Week of December 15-19

Dear parents, 

I just can't believe that we are approaching the end of 2014! This year went by so fast and we are almost half way through another school year.  

This morning we celebrated at our Holiday party with pancakes, games, hot chocolate, and crafts.

Thank you to all the parents who sent in food and items to help us celebrate.  Thank you to the parents who came in to make pancakes, hot chocolate and to do our crafts. Enjoy the photos below!

This week we have been learning how to visualize when we read and the book doesn't have pictures.  Visualization is a comprehension strategy for readers, we practiced this week with several poems and the story One Snowy Night.  We called it "making a movie" in your head.  We discussed visualizing during the book Charlotte's Web and how one person may picture the story differently than another person. 

We worked this week to begin publishing a small moment from our last unit of writing.  When we return we will begin writing How To's. The student's writing has become so much more clear in the last unit Writng for Readers.  

In January, I will be assessing students one on one for reading, this will take a few weeks but it will show me how much students have grown as readers.

In math, we are well into Unit 4. We have learned about the standard foot and inch, we will continue  learning about measurement in January.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday! 

Mrs. Scheck

Week of December 8-12

Hello parents,

This week in First Grade we are beginning to wrap up the retelling unit we have focused on for Reading Comprehension.  Today we will read Little Nino's Pizzeria by Karen Barbour.  We will pracitice retelling the story with pictures.  Later this week we will begin a new unit on visualizing. Students will use inferencing and scheme to make a movie in their head of what is happening in the story. We will read the book Do You See What I Saw by Kay Winters.

Our popcorn words this week are: so, said, was, want, to, doing. Our phonics lessons this week will be about high frequency words.  We will play follow the path, a game to practice high frequency words.

 

In writing today we will work on revising with a partner. I will show students how to read their story over carefully with a pen and fix small mistakes,  we will continue to focus on writing for readers and making our writing readable.

In math, today is the Unit 3 math test. I will give the test in small groups.  We will begin Unit 4 this week.  The unit focues on measurement both standard and nonstandard, we will measure things with our feet and compare it to a regular one foot ruler. We will begin the unit looking at the thermometer and how to measure temperature.  The unit 4 Family Letter is coming home tonight.

In science, we have been working with liquids in the last few lessons, we observed liquid levels in different containers.   We will do a sinking and floating experiment this week. We have discussed the following vocabulary with liquids: viscous, transparent, translucent, foamy, bubbly, and colorless.The last part of the unit is solids and liquids together. We will begin the last part next week.

The family trees that were completed at home will continued to be shared this week. A few trees will be shared tomorrow and then I will hang the trees in the hallway.

We have a new student starting on Wednesday, welcome to Hailen Perin!

Thank you, 

Mrs. Scheck

Week of December 1-5

Hello parents,

I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving and maybe started to prepare for the next holiday that will be here before we know it!

This week in first grade we are continuing to work on retellings. I'll be showing the students how to retell with a "Shape Go Map."  The map uses three symbols to show the parts of a story.  First we will practice whole group and later this week the students will do a retelling independently.  The story we will practice on is called Hooray for Wodney Wat.  We will be reading it tomorrow and Thursday.

The new popcorn words came home today. The words are: make, my, there, they, this and will.  We have discussed how the word they is written with the and a y- not with an a.  This is a funny word that you can't "sound out."

In writing we are working on making our small moments writing readable.  We discussed today what makes a story a small moment. We remembered the parts of a small moment such as; the characters move and talk, there is a setting and a close in ending. A small moment is told in itsy-bitsy steps.

We remembered how to make our writing readable.  Writers do this by using spaces, neat handwriting and by spelling the word wall or popcorn words correctly because they are available to look at as we write.

This week we will begin looking at the properties of liquids in Science,  we will observe several liquids in their containers.  We will learn the words viscous, translucent and transparent.

In math we will be continuing to work on addition and subtraction.  We will do domino addition.  We will also work on story problems solving with groups of numbers.  A unit review test will be given early next week.

Please remember the family trees are due on Thursday, December 4.  We will begin sharing them in class.

Be sure to send students with hats, mittens and boots. It's cold out there and we go out on most days.  

Thank you,

Mrs. Scheck