Weekly Updates February 1-5

Hello,

There are lots of new things happening this week in First Grade! We will be starting our new reading unit, Readers Get to Know Characters by Performing Their Books. In science we will be starting our Solids and Liquids unit, which provides lots of hands on opportunities with solids and liquids. This is a favorite first grade investigation!  It also sounds like more snow may be on the way, so remember to bring snow pants and boots. If you have extra mittens, these can be helpful as they tend to get rather wet at recess.

Upcoming Events:

Monday, February 1st-School confirmation notes come home. Please return as soon as possible. 

Tuesday, February 9th-11:30 Dismissal

Friday, February 12th-Valentine Celebration-A note is coming home today. See below for a copy of the note as well.

Thursday, February 25th-11:30 Dismissal

Friday, February 26th-No School

Monday, February 29th-Melodies and Masterpieces Family Night-5:30-7:00-Night includes a short concert put on by New Directions Students. Look for more info to come home in a few weeks.

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: This week we will be starting our new unit, "Readers Get to Know Characters by Performing Their Books." This character unit builds on children's natural inclination for imitation and role-playing by inviting them to do this same sort of pretending with the characters in their books. We will spend time learning ways readers get to know a character and pretending we are characters and performing books with our partners to become character experts. This week we will think about story elements (character, setting, problem, solution) to help us learn more about our characters, think about how the pictures and words work together, and think about what all the pages together can teach us about our character. 

Writers' Workshop: Students are doing an awesome job of reviewing their favorite (or not so favorite) books. We will be finishing up this unit this week. We will be reviewing our reviews using our checklists to make sure we have all the parts. We will also be learning how we can use special print to emphasize words and phrases and be sharing our reviews on Friday.

Math Workshop: This week we will be solving and writing a variety of teen story problems. Problems will include:

* unknown partners (There are 16 flowers in the vase. 6 are pink and the rest are white. How many are white?)

*both partners unknown (I have 12 marbles. How many marbles can I put in a blue bag and red bag?)

*subtraction problems with various unknowns (15 butterflies are in the garden. Some fly away. There are 8 left. How many butterflies fly away?)

We will be using a variety of strategies to solve these problems, including equations, math mountains and drawings. Students will also be writing their own story problems to include these different types.

Science/Social Studies: We finished up our Families unit, and are moving on to Solids and Liquids. This is an exciting first grade science unit! With the help of our Einstein kit, we are able to explore and learn about solids and liquid hands on. In a few weeks, we will be writing like scientists in writing and creating our own experiments to write about. Our overall solids and liquid unit goals are:

*Solids and liquids can be described by their properties.

*Some properties of solids are color, shape, ability to roll or stack, hardness, magnetic attraction, and whether they float or sink.

*Some properties of liquids are color, tendency to flow, degree of viscosity or fluidity, whether they are miscible with water, and whether they float or sink in water.

*Tests can be performed to investigate properties of solids and liquids that cannot otherwise be observed.

We will also be studying Groundhog Day and making predictions. Keeping our fingers crossed for an early spring!

Word Study: New word wall words for this week are: 

who rain after out house

These words will be assessed Friday, February 5. 

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

Kathy Zobel

First Grade

New Directions Learning Community

Weekly Updates January 25-29

Hello,

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend! Just a reminder that Mrs. Desmond will be our guest teacher this week. Due to the snowstorm in NY over the weekend, the Institute I am attending will run Monday-Thursday now. If you need to communicate with her feel free to jot a note in your child's agenda or contact Mrs. Mitchell in the office and she will relay the message. Have a great week!

Upcoming Events:

Friday, January 29-6:00-7:30 New Directions/EQ Dance-More information to come home soon!

Tuesday, February 9th-11:30 Dismissal

Friday, February 12th-Valentine Celebration-A note will come home soon with student names and more details.

Thursday, February 25th-11:30 Dismissal

Friday, February 26th-No School

Monday, February 29th-Melodies and Masterpieces Family Night-5:30-7:00-Night includes a short concert put on by New Directions Students. Look for more info to come home in a few weeks.

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: This week in reading we will continue to focus on making sure we understand what we're reading. We'll keep track of who's talking, make sure we understand the words we read, use all of our strategies to keep our reading going quickly, and work on ways to make our reading sound smooth and fluent. We have also been working on setting our own goals as readers and working hard to accomplish those goals. 

Writers' Workshop: This week our opinion writing will take a turn as we begin to write book reviews. We'll use everything we know about opinion writing so far (tell an opinion, give reasons and examples, make comparisons, tell a small story, add a catchy introduction and say good-bye) to write book reviews. As we write reviews, we'll learn how to give sneak peak summaries spilling the beans, using conjunctions in sentences (and, but), and using speaking skills to give oral book reviews. We've read so many great books this year, now we can tell our opinion about them and convince others to read them!

