Weekly Updates February 27-March 3

Hello,

We had an amazing week of training at Columbia Teacher’s College, and I’m excited to try some things out in our classroom. Ms. Desmond enjoyed her time with students, and was impressed with how well they were able to follow our routines. I’m happy to be back in the classroom though and really missed our class!

http://signup.com/go/TNwaqh

Here is the sign up link for Knowledge-a-thon​

Classroom Need:  We are in need of more pens for writing.  We use the Paper Mate: Flair Pens in black.  If you are out and about and could pick up a pack we would appreciate it!   Thank you!

Upcoming Events:

3/2: Dr. Seuss Character Day
3/10: Author's Breakfast 7:15-7:45

3/15: No School for Students
3/28 & 3/30: Portfolio Conferences 4:00-7:00
3/29: Wacky Hair Day
4/3: Sports Day
4/11: Egg Crack Off

Reading: We have been continuing to get to know our characters. We’ve been going on adventures by keeping track of when and where our stories take place, predicting what might happen next, retelling the important parts (and marking those parts with post-its so we remember) and rereading to notice even more about our characters. We’ve also been working on having conversations with our partners to learn even more about our characters by using these same strategies together.

Writing: Last week we spent some time working on making our writing readable. We have such great ideas for stories, but we realized it’s important to make sure our writing is readable so others can enjoy our writing. We worked on letter formation, spacing, capitals, and punctuation. This week we are back to writing like scientists. Students will be setting up and conducting their own experiments with partners and writing up lab reports to share their learning. They’ll start with a question and hypothesis, write the procedure, conduct the experiment and then write about their observations, results and add a conclusions. First graders are super excited to conduct their experiments!

Word Work: The new words this week are: make, thing, funny, day, will. Please have your child practice these words on a regular basis. As they become fluent with them, it’s helps them with their reading and writing.

Math:  We started our new unit this week, Comparisons and Data. In this unit students will be representing and comparing data and solving comparison problems. We’ll spend a couple of days organizing, representing and interpreting data, and then students will be conducting their own surveys in our classroom and representing their data.

Content: We are finishing up our study of solids and liquids this week. We compared solids and liquids yesterday, and will be completing an assessment on Wednesday to show all we have learned about solids and liquids.

Weekly Updates February 13-17

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday we celebrated the 100th day of school and today we are celebrating Valentine’s day...what an exciting start to the week!   Thank you to everyone who donated treats for our party this afternoon.   

Next week (Feb. 20-23) I will be traveling to New York to attend an institute at Teachers College at Columbia University.  I will be learning more about small groups and conferring...I’m looking forward to learning new things and bringing them back to our school and our classroom.  While I am out Luann Desmond will be our guest teacher.  I will be checking email but if it is something that needs to be addressed that day please contact the school office.

See below for some opportunities to volunteer your time to  help with upcoming New Directions’ activities:

http://signup.com/go/TNwaqh

Here is the sign up link for Knowledge-a-thon​

http://signup.com/go/ghdv4U

This is the link for people to donate cookie for the Music and Masterpieces family night

http://signup.com/go/bErwXq

This is the link for people to sign up to help serve the cookies at the M and M family night

Reminder:

We’ll be collecting items for “Birthday Boxes” at our Music, Masterpieces and Munchies family night on February 27th. We'll have boxes out in the lobby to collect donations. Some ideas for items are: cake mixes, frosting, candles, hats, balloons, decorations, napkins, plates, etc

Classroom Need:  We are in need of more pens for writing.  We use the Paper Mate: Flair Pens in black.  If you are out and about and could pick up a pack we would appreciate it!   Thank you!

Upcoming Events:

February 14: Valentine’s Day

February 17: Six Flags Reading Logs Due

February 23: Early Release

February 24: No School for Students

February 27: Family Night: Music, MasterPieces and Munchies

Reading: Students have been really digging in and getting to know their characters! This week we will be paying attention to the illustrations and setting to help us learn more about our characters. We will also be studying tricky words and figuring out what they mean by reading the words around them, making a picture in our mind, and thinking about what makes sense. We will also be working with our partners to talk about what we are learning about our characters and growing ideas about our characters.

Writing: We have begun our Writing Like a Scientist Unit. How exciting! Don’t be surprised if first grade scientists start setting up experiments at home. This week we will be working through the scientific method together by conducting a whole class experiment and writing up a lab report. Our lab reports will include materials, question, hypothesis, procedure, results and conclusions. After we practice doing a couple experiments together, students will be planning, conducting and writing up their own experiments in a couple of weeks.

Word Work: The new words this week are: got, if, did, let, our, house. Please have your child practice these words on a regular basis. As they become fluent with them, it’s helps them with their reading and writing.

Math:  We are finishing up our unit on Friday. By the end of our unit students should be able to count, read, and write numerals to 120, add and subtract 10s, use strategies to add and subtract within 20 and solve story problems and add three numbers to solve story problems. We have been doing lots of work with numbers through 20 and using a variety of strategies to solve problems. This week we will be adding and subtracting tens. We’ll use a hundred grid to help us notice patterns, and count up by 10s starting at a variety of different numbers. You can practice at home by saying a 2 digit number and having your child tell you what 10 more or 10 less is (What is 10 more than 48? What is 10 less?). Then we will focus on adding and subtracting multiples of 10. For example, 80 + 20, 50 - 30.

Content: We will be continuing to investigate liquids this week. We will be studying how they flow and mix by participating in hands on centers, using liquids such as glue, water, shampoo and oil. Check out our blog post yesterday for photos of our liquids investigation!

Investigating Liquids

February 6-10

Hello,

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching!  If you are able to donate something for our party please let me know. Thank you!

Upcoming Events:

February 7: Early Release

February 9-10: Math Staff Developer here!

February 14: Valentine’s Day

February 17: Six Flags Reading Logs Due

February 23: Early Release

February 24: No School for Students

February 27: Family Night: Music, MasterPieces and Munchies

Reading: In reading we are beginning a new unit, Readers Get to Know Characters by Performing Their Books. In this unit we will focus on ways to get to know a character and pretend we are the characters and perform our books to become character experts. This week we will get to know our characters by using the title, cover and back of book to get ourselves thinking about the character, thinking about what we learn about the character on each page and putting the pages together to see what we can learn about our character, and pay attention to the ending and see what it can teach us about our character. We are getting to know our characters like friends!

Writing: In writing this week we are using checklists to make sure that each and every part of our opinion writing is as strong as it can be.  We will then prepare our book reviews for publication.  We are especially looking at conventions as we finish up this unit.  We will have our on demand at the end of the week.  Our next unit will be Writing Like Scientist.  

Word Work: The new words this week are: an, may, ride, get, there, what. Please have your child practice these words on a regular basis. As they become fluent with them, it’s helps them with their reading and writing.

Math:  In math we will continue to practice adding three numbers.  Students are using a variety of strategies to solve these equations!  They are doing great! We will also, start some work with counting.  We will count large quantities of objects by tens and ones, practice counting and writing numbers to 120 and then practice finding 10 more or 10 less than a two-digit number.  

Content: Yesterday we investigated two new solids using the properties of solids that we studied last week.  This week we will begin to observe and describe liquids.  We will look at six different properties: opacity, color, feel, viscosity, buoyancy in water, and miscibility in water.

Investigating Solids

Valentine Party Note