also introduce counting up on a calculator. I will introduce the dime and we will begin counting pennies, nickels and dimes all together.

In social studies we will begin making our time lines using the photos the students brought in to school.

In science we will sort solid objects and group them by their attributes. Later in the week, we will construct with the solids and learn the words:cylinder, tower, and engineer.

In writing, we have started to write our final copies if one piece of writing, we plan to complete them this week.  

Thursday is our first grade feast! If you are bringing a dish to pass, please be sure to label your bowl and utensils so they can be returns to you.  Pack a small lunch for your child that day if they aren't buying the hot lunch and bring a drink!

Have a great week!

Mrs. Scheck

Week of November 10-14

Dear parents, 

We welcomed our new student, Olivia, to our class this week! All the students have been so helpful making Olivia feel at home!

This week in first grade we are beginning to work on retelling a story after reading. Today we read Caps For Sale.  We stopped throughout the book to turn and talk about the important parts of the story, we discussed the problem and the solution.  We also read the book Have Fun Molly Lou Melon.  We made text to text connections with the story to other books we have read where the characters had similar traits: courageous, brave, self-assured and adventurous.

Our popcorn words this week are focusing on words ending in silent e.  Have, here, come, some, came, like, little. We are noticing when we use words with silent e that the e can make the vowel in the word say it's name.

We have been working on publishing a small moment in writing, we met with a partner to revise or change things in our writing that didn't make sense.  We will spend time tomorrow making our writing readable for others by rewriting our stories.

In math we have introduced odd and even numbers.  We have learned that in even numbers everyone has a partner, odd numbers have one partner left out. Here is a rhyme to help rememberodd and even.

Odd Todd thinks he is fine -  1,3,5,7,9.

Even Steven thinks he's great - 0,2,4,6,8!

We also used the number grid to find patterns counting by 2's and 5's.

In Social Studies a note went home asking for three pictures to make a time line in class.

Remember there is no school on Thursday, November 13th.  Parent teacher conference will be on that day, I look forward to meeting with parents and discussing all the great things your students are learning in First Grade!

Mrs. Scheck

Week of November 3-7

Dear parents, 

This week in first grade we are preparing for our first grade feast on November 20th.  We have talked about the first Thanksgiving and about why we celebrate Thanksgiving.  Over the next two weeks we will be making turkey hats and placemats for the occasion.

In math, we have begun unit three by looking at patterns. We will be taking the first quarter benchmark this week.  

In reading we read the book Too Many Toys by David Shannon. We learned that readers look at the cover of a book and a few pages to think about the featured character. In this story Spencer had too many toys and he learns the best toy is a cardboard box!

We will read the book Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon.  In this story we will do a short character analysis of the outside and inside traits of Molly Lou Melon. We will also look for patterns in her behavior to get to know her character better.

In social studies, we are wrapping up our mapping unit with the at home project due on November 10th.  We also will read Berenstain Bears Don't Pollute.  We discussed how the environment can become polluted by humans and that it's our responsibility to care for the environment.

Next we will begin Science, our first unit is Solids and Liquids.  We will begin by sorting solids by their attributes and learning the words rigid and flexible.

In writing this week we will work on telling our story to our partners first then writing what we say.

We will reread our stories to make sure they make sense. Then we will look for popcorn words to be spelled correctly.  We will be getting ready to publish a small moment soon.

November 13th is parent teacher conferences.  We will not have school that day.

Popcorn words, the words this week are: she, ship, so, sit, us, up.  We practiced them with pipe cleaners, sandpaper, magnetic letters, and did invisible word rubbings. 

Have a good week!

Mrs. Scheck