Place Value

Hi Families! I want to thank the families who have been donating to the classroom off of the wishlist. We now have Friendship bags for students to decorate on the 14th and some snack. I have also had dry erase markers and wipes donated. Thank you so much!

The field trip was a lot of fun last week and we are going to have some very positive reviews on restaurants with one student writing a not so positive review. I admire that this student isn't afraid to be honest and speak her mind. We will finish the YELPS by next week and I will be typing them up and posting them over February break. Today we will continue with our anti-bullying curriculum and tomorrow we will have both mindfulness and a visualization activity with Ms. Watkins, our ELL teacher, who has done some training and work with picture books and images through and writing program for kids. The students should enjoy it and it should be helpful in building their skills.

Here's a look at our reading and math for the week:

Reading:

We will continued with our differentiated reading groups with leveled readers, written response packets, journals, games and activities. We will begin our next unit of Superkids on Tuesday, where students will look at vowel teams and learn, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking". When two vowels and together in a word, they make the long sound of the first vowel. For example in the word lead , "lead", we hear the long vowel /e/ sound. Students will be expected to read and write words with the vowel teams. Look for a strip of paper coming home in each unit with these pattern and spelling words. If students want to practice at home that is great, but it is optional. We will also look at inferring as a comprehension strategy and over the next two weeks first grade will use Pixar shorts to practice this skill. In past years, students have enjoyed this!



Math:

In math students are working on place value. We will go back to this later in the year but we are introducing students to writing numbers up to the 100's or 1000's place value. Students will look at groups in the 1's, 10's, 100's and 1000's places and the order of where the number falls. Students will also write numbers in expanded form: 538=500+30+8 or 600+20+5=625. Students will also be introduced to dimes and pennies as they relate to 10's and 1's. This unit will be short and we will wrap it up before vacation, and as I mentioned go back to place value later in the year. 

Reminders:

Please send your child with his or her folder daily. If your child has lost his/her folder or it is ruined, you may buy him/her a new one. Just write your child's nice on the front. Keep reading each night with your child at home and I would highly recommend encouraging your child to do some creative writing or card-making to work on letter formation and handwriting. We work on it daily, but for some students this may be helpful.