This week was filled with Kindness! Throughout the week we celebrated kindness towards others and ourselves!
Writing: Our opinion stories have gotten so detailed and fun to read! We practiced putting opposing arguments in our stories to help convince our readers why our opinion is correct. Each student added sparkly words such as shiny, glittery, colorful, and many others to get our readers attention. We have been monitoring our use of conventions by checking our writing for a capital at the beginning of each sentence, punctuation to end our sentence, and no capital letters in the middle of a word or sentence. To finish the week, we asked our peers to help us give more reasons for our opinion and put their quotes into our stories! Spelling Words: buzzes, buses, dishes, kisses, boxes, peaches Reading: While traveling on different adventures in our stories, we narrowed in on the main characters this week. In our group discussions, we talked about the main characters in our stories and everything we learned about them. Together we discussed the characters likes and dislikes, what characters said, and what the characters were doing. Some students were even able to find characters that they had a personal connection with! We also learned that we need to pay attention to other characters in the story because they also have important roles. Math: This week in math we refined our skills of RDW: read, draw with labels, and write a number sentence and statement. For our drawing, we started using a diagram called a tape-diagram. Everyone continued to practice the tape diagram and were able to solve their own RDW problems with their group. During this group challenge, students had to work together to solve the problem and present. It was so fun to watch each group present their hard work to the class! Science: We wrapped up our Motion unit this week by learning about distance, time, and speed with motion. Each student hopped, walked backwards, and bear crawled for 5 seconds to observe their distance and speed. After racing, we looked at our results and found that the farther the distance, the faster the speed. Everyone agreed that hopping was the activity with the fastest speed. To complete the week, we looked at how the forces of push and pull effected motion. We have loved learning about motion! Next Friday First Grade is holding a Spring Fling before spring break! From 2:30-3:30 students can wander through the first grade classrooms to do art projects, play with bubbles/water beads, have a dance party, or have some free choice time. We are looking for a couple volunteers from each class so if you are free, please join us! You can also send in some playdough, bubbles, or chalk to donate for our Spring Fling! The Scholastic Book Fair starts on Monday and it is buy one, get one free! I know I will be shopping for some books to add to our library with that great deal! I hope to see you there! Have a great weekend! The weather this week was so amazing!! We had a blast with our local cops out on the playground and listening to our guest author Simon Calcavecchia! Our class is collecting box tops so please help us win a prize by bringing in box tops!! Our class has been having so much fun learning this week and we can’t believe Spring Break is around the corner!
Writing: We have begun learning about Opinion Writing this week! Everyone has enjoyed writing about the collections they brought into the class and describing which item from their collection is the best one. Over the week we have talked about adding detailed reasons for why our favorite item is best to convince others we made the right choice. Students are doing a great job of convincing their friends with their writing! We have also continued talking about conventions such as spelling, capitals, and punctuation! As your child writes at home, remind them to check for all of these things! Reading: This week we have been focusing on retelling the stories we are reading. We practiced retelling the story Curious George Goes to an Ice Cream Shop. To start, we read the book together and paused during different important parts. The next day we revisited the story and only used the pictures to retell what was happening in the book. Then we made personal connections to the book about times we have gone to an ice cream shop! Many students talked about how they also couldn’t choose what flavor they wanted because there were so many to choose from just like the story! Everyone was making connections and retelling the story without even thinking about it! Spelling Words: June, tub, tube, blue, shut, huge Math: Our class is becoming experts at solving problems involving tens and ones! We have learned many different strategies on solving two-digit addition problems such as the arrow way, drawing quick tens, and making number bonds. Students were able to pick whichever strategy they wanted to solve the problem 19+5. They used their white board to show their work and then explained their thinking to a partner. This allowed each student to “teach” their partner about the strategy they used and helped others find their mistakes! Science: During science, we have been talking about Motion! We learned that motion is the change in position or place. Our class took advantage of the nice weather and went on a Motion Scavenger Hunt on the playground. Students saw birds flying, leaves blowing, spiders crawling, and many more. Each student drew or wrote 4 things they saw in motion and then discussed it back in class. Using our scavenger hunt, we then showed how far our objects moved, what speed they were going, and what path they took. Everyone has had a lot of fun learning about motion! Thank you for all of your continued support! Our class had a wonderfully busy week; so busy that I didn’t have time to complete our newsletter or update our website! My apologies! I hope you all enjoyed the amazing weather we had this weekend! I definitely took advantage of the weather with some walks to lunch and a nice 5 mile run to Lake Sammamish!
