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 

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