Happy November! It looks like we'll be having a few warm days. This will be a perfect kick off to our weather unit in science, which ties into our Building for Kids fieldtrip.
Upcoming Events:
Tues. November 10th and Thurs. November 12th-Portfolio Conferences
Monday November 16th-Half Day-11: 30 Dismissal
New Directions is participating in the KHS National Honor Society Food Drive from Oct 26-Nov 6. Please consider donating if you haven't already.
Curriculum Updates:
Readers' Workshop: We will be finishing up our Word Detective unit by being word detectives in nonfiction books. We'll be using clues to help us figure out tricky words and what they mean. We'll continue using our strategies of, "Does it look right? Does it make sense? Does it sound right?" when trying to figure out tricky words. We'll also be sharing our new learning from our nonfiction books with our partners.
Writers' Workshop: As we finish up our How-To writing, we'll be starting our Nonfiction Chapter Books unit. Writers will be bringing home the How-To books they have written over the past two weeks. In our new unit students will be writing information teaching books. In the beginning they will be writing a basic information book similar to a picture book. By the end of the unit they will be creating multiple information chapter books filled with elaboration, interesting text elements and pictures that supplement the teaching of the words. This week we will find a topic we know a lot about, plan our topic across our fingers, and keep readers in mind when writing.
Math Workshop: We will be starting a new unit, Unknown Numbers in Addition and Subtraction. This week we will be focusing on solving problems with unknown addition partners. For example, We see 9 fish. Five are big. The others are small. How many fish are small? We will be exploring multiple strategies for solving these problems.
Science/Social Studies: Students were very excited to create posters sharing their research about bats, spiders or pumpkins. This week we will be starting our weather unit. We'll be spending the week building background, including a weather class at the Building for Kids on Friday.
Word Study: We introduced 5 new word wall words today. The words are: look, make, but, give, all. 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. Students also continue to work on phonics skills and word sorts at their developmental level.
As always, let me know if you have any questions.
Kathy Zobel
First Grade
New Directions Learning Community
Help spread the word!
New Directions Learning Community will be offering a free event
for senior citizens in the Fox Valley.
On Thursday November 5th from 8:30 – 9:15 am
seniors are welcome to visit our school.
Coffee and pastries will be served while they
learn about how school is different today than it was when they were young.
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