Math Workshop: This week we are starting a new unit in math.  This unit extends strategies from our last units for unknown partners in addition and subtraction situations.  The methods for finding totals and differences within 10 are used in this unit for totals within 20.  We will use the strategies of counting on and making a ten.  We will access prior knowledge of strategies and apply them with numbers greater numbers.  This week we will be solving teen addition problems with unknown partners (Sam had 6 balls. Molly gave her some more. Now she has 15. How many did Molly give her?), and teen subtraction problems (Sam had 16 legos. She gave 8 to Molly. How many does she have left?)

Science/Social Studies:  This week we will be continuing our families centers to help us learn more about families today and long ago. In our centers we will learning what kinds of things families do, where people go and what they do, how are families the same/different long ago compared to today, and creating collages of things we enjoy to do with our families. 

Word Study: New word wall words for this week are: 

that best will they saw

These words will be assessed Friday, January 29th. 

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

Kathy Zobel

First Grade

New Directions Learning Community

Weekly Updates January 18-22

Hello,

Last week marked the end of the second quarter. It's hard to believe we are halfway through our year! First graders have grown so much this year. Report cards will be coming home Monday, January 25th. What a great way to celebrate all the gains your child has made so far this year. 

Upcoming Events:

Monday, January 18th-Friday, January 22nd-Celebrate New Directions Week

Tuesday, January 19th-5:30-7:00 PM Spaghetti and Art Night

Wednesday, January 20th-No School

Thursday, January 21st-6:00-7:00 PM-Gym Night-No RSVP necessary

Friday, January 29-6:00-7:30 New Directions/EQ Dance

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: 

We are continuing to add new tools to read hard words. Today we tried sounds many ways to figure out words because some words sound different than they look. We need to try sounds several ways until the word sounds right. We will also work on reading the words we know is a snap, and only slowing down to read a word when we have to so our reading sounds as smooth as it can be. Thursday and Friday we will focus on using tools to understand our books. We'll work on rereading if we don't understand something, and make movies in our minds to picture what's happening.

Writers' Workshop: We are continuing to work on our reviews. Students have been reviewing toys, restaurants, games and many other favorites. We will be learning more details we can add to our reviews to make them even more convincing. We'll add small moment stories that fit with the topic of our reviews, come up with ways to hook our reader into reading our reviews, write catchy conclusions to tie our pieces up and work with our partners to give our writing check-ups, making sure our writing is easy to read.

Math Workshop: 
We're finishing up our work with 2 digit numbers. We'll spend some time comparing 2 digit numbers, deciding which one is more and which one is less and practice using the appropriate symbols: < > =. We'll also spend some time practicing using 2-digit addition, focusing on using tens and ones to add 1-digit and 2 digit numbers. At the end of the week we will be focusing on mathematical practices, including making sense of problems, reasoning, and using words and models to back our thinking. 

Science/Social Studies:  We spent some time learning about Martin Luther King Jr. today. This week we will starting our families centers to help us learn more about families today and long ago. In our centers we will learning what kinds of things families do, where people go and what they do, how are families the same/different long ago compared to today, and creating collages of things we enjoy to do with our families. 

Word Study: No new words will be coming home this week. We will be spending time studying letter combinations and different sounds they can make (ie -ed can make the /t/, /d/ and /id/ sound).

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

Kathy Zobel

First Grade

New Directions Learning Community

Weekly Updates Jan. 11-15

January 11th News

The cold is officially here and so is inside recess!  Many lego creations and art projects are being created this week.   We are hoping it will warm up at the end of the week.  We have been busy starting lots of new units and we are also focusing on mid year reminders of classroom and hallway expectations.  It's hard to believe that we are half way through 1st grade!  

Reminder: Yearbook order forms are due back by Jan. 22nd. 

Upcoming Events:

January 15: Early Dismissal
January 19: Family Night (Spaghetti and Art, 5:30)

January 20: No School

January 21: Gym Night 6-7 p.m.

January 29: New Directions/Quinney Dance 6:00-7:30 p.m. 

Curriculum Update: 

Reading: This week in reading students will think about what is happening in the story to help them problem solve a difficult word.  They will also work on listening carefully to consider what word might come next and thinking "What kind of word might fit here?" We will be looking closely at words towards the end of the week looking at different parts and recalling words that look similar to help us solve them.  An example is using the word bake to help us solve bakery.  I am continuing to meet with students to do our mid year assessment and we have had many mini celebrations as they are all growing so much as readers! 

