Weekly Updates April 25-29

Hello,
This week brings the last week of April. I can't believe how quickly the year is going. Although the weather has been unpredictable, things are starting to warm up slowly, but surely. We continue to learn and grow in first grade. 

Upcoming Events:

Friday, April 29: Yoga-wear comfy clothes
May 12: Family Night 
May 20: Community Walking Tour Field Trip

May 26: Early Dismissal 

May 27-May 30: No School

May 31: Mini Courses

June 1: Field Day

June 2: Last day of school for students. Early Dismissal

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are starting a new unit, "Reading Nonfiction Cover to Cover: Nonfiction Book Clubs. In this unit we will focus on growing nonfiction reading skills, as well as work on our speaking and listening skills. As we read longer books, we'll need strategies for hanging on to the important information. We'll also learn to take the information provided in one book and add it to information learned in another, and another, thinking and learning about a topic across many texts. This week we ill be focusing on reading with an explaining voice, and using and explaining voice when talking with our partners about our books. We will also notice the different ways nonfiction books are organized and think about how it will teach us. We'll spend some time determining what's important by looking for words and phrases that repeat.

Writers' Workshop: We will continue to work on writing series.  This week we will be working no showing realistic settings by remembering places we have been that are similar to places in our stories, including chapters in our stories, using everything we know about fiction writing to help us set goals, and using patterns like one of our favorite author's Cynthia Rylant to help us elaborate.

Word Study: We will continue to work on using all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We have also been adding many new poems to our poem binders!

Math Workshop: This week we will be starting our new unit, Geometry, Measurement and Equal Shares. In this unit we will be telling and writing time to the hour and half hour, learning about the attributes of squares, rectangles, triangles and circles, partition circles and rectangles into two or four equal shares, compose 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes, compare and order objects by length and measure objects with same-size length units. Look for the parent note that is coming home today with more information.

Social Studies: We finished up our US Symbol study on Friday, by presenting what w learned to the rest of the class. See the photos below! Mrs. Welhouse will finish up our Junior Achievement program today. This week we will be starting our study of communities and families in communities.

Have a great week!  As always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Weekly Updates April 18-22

Hello! It sounds like everyone had an opportunity to enjoy the beautiful weekend we just had. Hopefully more weather like that is soon to come!  Tomorrow we will be walking around the neighborhood to clean up trash to celebrate Earth Day.  Make sure that your child is wearing walking shoes J

Our end of the year field trip in First Grade includes a walk around Kaukauna with a few visits at local businesses.  It’s a great way to celebrate the end of our Communities unit.  We will be starting this unit next week. We will be needing chaperones for this day.  If you would like to add it to your calendar it will be Friday, May 20^th.  Also, if you will need a background check done, please let me know as soon as possible! 

Upcoming Events:

April 20th-Earth Day Clean-Up-Please return your permission slip if you haven't already. Second copies are coming home with students who still need them.

April 21 & 22: Brianna our Staff Developer from the Teachers College at Columbia University will be visiting our school and working closely with teachers and students.  We are excited for this learning experience!

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are continuing our unit, Thinking and Talking About Books. We are focusing on making connections for a couple days this week. We will be noticing when we think “That reminds me of... because…” or “This makes me think of… because….” and using these as a conversation starters with our partners and as stop and jots in our books.  We will also make sure that our connections are not taking us too far away from the book, so that we can continue to carry the meaning of the story.  At the end of the week we will revisit the importance of our partners during reading time.  Partners can help us in many ways including solving tricky words.

Writers' Workshop: We will continue to work on writing series.  We will revise and celebrate the books in our first series this week.  We will then investigate what makes realistic fiction realistic.  We will use mentor texts to help us in our inquiry.  At the end of the week we will work on “show, not tell” by focusing on tiny realistic details so that the reader can picture the story in their mind. 

Word Study: We will spend the month of April reviewing all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We have also been adding many new poems to our poem binders!

Math Workshop: We will continue to practice 2-digit addition this week.  See the chart below to see the methods that we have been using in our classroom.  We will have the unit test on Thursday.  On Friday we will be doing more number-work with numbers up to 120. 

Social Studies: This week we will be finishing up our research on U.S. Symbols.  Students will share their findings with each other.  It really is exciting how much they are learning through their own investigations!  We will also learn about Earth Day and importance of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Mrs. Welhouse will be in again on Wednesday as part of Junior Achievement. So far we have learned about communities, needs and wants, jobs and community helpers.

Have a great week!  As always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Weekly Updates April 11-15

Hello!  

Our KAT was a huge success! Students enjoyed the dress up days last week,  and did an awesome job showing off their knowledge on Friday.  Thank you for all the practice at home and all the donations that were collected. This is a huge fundraiser for our school. Money can be turned in through Friday, April 15th, so if you haven't turned yours in there is still time. Thanks again for all your support!

