6 More Weeks of Winter!!!

Well, I guess the groundhog was correct! The children were busy making predictions about whether or not the groundhog would see his shadow. Most of them love the snow and couldn't wait for more winter. Since they all studied shadows they knew that if it was a sunny day the groundhog would indeed see his shadow. Many of their predictions were right! Though our attendance at school has been inconsistent we have been moving along in our first grade studies. The students just got assessed in their knowledge of consonant blends and diagraphs. They all passed with flying colors! They are also all very knowledgeable on their identification of sight words and are continuing to improve in spelling those tricky words. We learned about contractions today and will continue to work on them. Next week we will work on the important parts of writing a friendly letter. On Thursday all the children will craft a letter to a special friend or family member and send them in the mail! Please make sure that you send in a stamped envelope and address ASAP. We just wrapped up a unit on writing how-to books. Each student took home pieces that they worked on in this unit. Today they spent time composing a how-to piece with little assistance from me. This is called an on-demand prompt. This is done at the beginning and end of each writing unit and provides a great comparision to see how much the children have learned. We will begin a new unit on writing non-fiction all about books. Please look for examples of these types of books at home and at the library. Please continue to read at home every night. Reading to your child each day is very important. Please find a way to incorporate it into your night time routine. In Social Studies we have been watching videos about important Black Americans and Women in celebration of Black and Women's History Month. The children have learned about Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman so far. Ask them about what they have learned about these amazing Americans. Your Math geniuses have been rising to the challenge of our demanding math program. It is amazing all the ways they now know to solve a word problem. I think that it is also most important that they have all found the quickest and most efficient way to solve a problem for them. I am really impressed! Please continue to work on addition and subtraction facts at home. There are some great games on the ETC through the monroeps web-site. If you haven't already had a family member sign up for Mystery Reader, please consider it. It is so exciting for the children to share their classroom for a little while. Don't forget to send in Valentine cards for the class by February 13th. Stay warm and have a wonderful weekend - hope to see many of you on Sunday at the Wizard's game!

Last week in January!

Good morning!

Hope that you enjoyed this past weekend.  Just a few updates.

The children will be bringing home their weekend news from the past month.  It is not corrected for spelling.  Have your children read their journal to you and congratulate them on their hard work.

We are working on Very Important Parts of words.  For example, if the children know the word day they will know may, stay and play.  The children will also be assessed on consonant blends at the end of the week.

The students will be writing a descriptive piece about their lovely mittens and doing some other work involving the book The Mitten.

The children are currently in math Wynn groups focusing on fluency in subtraction.

Have a wonderful week!

First grade is "snow" much fun!

This week our stations will center around snowmen activities. The children will design a snowman and then write a descriptive piece on the snowman that they created. Ask your child about their new station parnter. We switched partners last week. We will begin recording the weather and temperature in a weather journal this week. We have already been watching the temperature closely each day last week and looking at how it changes during the day. Ask your child why the temperature changes as the day progresses. The children have been busy learning phonics rules. Last week we worked on adding plural s and es to words. This week we will continue to practice that concept and work on adding ing to words as well. I am so impressed by the readers in our classroom! Keep up the good work at home. Stress to your child to read smoothly and with expression in thier voice. Have them practice reading to Grandma, Auntie or an older cousin. We are wrapping up WYNN groups on comprehension. This week we will move on to addition and subtraction computation and fluency. Take out those flashcards or make some of your own. Give your child math facts aloud and have them answer on a white board. How many can they complete correctly in 2 or 3 minutes? That may be a motivating challenge! In Math we continue to work on problem solving and efficiently solving problems. Ask your child what efficient means? We have been talking about that a lot in Math. The children will also learn about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his impact on our country. We will discuss his dream and I will ask the children what their dream for our world is. The children have also been using the senteo hand-held computers during our computer time. They have been answering math questions. They really enjoyed using them and did a very good job. I will be sending home a mitten on Monday to decorate. The children did such a wonderful job with their Gingerbread people that I hope this project will be the same. They will be writing a descriptive piece about their mittens at the end of the month. Have a wonderful week!

Happy New Year

A hard copy of this blog was sent home on January 2nd, 2014 Happy New Year! 2014 is here and First Grade will be learning lots of new and exciting things this year. It is really hard to believe that we are heading into the last part of the school year. The children will learn and grow so much during this time. They will become more fluent readers, they will be able to think of new ways to problem solve in math and their writing will get more detailed. Here is just a few of the things that we will be covering in Room 15 this month. In Phonics we will focus on word families and the different ways that vowel sounds can be written. We will get into the tricks that words can play! I hope that you read a little during vacation!! If not, start a new resolution with your child. Maybe if they read one book to you each night, they can pick out the family meal for dinner over the weekend or have a special dessert. Make it a game and they will begin to read more and more. Have you thought of reading a chapter book together? This is a great way to get in extra reading time on those nights when your first grader is too tired to read to you. In Writing, we are focusing on writing how-to books. The children are very successful in this type of writing. I am encouraging them to add details in pictures, labels and words in these how –to books. We will also be doing some more descriptive writing at the end of the month. The Gingerbread people that they brought in were amazing. The details really helped them write some great descriptive pieces. They will be asked to decorate a mitten at the end of the month for a take home project. We will be writing about them in class. In Math we continue to work on problem solving each day. The children are beginning to see which strategies work best for them and which are the most efficient. Play a game to work on fact families. Pick any number from 2 to 10. Tell your child the number. This is your target number. Then give them another number and see if they can tell you how many more to the target number. In Science we will be working on measurement. The children will be measuring in centimeters. They will also keep a weather journal in January in which they measure the temperature for a week. This month we will also learn about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a great way to bring up respect, tolerance and equality with our youngest learners. They get Dr. King’s message very quickly. This is why I love spending my days with first graders! I hope that your break was filled with a ton of family time and you really got to enjoy the magic of the season.