THIS WEEK IN FIRST GRADE...

Matthieu shares his story about the day he went skateboarding.

Writer’s Workshop: We are writers! Last week each child selected a piece from their Writing notebooks and worked to “fix it up” for publishing. This morning they shared their published stories as we enjoyed our first Writing Celebration!

Tomorrow we begin our new unit of study in Writing Workshop – Small Moments: Personal Narrative Writing. The children will learn that they can create stories out of the details of their own experiences. The opportunities that children have to take the moments of their lives and spin them into stories play an important role in their literacy development.

Language Arts: This week we are working on words with variant vowel /o/a - as in “all”. This week’s wall words are: how, make, of, some, town. This week’s robust vocabulary words are locate, search, symbol, overflowing, commotion, and muffle. We have also been learning about contractions and homophones. When reading, we will continue working on the comprehension strategies of classifying and categorizing. We will also work on adjusting our reading rate. It is important to understand what we read. Rereading more slowly may help your child to understand the information in a nonfiction selection. On October 7, Mrs. McKenzie and Mrs. Cameron will be presenting a workshop on helping your child select "Just Right Books". I encourage you to attend if you are able to!

Handwriting: During handwriting lessons, we will continue working on lowercase letters. I will share more about the handwriting program at our conference.

Math: In Math, we will be working on subtraction number models and making up and solving number stories. We will complete Unit 2 this week and take our second math assessment. The family letter for Unit 3 will be coming home on Friday. Please look for it in your child’s folder.

The children had a ball working on graphing skittles using Graph Club in the Computer Lab today!

Social Studies/Science: We will begin working on map skills this week, which will continue throughout the year. In science, our human body unit continues with a look at the muscles, nervous system, and brain. We will be having some exciting visits coming up during our human body unit!

THINGS TO REMEMBER:

There will be no school for students on Thursday due to Conference Day. Please see the conference reminder on your child’s homework calendar. I look forward to sharing your child's progress with you!

Please return the word ring on Friday this week!

Online Opinion Survey - Please remember to look for the online opinion survey on Friday, October 1. It is important that we have all parents participate in the survey to help guide and inform the goals we set for Shorecrest for the next five years. Your participation is crucial to the success of this reflective process. I will be posting the link for the survey on Friday.

There will be no school for students on Friday, October 15, due to a Professional Development Day for teachers.

VOLUNTEERS THIS WEEK:

Tuesday – Art – Kristen Danielson (12:05)
Friday – Math Game – Julie Piper (9:00)
Friday – Parent Reader – Michelle Clopet (2:20)