Thursday, October 20, 2016
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Weekly Updates October 17-21
The Penny War was a great success! We raised over $2000 for Timmy and the Romenesko family. Congrats to Ms. Schmalzer’s class for being the overall winner of the pizza party!
Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, October 18th-Grandparents and Goodies Family Night, 6:00-7:00 PM
Thursday, October 20th-Packer Wear
Red Ribbon Week Oct 24-Oct 26-During the week we will be joining many other schools and communities throughout the nation to celebrate RED RIBBON WEEK…a week dedicated to celebrating a healthy and drug free life!
All Kaukauna schools will be participating in various activities that promote drug free living. Students will participate in several dress-up days to raise awareness of the importance of living a drug free life! The elementary dress-up days are as follows:
Mon. Oct. 24th Wear "Red, White, and Blue”
…I Elect to be Drug Free!!
Tues. Oct. 25th Wear “Active Wear/Sweats”
…Stay active and be drug free!!
Wed. Oct. 26th….District Wide “RED DAY”
…Unite against drugs!!
Thursday, October 27 & Friday October 28th-No School for Students
November 10th & 15th-Portfolio Conferences-Look for more information to come home soon.
Reading: Yippee! We completed all of our word solving missions and have received our official “Super Secret Detective Agency” Word Detective Badges. We are becoming amazing word solvers! However, our work is not over. Now we are focusing on words we know in a snap to help us figure out words. These are our word wall words that we know from Kindergarten and the new ones we are learning in First Grade that are sent home on Mondays. We are working on reading the words we know in a snap, using those words to help us solve unknown words (I know and, so that can help me read stand), and noticing words we read again and again and turning them into snap words. We are up for the challenge in first grade!
Writing: We have started our How-To writing. First graders are experts in some many things! Thank you for returning your green folders. If you haven’t yet, whenever you get a chance to would be great. This week we will be focusing on acting out our how-tos with a partner, using transitional words in our writing (first, then, next, after, before, finally, last), using mentor texts to notice what other authors of how-tos do, picturing our steps to add the exact teaching words and adding warnings, tips and suggestions.
Word Work: Our word wall words this week are: me, on, look, he, was. We will be assessing these words on Friday. These are the ‘snap’ words we are using as word detectives. Some fun ways to practice them are writing them in shaving cream on cookie sheets, writing them in the air, clapping them as you spell them, or tracing over words with different color crayons or markers. We will also be spending time each week work on phonics skills specific to each student’s developmental level.
Math: This week in math we are focusing on subtraction equations. We are working on showing our equations and making a proof drawing. Students are using these to prove that their equation is true. We are also working to generate our own subtraction stories. We will end the week by relating addition and subtraction. An example of this is: 6+3=9, so I know that 9-6= 3.
Content: It was great to see so many families on Friday come in and check out our aquariums and terrariums. Students are loving watching the living organisms each and every day. This week we will be comparing the freshwater and woodland plants and animals noticing the similarities and differences.
As always if you have any questions, let me know!
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Weekly Updates October 10th
The Penny War for the Romenesko's is off to a great start. There was A LOT of money brought in already! NDLC families ROCK!
To end the week, we are going to have a "wear lime green" day to show support for Timmy and all children struggling with Lymphoma.
Thanks for all your support.
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Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, October 18th-Grandparents and Goodies Family Night, 6:00-7:00 PM
Red Ribbon Week Oct 24-Oct 26-During the week we will be joining many other schools and communities throughout the nation to celebrate RED RIBBON WEEK…a week dedicated to celebrating a healthy and drug free life!
All Kaukauna schools will be participating in various activities that promote drug free living. Students will participate in several dress-up days to raise awareness of the importance of living a drug free life! The elementary dress-up days are as follows:
Mon. Oct. 24th Wear "Red, White, and Blue”
…I Elect to be Drug Free!!
Tues. Oct. 25th Wear “Active Wear/Sweats”
…Stay active and be drug free!!
Wed. Oct. 26th….District Wide “RED DAY”
…Unite against drugs!!
Thursday, October 27 & Friday October 28th-No School for Students
Reading: We’ve just started our new unit, Word Detectives! On Thursday we received a “Top Secret” message asking us if we were up for the challenge of being word detectives by the Super Secret Detective Agency. Of course we decided we were! Each day we have been receiving secret missions. Mission 1 was word detectives are always on the lookout. They notice when there’s a problem and stop to solve it right away. Mission 2 was word detectives look CLOSELY to get clues and make sure to look across the WHOLE word. This week our missions will include: using everything we know to solve problems, doing a s-l-o-w check when trying to figure out a word we think we know, using our partners to help each other as we read together. If we complete all these missions successfully we will receive a word detective badge! Students are super excited for these missions!
