What a crazy week! I am glad we were able to have our Friendship Celebration before Mid-Winter Break! I hope you all have a wonderful break!
When we come back from break we will be celebrating and participating in Read Across America! Feel free to bring books from home to read throughout the week! If anyone has a favorite book they would like to read to the class, please send it in and I will find time to read it out loud! During Read Across America we will be doing different themes throughout the week: Monday is Mystery Reader Tuesday is Buddy Reading with Ms. Lehl’s Class Wednesday is All School Read-In from 10:05-10:20 Thursday is Dress Up Day-Dress up as your favorite character! Friday is Unplug day! Our First Grade Dance has been moved to Tuesday, February 26th from 6:30-7:00 PM. We hope to see you there! Have a great break! What a crazy, short week we have had! I hope you all enjoyed your two snow days and that you will all stay warm and safe this weekend! Please be sure to check your emails throughout the weekend for any school closure updates if we do get a lot of snow!
Writing: In writing this week we focused on putting comparisons in our information books to help readers visualize what we are writing about. For example, the polar bear is as white as snow! Many students had fun coming up with funny and unique comparisons to enhance their writing. With some reminders, each student was able to add a comparison into their information book to help readers picture what is happening. Next week we will work on our introductions and conclusions for our stories! Reading: During reading we continued to add tools for strengthening our understanding of books we are reading. Students learned the importance of keeping track of which characters are talking. We practiced this skill by reading Ivy and Zelda which had many parts in the book where the character talking was not identified. Many students noticed that they can use clues from the book and picture to identify and keep track of who is talking. After transitioning to stamina reading, I heard many students keeping track of who was talking in their books! Math: In math this week we focused on graphs! Together we graphed our favorite rainy day activities using tally marks for each student vote. Once students became comfortable with tally marks, we transitioned to bar graphs! As a class we graphed our favorite fruits using sticky notes and noticed that graphing is like measuring because we have to line up end points and not let the sticky notes overlap. Using our data, we answered questions such as: How many more students like pineapple than apple and How many students voted in all. Spelling Words: Next week’s spelling words are: mad, made, take, that, cake, and apple. Next week Warm Fuzzies will be for sale on February 12th and 13th for 25 cents. Please bring in quarters, dollars, or five dollar bills to purchase. First Grade Dance Party is on Tuesday the 12th from 6:30-7:00! See you there! Our Friendship celebration is on Thursday from 2:25-3:30! Please come join us for some fun and friendship! Box tops are due February 15th! Please send them in so our class can earn a party! We had a wonderful week of learning! Our class explored new math concepts, studied how to write chapter books, and use new strategies to really understand the books they are reading! As a reminder, Twin Day is February 13th! Warm Fuzzy’s will be sold during second recess on February 12th and 13th for 25 cents each!
Our Friendship Celebration will be on February 14th from 2:25-3:30! Please come join us for some fun and friendship! Writing: This week our class learned how to make a table of contents for our chapter books. Together we came up with rules so our table of contents are similar to the ones we read in books from our classroom. We decided that each chapter should be exciting, not too long, and states what the chapter will be explain. Many students created exciting chapters about dogs, cats, basketball, and Mario! Spelling Words this week are: hike, spike, bike, spoke, stroke, and woke. Reading: During reading this week, our class focused on comprehension. Now that many of us are reading bigger, longer books, it is important to slow down and ask if we really understand what we are reading. Together we practiced rereading our books to make sure we understand the big idea, the main problem, who the characters are, and many other important details. We also played a “movie” in our minds to see all the details we were reading about it. You can practice these reading strategies at home! Math: Our class continued learning about measuring this week and began to learn about graphing. During our circle time, we surveyed our favorite read aloud books and put them on a chart. After realizing how hard it is to see jumbled votes, we organized our class votes into a graph. This made it easier to see which read aloud was the most popular. We then voted on our favorite sports and made tally marks to represent each vote. You can practice graphing at home by choosing things to survey! We finished the week by attending the Variety Show! It was so fun to watch the different acts and many students were inspired for next year! Mid-Winter Break is February 18-22! I hope you all get to travel somewhere warm! Have a great weekend! |