Weekly Updates October 5-9

Hello,

Lots of exciting things have been happening in first grade! First graders have been reading longer and stronger and are writing up a storm. We have also been active scientists! W have aquariums and terrariums at each of our tables that we are studying and learning from everyday. We are looking forward to another full week of learning and growing! Please check our blog as you can. I'll be working to add pictures of our weekly events for you to check out!

Upcoming events:

Oct. 9th-Homecoming Parade-We hope you can join us. Wear orange and black to school today! Crazy Hair Day!

Oct. 16th-Math Morning 7:30-8:15 AM Ryan Flessner, our math consultant from Butler, will be presenting information about math instruction.

Oct.  20th   Grandparents and Goodies Family Night-Please RSVP if you haven't and are attending.

Oct. 23 & 24-No School

Red Ribbon Week:

Red Ribbon Week is an alcohol, tobacco and other drug and violence prevention awareness campaign observed annually in October in the United States.

Tues. Oct. 27th....no sweat being drug free...wear sweats
Wed. Oct. 28th....Red Day
Thurs. Oct. 29th...drug free is double the fun....twinning
Fri. Oct. 30th...we're the ghosts. ..say BOO to drugs....wear orange and black!

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We finished our Building Good Reading Habits unit by sharing the habits we are great at and ones we are still working on. We began our new unit today: Word Detectives Ues All They Know to Solve Words. In this unit we will work on our word solving skills. When readers get stuck, they think, "Does it look right? Does it make sense? Does it sound right?" We will also work on more word solving strategies as our books become trickier. At the end of our unit, we will be spending time working on fluency and using punctuation clues to help make our reading voices smooth like talking. I have also begun meeting with students in guided reading groups. During guided reading we read books that are just a little bit trickier than students' independent levels. It's a great time to try out some of our newest strategies!

Writers' Workshop: We will be wrapping up our small moment stories this week. We have been using Night of the Veggie Monster, by George McClements, to notice and try new things in our writing. Last week we tried writing exact actions just like George. This week we will try out POP OUT words and ellipses (...). We will also be choosing our best piece to edit, revise and celebrate as first graders.

Math Workshop: We finished up our first math unit, Partners and Number Patterns through 10. Students did an amazing job with these concepts! Our next unit is Addition and Subtraction strategies. In this unit we will be representing problems with objects, drawings, fingers or equations, learning strategies for solving equations (counting on and counting on from the greater number), solving subtraction equations and working towards fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Look for a math homework sheet to come home on Wednesday.

Science: Our aquariums and terrariums are growing! Last week we added snails and guppies to our aquariums. This week we will be adding bess beetles and pill bugs to our terrariums. Very exciting times in first grade! We will be bringing home our plants today. Hopefully they make it home safely! We learned what plants need to live and grow.

Word Study: We introduced 5 new word wall words today. The words are: the, went, is, are, be. We will be assessing these words on Friday. These are words we want students to be able to read and write automatically without having to think to sound them out.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

Kathy Zobel

First Grade

New Directions Learning Community