Writing:  We are continuing to write opinions.  This week we will become review writers, writing about anything and everything: toys, restaurants, video games, the works..  Review writers not only share their opinions but also persuade others to share their opinion.  Students will have to use their persuasive voice by writing as though they are talking right to their reader and offer important information.  We will also make comparisons and include why their topic is better or worse than others.  At home you might have conversations about your favorite restaurants, movies, restaurants, vacations, or even games to support this work at school.

Word Study: The new words this week are: with, this, over, very, want.  Please continue to study reading and writing these words at home.  The words have become a little trickier to spell correctly and might need a little more practice!  

Math: In Math this week we are focusing on adding with tens and ones or both.  Students will need to look closely at the numbers to notice place value.  Some examples of the problems that we will be solving are:

3+2= 5

30+60= 60

30+6= 36

When adding mixed equations we will be using the counting on strategy or drawing pictures.  Some examples are:

28+5=

28: 29, 30, 31, 32, 33. So, 33 is the answer.  

Social Studies: This week in social studies we are continuing our Family unit.  We went on PebbleGo yesterday to learn more about families and compare now and long ago.  We will be reading and doing some writing about reading with the book My Family Community and at the end of the week we will begin our centers. Below are some pictures from our work on ipads! 

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

Kathy Zobel

First Grade

New Directions Learning Community

Weekly Updates Jan. 4-8

Hello,

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable break. The snow was definitely an added excitement. With snow brings extra bundling up! Please remember to have your child bring snow pants and books in addition to his or her jackets, mittens and hats. You may also want to send extra socks and mittens as these can sometimes get pretty wet!

As we move towards January, New Directions begins to think about enrollment for next year. We have several informational sessions scheduled during the month of January for any families who would like to learn more about New Directions for their child. Word of mouth is the best way to spread the great things happening at New Directions, so if you know of any families who would be interested in sending their children to New Directions, here are the dates of our upcoming information sessions:

Tuesday, January 5th-6:00-7:00 PM Info Session at New Directions

Thursday, January 14th-6:00-7:30 PM District-Wide Info Session held at Tanner Early Learning Center

Tuesday, January 19th-5:30-7:00 PM-Spaghetti and Art Family Night

Wednesday, January 20th-10:00 AM-noon-Open House at New Directions

Monday, January 25th-6:00-7:00 PM-Info Session at New Directions

Families can also call Mrs. Frischmann at 766-6116 to set up individual tours.

Upcoming Events:

Friday, January 15th-11:30 Dismissal, end of 2nd quarter

Monday, January 18th-Friday, January 22nd-Celebrate New Directions Week

Tuesday, January 19th-5:30-7:00 PM Spaghetti and Art Night

Thursday, January 21st-6:00-7:00 PM-Gym Night

Monday, January 20th-No School

Friday, January 29-6:00-7:30 New Directions/EQ Dance

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We started our new unit yesterady, Readers Have Big Jobs to Do: A focus on fluency, phonics and comprehension. This unit will focus on having students take on the important jobs a readers needs to do. They need to have strategies to be in charge of their own reading, set their own agenda and get through the hard parts by themselves. Students will learn to begin solving their own reading dilemmas by using the tools and strategies they've learned this year. They'll learn to balance their reading energies between world solving and meaning making.

This week we will be focusing on the important jobs readers do. Reading are their own boss. They say, "I Can Do This!", readers use everything they know to solve a work, readers 'check it!' to self-monitor, readers make a plan and readers get help when they need it. The next week I will also be reading one-on-one with students to assess their reading level as they continue to grow as readers. It's amazing the progress first grader readers have made so far this year!

Writers' Workshop: This week we will start opinion writing in first grade, Writing Review. In this unit we will begin by judging items and explaining judgments in convincing ways. Next we will move into writing reviews about anything and everything: toys, restaurants, video games, and anything else important to students. During the last part of this unit we will learn to write book reviews. 

Math Workshop: We are continuing our work with 10s and 1s. We will be doing some beginning grouping of ones to compose a ten, adding a 1-digit number to a 2-digit number, solve addition story problems that involve grouping tens and extra ones, and using place value to compare 2-digit numbers. For example, 70 < 80

Science/Social Studies:  Yesterday we spent some time talking about goals for the new year. Today we will be starting our new unit: Families Today and Long Ago. We will be exploring what makes a family, what families like to do together, and how families today are similar and different than families long ago.

Word Study: We introduced 5 new word wall words yesterday. The words are: jump, not, off, have, eat. 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.

January Homework Calendars came home before break. Here's another copy:

January Lunch Menu

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

Kathy Zobel

First Grade

New Directions Learning Community