Weekly Updates April 24-28

Hello,

Last call for KAT envelopes. This is an amazing fund raiser for our school. Thanks for all your support!

Note from the office: Teacher Appreciation Week - May 1-5 Help thank our teachers for their hard work. Provide an item for lunch or snacks during Teacher Appreciation Week.  Click on this link to sign up.  Thank you for your support!

If you have any empty cereal boxes at home please send them in. We need about 6 more!  We will be using them at the end of our writing unit next week.

Upcoming Events:

4/28-Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)
5/4- Action Figure/Sci Fi Day

Reading: We are continuing to grow our nonfiction reading skills. We are working hard on setting our own goals and practicing them everyday. In order to make a goal a habit, we need to practice, practice, practice! As we are reading, we continue to think about the topic of each section and are learning how to stop and think often about the key details in the text. See below for some questions nonfiction readers can ask themselves when thinking about key details.

Writing: We are continuing with our series books. This week we are learning how we can use patterns to elaborate (add more to) or writing. We are also making reading/writing connections by studying some of the books in our book boxes and noticing what the authors are doing that we can do in our own writing. We will also be focusing on our punctuation, and having a “punctuation party” to be purposeful about the punctuation we are using.

Word Work: The new words this week are us, boy, girl, just, friend. 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 finished our 2-digit addition unit and have started our next unit, “Geometry, Measurement,  and Equal Shares. During the first part of this unit we will be focusing on telling and writing times to the hour and half hour. We will then move on to shapes and equal shares. The last part of our unit will focus on measurement and ordering by length.

Content: We’ve started our Needs and Wants unit. This ties in nicely with our Junior Achievement lessons.

Weekly Updates April 17-21

Hello,

Welcome back! I hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful break. It’s hard to believe we are halfway through April already! We continue to be busy in first grade. Read below to see what's going on.

Thank you for all the Birthday Box donations. We will be assembling boxes this Saturday, April 22. Please click the link below if you are interested in signing up to help!

http://signup.com/go/fa4ZnY

Please contact Kristin McEneany at  kristin.mceneany@gmail.com  with any questions.

Note from the office: Teacher Appreciation Week - May 1-5Help thank our teachers for their hard work. Provide an item for lunch or snacks during Teacher Appreciation Week.  Click on this link to sign up.  Thank you for your support!

If you have any empty cereal boxes at home please send them in.  We will be using them at the end of our writing unit in about a month but I figured it’s never to early to start asking.  

Upcoming Events:

4/20: Family Night 5:30-7:00 Subs, Science and Social Studies

4/21-Wear Green and Blue (earth day) Permission slip coming home soon for neighborhood clean up

4/28-Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

Reading: We are continuing to build our nonficiton knowledge in our clubs! This week we will be noticing the different structures our books contain (diagrams, heading and details, question and answer, cause and effect) to help us make a plan for our reading. We’ll be learning how to break the text into sections and asking, “What is this part mostly about?” and stopping often to think about what we are learning. Then, we’ll use this learning to have conversations with our clubs.

Writing: We are continuing with our series books. This week we are focusing on showing not telling by adding in tiny realistic details. We’ll also be showing not telling how the character is feeling and realistic settings. We’ll be adding chapters to our books and using our partners to help us add even more.

Word Work: The new words this week are find, ask, every, know, who: 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 continuing our 2-digit addition unit and will be completing our assessment on Friday.  See our chart below to see the strategies that we are using to help us solve these equations.

Content: This week we will be learning about Earth Day and importance of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We will also be starting Junior Achievement this week.  A volunteer from a local business comes into our classroom once a week for 5 weeks and conducts a lesson that lasts about 30 minutes. JA programs focus on the skills necessary for students to develop work readiness, financial literacy and entrepreneurism all at the first grade level. The program is designed to be interactive using practical hands on activities that reinforce key concepts to prepare and inspire students to succeed in a global economy. The title of the first grade program is: Our Families.

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Birthday Boxes and Egg Crack Off

Weekly Updates April 3-7

Hello!  April showers bring May flowers! I’ve noticed many parents are now following us on Seesaw. So far, this has been a very successful tool for students to share their thinking and connect with each other. Seeing parent comments at school is also very exciting :)  Some of us have a post about our US Symbol research, and the rest of us should be finishing up today or tomorrow. We'll also be posting book recommendations today.

If you have any empty cereal boxes at home please send them in.  We will be using them at the end of our writing unit in about a month but I figured it’s never to early to start asking.  

http://signup.com/go/TNwaqh

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

Upcoming Events:

4/3-7: Dress Up Days- See Below

4/7: KAT in the AM, PAC field trip in the PM
4/11: Egg Crack Off-WEAR RED!- Note coming home about bringing an egg.

4/11: Fox 11 News Good Day Wisconsin filming. Watch for more information to come home today regarding this event!

4/12-17: Spring Break

4/20: Family Night

4/21-Wear Green and Blue (earth day) Permission slip coming home soon for neighborhood clean up

4/28-Funky Friday (dress as silly as you want)

KAT Week Dress up days April 3-7th

Monday Brewer/Sports Day

Tuesday Dress as a question or answer to KAT question

Wednesday Pajama Day

Thursday Superhero Day

Friday Dress Fancy

Reading: This week in reading we are beginning our new unit: Reading Nonfiction Cover to Cover.  In this unit students will improve their nonfiction reading skills, and work on their speaking and listening skills.  We will learn new strategies to help hang on to important information and how to let go of the not-so-important information.  We will also learn how to take information provided in one book and add it to information learned in another, and another, thinking and learning about a topic across many texts, not just one.

Writing: This week we are working on writing a series.  We learned that series writers often write a Book One in their series.  In it, they share a lot of details about their character.  We also are focusing on adding more dialogue into our stories to make our characters come alive.  We will end the week with some revision work and celebrating our first series.

Word Work: The new words this week are:soon, rain, fly, any, under. 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 have started 2 digit addition! Students have been trying a variety of methods to solve these problems: tens frames, drawing, and using tens sticks and ones circles. They will be learning the new group below and new group above method in second grade. This year our focus is on exposure and building the concept of adding a 2-digit number with a 2-digit number.

Content: This week we are finishing up our U.S. symbol research and presenting our information to each other.