November News #1

  Happy Halloween! It looks like we will have beautiful weather to start off the month of November.. On Friday, we had our "Fall Party" celebration and enjoyed treats and juice boxes. We have started a new class ticket challenge, our goal is to earn 10 class tickets for 15 minutes of free time. We will focus on line basics for this class goal. . Many students also  have earned homework prizes.  I have been impressed with how many have returned their "Making Words" homework. The extra practice will build your child's decoding skills, and it's a great way to practice spelling and reading too.

Reading: Last week, our reading goals were to read and spell words with the short o sound, as well as words with the l blends (bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl), our comprehension skill was to sequence events after reading using these words: first, next, then, and last, and our grammar skill was statements. We learned that a statement starts with a capital letter and ends with a period. This week, our goals will be to read and spell words with the short e sound, as well as the s blends (sc, sk, st, sp, sw, sl, str), our comprehension skill is text and graphic features of a biography, and our grammar skill is singular and plural nouns. We will also learn about antonyms. We have been doing the comprehension activities together, for these can be difficult tasks for 1st graders to write out and it is a challenge to verbally retell them in their own words. We continue to learn new words weekly and we're reading fun stories. We're also enjoying big books in our large group reading lessons. The big books that we have read are then placed in a literacy center for extra practice. A word wall has also been created in our classroom. High-Frequency words practiced during our large group reading lessons are placed on the wall at the end of the week. Word wall words should "click" when we read. The following High-Frequency words were practiced last week: her, she, now, today, our, would- words for this week will be: after, read, draw, was, pictures, write

Math: Last week, we started Module 3 which is titled "Properties of Operations". Our lessons will focus on the following addition strategies: Represent Addition in Any Order (I call this "turnaround facts"), adding 3 numbers, adding 3 numbers to Solve Problems, as well as Equal and Not Equal. As we practice and learn each strategy, we are working on developing fluency of addition facts. We will complete Module 3 later this week. We will then move on to “Subtraction Strategies”. During calendar, we are focusing on odd and even numbers, as well as using the words "more" and "fewer" when working with numbers. For odd and even, the students discovered that even numbers make a pair, and odd numbers have one left over. At home, you may want to work on the facts using flashcards, or by finding a game online. A good site to find math games is abcya.com. This site has numerous games to reinforce skills in 1st grade. I use this for centers, so your child will most likely know some games they can do. You could also encourage your child to do the Xtra Math program. I sent a letter home regarding this program a few weeks ago with login information. If you need a new letter for this program just send me an email, and I will send one home. 

Writing: I mentioned during conferences that writing a complete sentence was our focus to start the year.  We will continue to practice this by writing in our journals and within our daily written work. I hope you enjoyed the first journal they completed. We are now using one of their notebooks to write in. Our focus now is "Opinion Writing" and the difference between fact or opinion. This will be done in our journals, as well as writing pieces we will create. When writing in our journals, we have done a few like this: "I would rather _____ than ________. An example of one we have done is jump in leaves or jump in the snow. 

Science: Our focus has been "Plant and Animal Superpowers". Titles of Mystery Science lessons we have done so far are: "Why do Birds have beaks?", "Why do baby ducks follow their Mother?", "Why are Polar Bears White?", and "Why do Family Members look alike?" We have also combined these lessons with a program called "Little Thinkers" and our focus has been on animal structures and survival, animal behaviors, offspring survival, and camouflage. We will continue to have lessons on this through the end of November and will soon have lessons on plant movement and survival. The kids love our science time. We also had Anjanette from ISU extension come in for a STEM activity last week titled “Rolling Things”. This activity focuses on mass, gravity, momentum, and friction. Anjanette will be coming again in November to continue with the “Rolling Things” activity. 

Star Student: Dylan and Van were most recently featured. Dylan likes to drink sprite and eat ice cream. Her favorite place is Nana and Papa’s camper, and when she grows up, she wants to be a teacher. Van’s favorite drink is Mountain Dew, and he likes to eat pizza rolls. Van’s favorite thing to wear is his crocs, and he wants to be a police officer when he grows up.