Weekly Updates March 7-11

Hello,

It looks like this week will be bringing some warmer weather. Yippee! Students are still encouraged to wear their boots outside to keep their feet dry and try to keep the mud out of our classroom. Try to spend sometime outside this week.If that means a little less math or reading at home, we understand!

Upcoming Events:

Friday, March 11th-Author Breakfast-Join us anytime between 7:15-7:45 AM to read published work of New Directions' students.

Thursday, March 17th-Field Trip to the PAC to see The BFG. Please return permission slip and money if you haven't already.

Monday, March 21st and Tuesday, March 22nd-Portfolio Conferences. Confirmation forms with scheduled times will come home Friday, March 4th.

Wednesday March 23th-Monday March 28th-Spring Break

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: As we continue our character unit, we move into the next part of our unit, "Learning Important Lessons." We will be discovering the lessons our stories teach by re rereading the end and thinking, "How did the trouble get fixed?" and think, "What did the character realize or learn?" As we read, we always keep the life lessons in mind and try to predict the life lesson from the beginning.  We will also be comparing the books we read looking for similarities and differences in the characters and life lessons. As we learn more about the lessons in our books, we'll start to group our books together by the lessons the teach. 

Writers' Workshop: We are continuing our "Writing Like Scientists" unit. Last week we conducted two different experiments: liquids in a bottle (dish soap, oil and rubbing alcohol) and mixing half and half, sugar and vanilla in a baggie and adding it to another baggie with ice and it turned into ice cream. Directions for the ice cream came home on Friday if you wanted to try this out at your house. It was a big hit, and the first grade scientists were already coming up with ideas on ways they change the experiment by adding in different flavors. As we conducted our experiments we wrote up lab reports which included questions, hypotheses, procedures, results and conclusions. This week first graders will be conducting their own solids and liquids experiments and recording them in lab reports. 

Math Workshop: We're continuing our Comparisons in Data unit this week. In the beginning of the week first graders will be conducting their own survey with a partner, surveying our class and representing the data. Some examples of questions students may ask are: Which do you like better: summer or winter? Or, which would you rather eat: grapes or apples? I can't wait to hear all the questions first graders are wondering! We'll end our week by using comparison bars to help us solve compare story problems. For example, Kim has 10 crayons. Sam has 3. How many more crayons does Kim have than Sam?

Science/Social Studies: This week we'll be investigating liquids in centers to learn even more about their properties.  Our centers will include: drop races, mixing liquids, flowing liquids and using pebblego to learn more about matter.

Word Study: New words this week are: how, your, people, friend. Words will be assessed this Friday, March 14. 

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

Kathy Zobel