Writing: We are finishing up our Small Moments unit. On Monday we edited our writing to make sure it was readable. We checked our spaces, spelling using the word wall and everything we know about letters and sound, and punctuation and endmarks. Today we fancied up our writing and tomorrow we will be having our celebration. On Thursday we will be starting How-To writing. This is procedural writing in which we teach our reader how to do something we know how to do well. This week we will be generating ideas by thinking about things you care about and what you could teach a reader about these things. We’ll also think of friends and family members and what we can teach them. We’ll work on planning our how-tos across pages and acting them out with our partner. We have new folders for this information writing. A note and folders are coming home today. Please return them as soon as you have a chance to decorate them.
Word Work: Our word wall words this week are: in, see, to, went, like. We will be assessing these words on Friday. Some fun ways to practice them are writing them in shaving cream on cookie sheets, writing them in the air, clapping them as you spell them, or tracing over words with different colors or markers. We will also be spending time each week work on phonics skills specific to each student’s developmental level.
Math: This week in math we are working on the counting on strategy. Students should see that it is more efficient to count on starting with the larger number in the equation. See the parent note that came home yesterday for more information about this strategy. We will also learn a new game with flash cards to help us practice addition equations up to 10. At the end of the week we will move into subtraction and use pictures to represent subtraction equations. A reminder that the math worksheets that come home on Tuesdays are just for practice at home.
Content: Our aquariums and terrariums are brimming with life. This week we will be studying what is happening in our aquariums and terrariums and recording our observations. We’re excited to share our habitats with you on Friday at 2:30 p.m.!
As always if you have any questions, let me know!
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Weekly Updates October 3-7
Hey! Can you believe it’s already October? Where did the first month of school go?! Continue to read the blog to see what’s new in first grade. We are beginning a few new routines in October: New Word Wall Words and Math Homework. Read below to learn more and let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for your continued support at home :)
Check out the link below for New Direction’s October Newsletter:
Here is a link to our parent survey if you haven’t had a chance to complete it yet:
Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, October 18th-Grandparents and Goodies Family Night, 6:00-7:00 PM
Red Ribbon Week Oct 24-Oct 26
- Mon. Oct. 24th Wear "Red, White, and Blue” …I Elect to be Drug Free!!
- Tues. Oct. 25th Wear “Active Wear/Sweats”…Stay active and be drug free!!
- Wed. Oct. 26th….District Wide Wear ”RED DAY”… Unite against drugs!!
Thursday, October 27 & Friday October 28th-No School for Students
Reading: We will be spending more time this week working on our good habits with partners. We’ll be learning how to help our partners, not tell them and how we can do something at the end of the book. We’ll be celebrating the end of this unit by celebrating our best habits and setting new goals. Ask your child what he/she has been working on as a reader. At the end of the week we will be starting our new unit, Word Detectives. In this unit we’ll be learning more strategies for using high-frequency words and for decoding.
Writing: We had a mini celebration at the end of last week to applaud the growth we have made so far this year as writers. We have been working so hard to bring our stories to life! This week we will be focusing on studying other writers’ craft, in particular The Night of the Veggie Monster by George McClements. We will be noticing things such as exact actions, pop-out words, and ellipses and trying them out in our own writing.
Word Work: For word study this year, we will be focusing on 5-6 word wall words each week. New words will be introduced on Mondays and assessed on Fridays. These are words we want students to be able to read and write automatically without having to think to sound them out. Oftentimes they don’t follow the phonics “patterns” we study. This weeks words are: us, am, I, is, the.
Math: In math this week we are beginning a new unit: Addition and Subtraction Strategies. We are starting with representing addition equations. This can be done by drawing a picture story or using circle drawings. You will see this on the homework sheet tonight. We will discuss the equal and not equal sign and practice telling addition stories and writing an equation that matches. We will end the week exploring solution methods and introducing counting on. An example of this is 5+4. The count all strategy would be 1,2,3,4,5….6,7,8,9 but instead we want students to use the more efficient way of finding the bigger number and counting on: 5...6,7,8,9.
Math Homework: On Tuesdays we will be sending home a math worksheet. On one side it says Homework. This is the side that includes the math that we are working on currently. The other side is the Remembering side. This side is used to review past concepts. We are sending it home once a week as a quick review for students and for you, parents, to see what we are working on in class. This can be completed at home anytime throughout the week. It does NOT need to come back to school. As always if you have questions about it or notice your student struggling please let me know. If you are looking for other ways to practice math throughout the week counting forward and backward up to 120 and flashcards to practice partners up to 10 are always helpful at this time of the year!
Content: Our plants came home yesterday. I was really impressed with how much they grew this year! We are watching our snails and guppies closely. Some of the aquariums have babies! We are awaiting the arrival of our bess beetles and pill bugs this week. We will be adding them to our terrariums and watching how they interact.
As always if you have any questions, let me know!
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