Week of February 2-6

Dear parents,

  

I am sorry that I didn't post an entry in our blog last week! It was a busy week for us.

This coming week in first grade we are back in the swing of reading groups. Students began bringing home books last week, please remember your child needs to bring their book back to school every day.  

In reading comprehension we have been working on the strategy "wondering" which we practiced last week with the books On Down the Road and Charlie Anderson.  In the stories we stopped at different parts and made I Wonder statements about the story.  We discussed that reading is thinking! We aren't just decoding words, we are reading for meaning.

In writing, we have been working on How To writing.  We have discussed the helpers that make a how to more understandable: pictures, numbered steps, a title, a list of items needed and a table of contents.  

Our popcorn words are: play, stay, day, away, stayed and played.  We will focus on -ay endings and adding -ed to words.  I will send them home Monday.

In math we worked this week on comparing and adding two digit numbers using base 10 blocks.  We will write number stories this coming week, expect a homelink Tuesday and Thursday.

We are beginning a new social studies unit -"Earning and Spending." We will discuss trading and why people trade, we will read the book Pig and Crow. We will talk about how trades can be unfair. We will learn about opportunity costs.  The family trees are coming back home, they are not graded.

Valentine's Day is coming. We will decorate bags in class next week. We will have our party on February 13th at 1:30.  We will exchange cards and have a treat.  A note will come home next week.

January 20-24

Dear parents,

This week in First Grade we are moving into our second semester of school! 

In reading we will hear the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. We will visualize the snow, then later in the week we will paint snowy day pictures! 

In Writng I willbe giving the district required writing assessment today and tomorrow, we will hear the book Too Many Toys by David Shannon. We will talk about one of our favorite toys and write about the toy. This will take two days, the we will return to "How-to" writing.  

Our popcorn words this week are: look, looks, looking,sing, sings, singing.  We will focus on adding -s and adding -ing endings. 

In math we will begin Unit 5.  We will on work on  place value to the 100's place.  

Look for the family letter this week for math.

In science we have completed the unit on solids and liquids. We will see the salt left behind from our salt solution. Tomorrow we will dissolve a piece of candy in water and watch the water evaporate over a few days. 

Have a good night!

Week of January 12-16

This week in first grade we are busy wrapping up the first semester of our school year.

I have continued to assess students in reading.  I will continue into next week with assessing and return to groups as soon as possible.

We read the book Sheep out to Eat and used visualizing as a stategy for comprehension during the story.  We also used the story to think about -ee and -ea sounds in words,  we played a fun memory game with rhyming words. We will read The Empty Pot to discuss the character traits: wise and honest. 

In math, we have completed unit 4 on measurement.  We have begun the quarterly assessment today. We will complete it tomorrow and begin unit 5 next week. Look for the family letter and begin practicing facts for addition and subtraction at home.

In science, we have completed the solids and liquids kit. We learned this week about solids and liquids together, evaporation and a little about the water cycle.

In writing we have begun to explore how to writing, we looked at books with how to's in them. We wrote a how to together.  Tomorrow we will write our own how to.

There is no school Friday or Monday.  

Have a good night, 

Mrs. Scheck 

Week of January 5-9

Dear parents, 

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a relaxing holiday and enjoyed the season with your family. It was a fun and busy two weeks at my house and it is good to be back into a normal routine.

This week in first grade, we will be reading books to practice the comprehension strategy called visualization.  We read the book In The Tall, Tall Grass. We will read it again and do our own illustrations using the visualization strategy for a class book tomorrow.  

Our popcorn words this week focus on -er endings.  The popcorn words were sent home today. We will also learn about consonants and vowels.  We will be vowel detectives with names to find the number of consonants and vowels in the students names in our class.

For reading, I will begin assessing students one on one starting this week. This will take me a few weeks. During this time I will not be seeing reading groups, so your child will not be bringing home their reading bags. Please continue to read at home each night. After reading have your child retell the story to you including the characters, setting, problem, solution and the beginning, middle and ending.  I'm excited to see how much growth the students have made since the beginning of the school year.

In writing, we have graduated to a new unit of writing called How-To writing.  We will begin this week 

looking at and reading how to books.  Students will notice a format for How-To writing. We will practice writing How To's together and begin trying an independent How-To this week!

We continue to work on measurement in unit 4 for Math.  Today we practiced measuring to the nearest inch with a tape measure.  We will measure our height and graph the various heights of the students in our class.  We will learn how to tell time to the half hour and follow the lesson up with a homelink on Wednesday. We will learn about fact power. This is a good time to start your child on practicing with flash cards for addition.  We will learn "turn around" facts.

There will be a unit 4 assessment early next week and a quarterly assessment later next week, I will give you an email explaining what to focus on for the test.  

In science, we will begin the last portion of the Solids and Liquids unit.  We will learn about mixtures. We will explore evaporation and observe dissolving a solid inside of a liquid to make a solution.  

Please be sure to send snow clothes each day in case we go outside! If the temperature is above zero, we will be outdoors for recess.

Enjoy the pictures of our first day in 2015!

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