Writing: This week our class wrapped up our Information unit! Everyone edited their stories checking for punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and mess ups. It was so fun reading about things our classmates are experts at! At the end of the week, we talked about conventions and how to implement them into our writing and make it stronger. Together, we wrote sentences with a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and a period at the end. We checked to make sure there were no capital letters hiding in our words and used the word wall to check our sight words! We will be starting our Opinion and Review unit next! Reading: While reading this week, students were tasked with going off on adventures with the characters in their story! As students read, they used sticky notes to mark important parts of the story. After reading their books, students went back to their sticky notes to reread those important parts and see if they missed any details! Many students met with their reading partners and talked about the important parts of the story they had marked. Throughout the week, students continued to read more and more so they can understand the important parts of their stories and tell them to a friend! Spelling Words: hop, hope, goat, soap, stop, plop. Math: This week in math we continued to use our quick ten drawings to help us solve math problems. We have started solving addition problems with two digit numbers! To solve these problems, many students noticed that we can look at the tens and ones to see if the tens will change or the ones. Using our place value charts, quick tens, and number bonds, we have been able to solve many different additions problems! Students also completed their mid module test and have shown how much they have learned during this unit! Science: Our class continued studying magnets this week by adding Repel to our vocabulary chart. Together we learned that repel is the opposite of attract so it means to push away. We observed how magnets can repel from one another and move around. Our class also observed that magnets have two poles: a north pole and a south pole. As we experimented with the magnets, many students noted that when two north poles approached each other they repelled and same with two south poles. When a north pole and a south pole approached each other, they attracted! We concluded that magnets attract to the opposite pole! Lucky Charms will be sold this week so bring in 25 cents for each lucky charm you would like to buy! I hope you all enjoy the beautiful weather! We are still in need of chaperones for our field trip on April 18th! Please let me know if you would like to join us! I think we experienced every type of spring weather this week! We all agreed that we are ready for some sunshine rather than snow! I hope to see you all at STEM Night tonight from 6:00-7:30!! Come visit the first grade pod for Bridging the Gap!
Writing: In our writing this week, we focused on using a capital letter only at the beginning of a sentence and for a name. We reread through our books as a reader would to make sure they made sense, looked right, and sounded right. Many students added more detail to their stories by including pop out words, talking bubbles, interesting facts, and zoomed in pictures. I have loved reading so many informational books! Spelling Words: bright, night, kit, kite, crisp, blink. Reading: We finished learning about all the important jobs readers do while reading. We have practiced solving hard words with many different strategies, rereading for understanding, and reading more and more each day. Our class is now starting to focus on the characters in a story and following the story as it moves along. During our read alouds, we paus and think about what the characters might be feeling, what they are thinking, what they might do next, and then continue reading to find out if we are right. Math: This week we have started learning the symbols for greater than (>), less than (<), and equal to (=). We learned how important it is to always read the numbers from left to right. If the first number is bigger than the second number we know it is greater than (>). If the first number is smaller then it is less than (<) and if the numbers are the same they are equal (=). We practiced this skill by thinking of two digit numbers and quizzing our partners! Many students were able to write the correct sign and I saw many partners helping each other master this new skill. Science: We continued learning about Magnets this week with our very own science project! We tested magnets to see whether temperature would affect their strength. After testing our control magnet that was kept at room temperature, we tested a magnet that was kept in the freezer all day and a magnet that was sitting in boiling water. Our results showed that the frozen magnet maintained its strength while the hot magnet became weaker. Everyone was so excited during this experiment and ready to learn more about magnet! As a reminder, class picture day is Monday! Have a great weekend! We finally had a full week of school!! Everyone was so excited to be back at school after all the snow days and mid-winter break! I hope you all were able to get back into normal routines! Our class needed some reminders this week but we all promised to come back next week ready to learn!
Reading: This week our readers were able to read with partners to become stronger at reading! Each partner group was given a reading strategy such as stretchy snake or chunky monkey. Then the groups had to come up with a skit to show the class how to use that reading strategy! It was so fun to watch the class teach each other how to use new strategies! To help at home, try to read every night! One area I have seen students needing more practice in is flipping vowel sounds! Have your child tell you how to use Flippy Dolphin and then have them use the strategy when reading new words! Writing: Many students finished their first chapter books this week! While publishing their work, students checked their writing as if they were a reader. Each student started at the beginning of their story and started reading through. While reading, students checked to make sure their story made sense, if they had misspelled words, if their conventions were correct, and see if they could add any details. Students then checked their introductions and conclusions to make them perfect. Our class is getting better at forming new words and making sure we only use a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence or name. Spelling Words: green, seat, mess, best, cute, hope Math: We began Module 4 this week in math! Within module 4 we look at place value with two digit numbers. Together we looked at two digit numbers and created a place value chart to see tens and ones within that number. For example, the number 45 has 4 groups of ten and 5 ones. By the end of the week, each student was able to show how many tens and ones were in a two digit number. Our last lesson this week introduced students to changing a two digit number by +1, -1, +10, or -10. Many students loved the added challenge and were excited to learn more about place value! Science: Our class started learning about magnets this week! During our first lesson in magnets this week we learned a new vocabulary word: Force. Students practiced saying the definition along with the hand motions to help them remember our new word! We then used a magnet to test whether some objects in our class were magnetic. Through our scavenger hunt, many students started to notice that the magnets attracted to metal objects! They have loved learning about magnets so far and are excited to continue our unit next week! I hope you all have a restful weekend! |