Week of September 10, 2012

Yay! A full week at last! Although we had a "soggy" start to our week today, things should dry out as the week continues. 

I hope you feel that you are "learning the ropes" of first grade along with your child. This blog is my way of letting you know what is going on in our classroom. Please be sure to check it out each week. 

Reading Workshop: We have spent the better part of the first few weeks of school learning the rules, routines, and procedures for our time in Reading Workshop. There is explicit teaching during our daily mini-lessons in Reading Workshop that the children then spend time practicing as they read independently and with partners. We also spend time each day with teacher read-alouds. The main purposes for these read-alouds are to teach the children to think and talk about books and to build excitement for reading. For example, I model making predictions – “Let’s look at the cover and ask ourselves, What do we think this book is going to be about?” I also model thinking aloud while reading by asking myself questions such as: “Who are the characters in this story?” “Where is this story taking place?” “What happened first, then next, then next?” I love seeing the children practice the concepts that are modeled during the read-alouds during their independent reading time! This week our mini-lessons will focus on the jobs that partners have, strategies such as picture clues to help them when reading books they have never seen nor heard before, and practicing making our voices sound like characters would sound like by noticing how characters are feeling in the pictures and in the words. Practice these strategies when you read with your child at home. I have also spent a great deal of time assessing the children's reading skills so that each child will have "just right books" for reading. 

Handwriting: We are working on the lowercase letters a, c, d, and g which are all made by beginning with magic c. Ask your child what this means. We will be playing a magic c mystery letter game to help us remember to "start the letters at the top" when writing. We will also be learning some physical motions with our hands to help us size and place our letters correctly. Please send in a clean sock for your child to use as an eraser when working with their chalkboard. So far, Natalie is the only one to bring in her sock!

 

Writing Workshop: We have had a successful launching of our writing workshop and are getting ready to publish our first piece of writing! Tomorrow the children will spend time going through all of their writing done so far and choose a piece that they love and think others will enjoy hearing or reading. We will spend the rest of the week "fixing it up" for publishing, which at this point means rereading, adding to the drawing, adding to the words, coloring the sketches, and making a cover. Then we will share them together in class as our first celebration.

Ryan, Carson, Natalie and Phoebe enjoy  Geoboards

Keith and Ben explore with pattern blocks

Avery's dad played Top-it with us during Math Explorations!

Math: Last week, we had our first day of math explorations. A big thank you to Avery's dad for coming to play a math game with us! Today as we worked on number stories, the children came to realize that we had actually been working on number stories each day during our Morning Message! We will take our first written assessment tomorrow on Unit 1. Look for these to come home on Wednesday. The children are learning how to take tests and "why" we take tests. I tell the children that the main reason we take tests is to let Mrs. Owen (and you) know what they need help with. We will begin Unit 2 on Wednesday. Look for the Math Family Letter for Unit 2 to come home in your child's take-home folder this week. Please read it and keep it in a safe place so that you may refer to it if needed. It will give you lots of useful information on what we will cover in this unit, vocabulary used, several "Do-Anytime Activities" that are helpful, and directions for games that you can play at home with your child to help them with the skills we are working on in the unit. Also this week we will practice counting up and back on the number grid as well as working with complements of 10. 

Social Studies: We will continue our character education unit through our author study of Kevin Henkes' books. Character education will be an ongoing theme throughout the year.  

Science: We will begin our study of the Human Body next week. The children will love this unit! I am looking for doctors, nurses, EMTs, or others that work in the health care field that would like to volunteer to come in to share during this unit. If you are interested, please let me know!

Things to remember:

Our Homework Calendar began last week. Look for it in your child’s folder each Monday. As we discussed at BTSN, please have your child turn in only the homework that is due each day. All homework should be done in pencil only, no ink. Reading each night for at least 15 minutes is part of the daily homework. Please help your child complete the reading log each night and return it on Mondays. Please be sure to always note the reminders on the right-hand side!

Cyrus enjoyed having his mom as our first Parent Reader!

Word cards (sight words on ring) need to be worked on each day and returned on Thursday. Please help your child to practice reading, spelling, and using each word correctly in a sentence. 

Picture Day for the Lower Division is tomorrow! If you want to order pictures and have not returned your envelope, please send it in with your child tomorrow. 

International Peace Day will be Friday, September 21. Children may wear "peace" shirts to school that day. 

We will have a special Town Meeting 

that morning and you are welcome to join us!

Volunteers this week:

• Wednesday - Library Check-out - Amber Ferrol and Chris Dubroff (2:10)
• Thursday - Math Game - Kim Gross (10:30)
• Friday - Art - Lorraine Thorpe (9:15)
• Friday - Parent Reader - Twila Davis (2:20)

Have a great week!

Susan