Upcoming Events:

This Friday, April 15^th, four-year-old-kindergarten through second grade classrooms will be cheering on our third and fourth grade testers! Please feel free to have your child wear work out gear for our “pump up for testing” day! We will conclude the day by having our third and fourth grade students parade through the halls, while the rest of the school cheers them on!

Tuesday, April 12th: Family Night-Science, Social Studies and Subs  5:30-7:00

Monday, April 18th-No School-In-service for teachers

Wednesday, April 20th-Earth Day Clean-Up. Please return permission slip if you haven't already.

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We are continuing our new unit, Thinking and Talking About Books. We will begin the unit with retelling.  This week we will be working hard to envision what's happening in our story by pretending we are in a movie and saying, "I'm imagining that...", trying to hear, smell, feel and taste what's happening and saying, "I can picture how _________sounds, feels, looks, tastes, and envisioning "between the pictures" scenes by asking, "What's happening that's not on the page?" We will also be making predictions by thinking about what's happening in the story so far and revising our predictions when they don't match what's happening in the story. We'll be trying to mark our thinking with post-its so we can share our ideas with our partners. 

Writers' Workshop: We're finishing up the first bend of our realistic fiction unit this week. We've been working hard to make up pretend characters, imagine adventures for our characters, make sure to solve our character's problem in the ending and write catchy leads. This week we will work on starting to write series books. We'll learn how authors introduce their characters in book one of their series and how to develop the dialogue in our books. 

Math Workshop: This week we'll be starting to explore 2-digit addition. We'll be using sticks and circles to represent 10s and 1s to help us solved 2-digit addition problems. We'll also be practicing writing equations vertically so the tens and ones line up. We will be reviewing adding a 1-digit number to a 2-digit number and adding a 2-digit number and a multiple of 10. See the note that is coming home today with some 2-digit addition strategies we will be using.

Science/Social Studies: We are continuing our study of US Symbols. This week students will decide which symbol they'd like to learn more about and do some research using resources such as books and Pebblego.  It is a topic that they love chatting about! We’ll be sharing some of our learning during our Family Night tomorrow.

Word Study: We will spend the month of April reviewing all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We’ll also be using the patterns and parts from these words to help us spell new words.

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

Kathy

Weekly Update April 4-8

Hello!  

I hope that your week is off to a great start!  It's so hard to believe that we are already in our second week of the 4th quarter!  As a school we have decided to implement some more options for nightly reading homework for the 4th quarter.  Today a list of reading and writing options will be coming home and students will be able to make a literacy choice nightly or at least 3 times a week.  Kids will still pack books to bring home each night, as they are always an option.  Our school goal is to create meaningful home literacy experiences for all kids.  If you have any further questions about this please feel free to email me or write a note in the planner.  

Upcoming Events:

Wednesday, April 6: Dress Up Day

Thursday, April 7: Mix Up/Backwards Day

Friday, April 8th: Dress like a Cat of KAT question/answer, Knowledge-A-Thon

Tuesday, April 12th: Family Night-Science, Social Studies and Subs  5:30-7:00

Monday, April 18th-No School-In-service for teachers

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: This week we've started our new unit, Thinking and Talking About Books. We will begin the unit with retelling.  Students will become aware of the elements of the story, particularly character, setting, and plot which will help them to have other kinds of talks about books.  We will learn that readers don’t just have thoughts after they read a book but while they read the book. We will use post-its to mark important parts and character change.  We will work on having meaningful conversations with our partners as a way to hold themselves accountable for comprehension.  Below is a checklist that we are using to check if we are including everything that we need in a great retell.  You might use this same checklist after retelling books that you are reading at home!

Writers' Workshop: We started our realistic fiction unit this week. This is an exciting unit for students because they get to do a lot of pretending!  Students will come up with characters of their own, naming and putting them into imagined scenarios. This week we will introduce that characters face trouble and that when characters get out of trouble writers give readers a satisfying ending.  We will also spend some time working on spelling and adding “sparkle words” to our writing to help bring our stories to life.  We will end the week by looking at the Narrative Checklist to see what we are doing well as narrative writers and set goals for what we want to work on next.  

Math Workshop: We've just begun our new unit, 2-digit addition.  We are taking some time this week to explore two digit numbers closely.  We are doing a lot of work with the 120 grid, before and after, and 10 more and 10 less.  Getting to know these numbers really well will help students as we move forward in this unit.  Towards the end of the week we will introduce the adding 2-digit numbers through picture drawings. 

Science/Social Studies: We are continuing our study of US Symbols. Each day that we have social studies we are choosing a new symbol to study closely.  They are becoming experts on each of these symbols…be sure to ask them about what they are learning.  It is a topic that they love chatting about! We’ll be sharing some of our learning during our Family Night next week.

Word Study: We will spend the month of April reviewing all of our words from this year. Our goal is to not only write them isolation, but also spell them correctly in our writing. We’ll also be using the patterns and parts from these words to help us spell new words.

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

Kathy