Week 3 - September 21, 2018

Family Picture

This week our focus has been on our classroom community and how we can make it fun and safe. We want students to feel as if our classroom if a family.  We also want to highlight and learn about each student's family, so if you haven't already, please send in a family photo (no larger than 5X7) so that we can discuss our families!  These photos will be returned to you at the end of the year.

Curriculum

Reading:
The students have learned about how to read to self.  We are building stamina to read independently for longer and longer periods of time.  The students also learned ways to choose good books for them.  Next week, the students will learn how to read to someone.  We will work on being a good partner and helping versus doing for others.  We will also continue to build stamina as readers.

Book Baggies:
Students are bringing home book baggies TODAY! Students have 6 books in their bag (two below their reading level to help them work on fluency, two at their level to focus on good reading skills, and two above level to continue to push and grow as readers).  These bags will stay at home all week for students to practice reading.  We will exchange books each week, so it is important that they remember to bring their bag back to school on Fridays when we exchange our books.  If a student forgets or is absent one week, they will need to return them the following Friday.  

Writing:
As writers this week, we read mentor texts to learn how published authors do things.  We will use what we learn from these authors to create our own stories about our family.

Math:
In math we spent a lot of time working on strategies for counting and number sense.  The students are learning to talk about math and understand math rather than just compute math problems.  We will continue this next week.

IXL Skills - Use these activities as you wish to help your child with the skills we will be working on throughout this first trimester.

Science/Social Studies:
This week the students were given a challenge from a real meteorologist.  She asked our first graders to help her predict the weather.  The students have been asking many questions about how meteorologists do that and what we will need in order to do that.  We also discussed ways in which we can learn how to predict the weather.  One idea was to go outside and observe, so we did.  We left off this week wondering how clouds are a part of weather, so we will begin next week reading and learning about the different types of clouds, what types of weather go with the different types of clouds and how clouds move across the sky.

Purposeful Play
Please see the Purposeful Play tab on the blog to learn more about our weekly Play Time and donation items we could use for it!

Homework

• Read every night
• Work on a math skill (i.e. adding and subtracting to 20 - play a board game for this, telling time, counting coins, measuring - length and volume -  have your child cook with you to practice this, talk about shapes - 2D and 3D - find items around your house, etc.) 

Specials Schedule

Monday: P.E. (Wear tennis shoes)
Tuesday: Art (Bring an Art shirt labeled with your child's name)
Wednesday: Music
Thursday: Media/Library
Friday: Rotates (See the back of your child's OWL folder (everyday folder) for a schedule.)

Important Dates

September 28: Color Run Kickoff
October 3: Count Day and Picture Day
October 10: Walk to School Day
October 19: Color Run