Spring weather is here! Students are feeling it and the energy has picked up. It is getting a little harder to focus in the classroom. Please encourage your child to finish out the year strong.
Looking ahead here are some things on our calendar:
5/9-1:20 release
5/14 and 9/29-garden with Farmer Leila
5/23-Visualizing Teaching Strategy field trip with Mattone's 2nd grade class, led by our shared ELL teacher, Molly Watkins @ Smith College gallery.
5/28-Memorial Day (no school)
6/15-Mill River, End of Year Celebration (tentative)
Here's a look at our learning this week and into next:
ELA-R controlled vowels and oi/oy.
Math-Story problems: solving for the missing part, writing the question in (what are we looking for?), 3 addends.
Writing-poetry: animal poems, color poems, acrostic poems.
*Embryology will start next week and eggs will arrive on the 10th.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Thursday, April 26, 2018
New Friends in Room 4
Hello and happy Spring! Your child may have mentioned to you that we have had a number of new friends recently join our class. Four in the last month. We are thrilled to have so many diverse new learners that bring new languages to our class and share their cultures with us. I have been so impressed with the empathy I have seen from our students and how helpful they have been in acclimating them to our classroom and school.
Assessment season has begun and my hope is to get through them before the weather becomes sunny. We will all want some more outside time at that point. Until then, each assessment will be given one-on-one due to the assessments we use in first grade, so it will require some patience and take some time with 22 students. We will do BAS for reading, letter name/ID for some, math-2 parts(structuring and place value AVMR).
In reading, students are doing "R controlled vowels" or "Bossy R". Words with ar, or, ir, er, and ur. Students' new memory words are: cold, know, does, laugh, both, again. We are working on paraphrasing and summarizing through our comprehension toolkit work. In writing students continue to learn about poetry. We are starting to write poetry about animals and encourage students to have fun and write in a playful creative way as a poet.
In math we have been working on creating graphs and reading graphs. Students have done a fantastic job! It has been a lot of fun gathering data on things like how many pockets we have, favorite food, ice cream and color. Today we start working on story problems.
Looking ahead, we will be getting the eggs on May 10th to start our embryology unit. This is many students favorite part of first grade. Students learn a lot and are very engaged during the unit and excitement builds as we get closer to the expected date of the chicks hatching.
Wish List: Chlorox wipes for the table, class snack, glue sticks, large white construction paper.
Assessment season has begun and my hope is to get through them before the weather becomes sunny. We will all want some more outside time at that point. Until then, each assessment will be given one-on-one due to the assessments we use in first grade, so it will require some patience and take some time with 22 students. We will do BAS for reading, letter name/ID for some, math-2 parts(structuring and place value AVMR).
In reading, students are doing "R controlled vowels" or "Bossy R". Words with ar, or, ir, er, and ur. Students' new memory words are: cold, know, does, laugh, both, again. We are working on paraphrasing and summarizing through our comprehension toolkit work. In writing students continue to learn about poetry. We are starting to write poetry about animals and encourage students to have fun and write in a playful creative way as a poet.
In math we have been working on creating graphs and reading graphs. Students have done a fantastic job! It has been a lot of fun gathering data on things like how many pockets we have, favorite food, ice cream and color. Today we start working on story problems.
Looking ahead, we will be getting the eggs on May 10th to start our embryology unit. This is many students favorite part of first grade. Students learn a lot and are very engaged during the unit and excitement builds as we get closer to the expected date of the chicks hatching.
Wish List: Chlorox wipes for the table, class snack, glue sticks, large white construction paper.
Friday, April 13, 2018
What's Next?
Today students will have earned a fun day, after a spelling and math assessment yesterday and a Superkids assessment this morning! Students also filled their pom-pom jar for great behavior and showing CARE. So they have earned some extra recess and a video that connects to our poetry unit. I will read them a poem and then watch the video. We have just finished up a math and Superkids unit and are in the middle of poetry. Here's a quick look at where we are headed with Superkids and math after vacation:
In reading students will start the /oy/ and /oi/ word patterns. They will learn to read and write words like boy, toy, soil and boil. Students will practice the memory words: cold, know, does, laugh, both, again. We will be working on comprehension with some non-fiction text as well and follow up on paraphrasing from a previous comprehension lesson. Please keep up all the great reading you are doing over vacation. I am so impressed with the reading I am seeing at school!
In math we have wrapped up our place value unit, but will review some of this content at the end of the year. After break we will start data collection, graphing and stories problems, where students are asked to solve for different parts of an equation.
Have a fantastic Spring Break!
Monday, April 9, 2018
Week Before Break...
Hello families! It's hard to believe it is almost spring break. We are flying through first grade and students are learning so much! They have certainly earned a break! Here is a look at this week's learning:
Reading:
We are working on aw and all endings and looking at the following memory words: they, come, coming, put and our. Students are also working on main idea and paraphrasing information or retelling in their own words.
Writing:
We are kicking off poetry this week. Students will be writing about objects and nature this week. Students will learn to write as poets. We have been reading a lot of poetry in class and students will be reading and illustrating some Shel Silvertein poems as another part of our unit. This will be a 3-week unit.
Math:
Students are wrapping up unit 9 of math, which covers conceptual place value. We are covering the jump, split and jump-split strategy to solve equations. Students will complete an assessment this week and when they return from their vacation time, we will start graphing and story problems.
Wish List:
Reading:
We are working on aw and all endings and looking at the following memory words: they, come, coming, put and our. Students are also working on main idea and paraphrasing information or retelling in their own words.
Writing:
We are kicking off poetry this week. Students will be writing about objects and nature this week. Students will learn to write as poets. We have been reading a lot of poetry in class and students will be reading and illustrating some Shel Silvertein poems as another part of our unit. This will be a 3-week unit.
Math:
Students are wrapping up unit 9 of math, which covers conceptual place value. We are covering the jump, split and jump-split strategy to solve equations. Students will complete an assessment this week and when they return from their vacation time, we will start graphing and story problems.
Wish List:
- Classroom snack
- Large white construction paper
- table wipes
- gluesticks
- dry erase markers
Have a great week and relaxing Spring Break!
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Snack donations
Hello families! We have had so many generous families donate snack this year. At least half of the students in our clas do not come with snack each day. With that being said, we are flying through snack and almost out. If you would be willing to donate, or have not yet donated and are able, we would really appreciate it! Thanks for your support!
Monday, April 2, 2018
Poetry Kick-Off!
This week we are starting to read some poetry, before the students start to create their own next week. We are reading both shorter rhymes and have started with some Shel Silverstein poems, which the students are having a lot of fun with. I encourage you to read some poems at home. Students will be recording their original poems in their poetry notebooks and illustrating some poems written by other authors.
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