Week of January 28, 2013

Dear Parents:

Tomorrow is a special Spirit Day! The administration has asked that the children wear green, gold, or white spirit clothes. We will be gathering for a whole school photo and pep rally at 1:45. Friday will also be Spirit Day.

Grandparents/Special Friends Day was a huge success! It was so nice to meet and chat with them and extra nice to see some again from years past. The children were so proud to show them our classroom, their work, and to tell them about their school day. Being a grandparent now, I look forward to one day visiting my grandchild's classroom! Be sure to go to our class Shutterfly site (link on the right). There are a ton of new pictures! I posted three new albums including one of Grandparents/Special Friends Day. If you have pictures to share, please either add them to existing albums or make a new album! At the end of the year, you will have a treasure of pictures that you can use to create an album of your child's year in first grade!

Relay for Life will take place on Friday, April 5.  The children and I will be walking the track that morning in support of Relay for Life. I will be sending home "Why I relay" cards. You might want to talk with your child about the meaning of Relay for Life and together decide on "who" they will relay for, whether in memory of someone or in honor of a survivor. You may have your child write the name of that person on the card and return it to school. The cards will be displayed during Relay week. 
  
It's going to be another busy week in first grade! Please take a look at some of the things we will be doing in 1-4:

Word Work: Our phonics focus this week is on the long vowel sound /i/ spelled igh or y. May I ask for your help on something with homework? When your child is writing sentences for homework, please challenge them to create stronger sentences by using describing words and including more information. Ask your child if they answer these questions in their sentence... "who, what, where, when, why, and how". Our rule of thumb is if you are 6 years old, you should try to have at least 6 words in your sentence and if you are 7, you should try to write a sentence with at least 7 words.

Reading Workshop: As non-fiction readers, we accumulate information by reading different books on a topic and keep track of new information by jotting what we learn on post-it notes. Then we share what we learn with our reading partners.

I have also completed reading assessments with all of the children and look forward to sharing their reading progress at our upcoming conference.

Writing Workshop: We are working on our "All About" books as we begin writing the chapters this week.

Math: We will be celebrating the 100th day of school soon! Can you believe it? Wow! Time flies! I will be sending a note home soon asking your child to bring in 100 pieces of a particular ingredient for our 100th Day Snack Mix. Please be sure to have these in by next Tuesday. A reminder note will come on next week's homework calendar, but I wanted to give you a heads-up in case you are shopping this week. Last week, I introduced the Addition/Subtraction Fact Table as another tool for finding the sum of two numbers. We'll work more with it this week. We'll also be working with equivalent names for numbers using name collection boxes. We'll learn about fact families. Fact families consist of 4 math facts - 2 addition facts and 2 subtraction facts. An example of a fact family is 4+3=7, 3+4=7, 7-4=3, 7-3=4. Then we'll begin working with fact triangles. Fact triangles are a great tool for showing the relationship between addition and subtraction within fact families.

Ryan plays Addition Top-it on the computer.

We love playing the Function Machine game!

Sydney and Kate work on dice addition.

Science: The children are working hard on their planet research. We've been using many different resources, i.e. books, charts, and websites. The children have worked with their partners to research together and have especially enjoyed using the ipads in their research! This week the partnerships will decide on the points they want to teach about their planet and what "visual" they want to create to help teach about their planet. Then they will design their project and decide what materials they will need to complete it.

Other important reminders: 

Field trip to the Science Center/Planetarium will be next Tuesday, February 5. We will eat lunch at school at 11:00 before we go. Parents are welcome to join us by following the bus or meeting us at the Science Center. We will leave school at 11:30. Our tour begins at 12:00 and we will leave to return to school at 2:00.

Spring Conference Day will be Thursday, February 7. There will be no school for the children that day. I look forward to sharing your child's progress with you!

Friday, February 15, will be a Professional Development Day for teachers. There will be no school for students that day.

School is closed on Monday, February 18, for Presidents' Day.

Class Picture Day will be on Wednesday, February 26. 

The Relay for Life Cookout will be on Thursday, February 28. Hotdogs and tofu dogs will be served. A letter will come home soon with more information. Please plan to have lunch with your child on this day if you can. All proceeds will be donated to Relay for Life.

Reading Week will be the week of March 18 - 22. The Oldie Goldie Book Sale is on Friday, March 22. The entire week will be dedicated to Mrs. Weinman. 

On March 25, we will also dedicate the new playground to Mrs. Weinman. The memorial will be at 8:05a.m. Parents are welcome to join us. 

Volunteers this week: 

• Wednesday - Library Checkout - 2:10 – Kim Gross and Mary Hind
• Thursday - Math Game - 10:30 – David Richardson
• Friday - Art - 9:15 - Lorraine Thorpe
• Friday - Parent Reader - 2:15 - Twila Davis 

Until next time - 
Susan