Spring Fever is Here!

Hi Everyone,

Spring Fever is here! Literally and figuratively.  For the last two weeks, we have had varying numbers of students in attendance due to illness.  Everyone seems to be on the mend and I'm hopeful that a week of rest, relaxation, and fresh air will make everyone feel a lot better!

This week was a "normal" week with a normal schedule.  It was tricky at times to focus on our work now that the weather is getting warmer, the sun is shining, and break is on the horizon! As a class, we have needed reminders about following our "rug rules" and blurting (talking when others are talking).  After break, we will do a review of our classroom rules and procedures to get us through the home stretch of the school year!

I cannot believe we're already approaching April Break! This year is flying by!

This week in Math...

-We reviewed fact families, practiced addition and subtraction strategies, and learned about defining/non-defining attributes.  We also learned about telling time to the hour using the minute and hour hand on a clock.  

This week in Fundations...

-We practiced adding -ed and -ing suffixes to base words.  For example, "squinting," "jumping," and "rested."

-We learned the new trick words out, our, and about.

-We reviewed our vowel teams - ai, ay, ee, ea, ey, oi, oy, oa, oe, ow, ou, oo, ue, ew.  We also learned aw/au.  Please note these vowel teams are only INTRODUCED in first grade so that students will have the background knowledge to decode words they come across in their books! They are not expected to master these spelling patterns in their writing, but many of them are using them in their daily writing journals!

-We took our unit 10 assessment.  When we come back from break we will be working on long vowel spelling patterns using vowel-consonant-e, i.e., cake, cube, kite.  

This week in Writing....

-We practiced writing sentences that start with an uppercase letter, have spaces between words, and end with punctuation.

-We have also been writing in our daily journals every morning.

This week in Science...

-We learned about the water cycle.  

Housekeeping

-Please be sure your child has a water bottle and snack EACH day.  We have a morning snack and an afternoon snack.

-Book orders went home today and will be due 4/24.

-No school week of 4/17.

Our rain cloud in a jar experiment.

We went outside and did some writing with Miss Cox's class on Thursday.

Recess!

Busy, busy, busy week!

We've had a super busy week in first grade with lots of exciting happenings! 

In the mornings, students have been writing in their journals.  It gives them extra practice and exposes them to a variety of genres.  Students write about their weekend news, they write "all about" a topic, they answer a "would you rather" question, and so on.  So far, it's going well!

Here are some pictures from small groups and center time.  Students are working on saying words, segmenting and counting sounds, and then writing the word.  Did you know that some sounds, like ch and sh, have two letters, but only count as one sound? Students practiced building words with short vowels and blends.  Next week, in centers, students will do this activity with long vowel patterns we have learned about.

Students are practicing writing sentences.  We are all working on starting sentences with capital letters and ending with punctuation.

Students are identifying the word that matches the picture.

We learned about Native Americans.  We learned that Native Americans weaved baskets.  We practiced weaving with paper and yarn (not pictured, but that should have come home today!)

We learned two new suffixes "-ed" and "-ing."  We learned that "ing" means that something is happening right now and "ed" means that something happened in the past.  We are practicing tapping out the base word and then adding the suffix.  

We had a STEM lesson with Miss Cox's class.  We learned about circuits and built Bristle Bots!

We had two special visitors, Ed Bullock and Ken Hamilton. They are Native Americans, who taught us about their culture and traditions.  We had a Pow Wow, learned about storytelling (ask your child about the story of the woodpecker!), and hunting.

 Tomorrow is UNICORN DAY! We will do some activities centered around Unicorns and read some books about Unicorns! I'm looking forward to it!