Hi Families!
I hope you have enjoyed the lessons provided this past week and have been able to create a schedule for school at home that works for you! We have loved reading the stories students have written, reading new facts students have learned in books, and seeing your progress in math! Make sure you give yourself a pat on the back and tell yourself “good job!” because you are all working so hard! This upcoming week, we will be posting more assignments to Seesaw! New this week, we will be posting the Seesaw activities the night before so parents can review the lesson and prepare for the next day. Please feel free to look at the assignments when they are posted, however, please do not post your response until the next day. Just like last week, we want to send you the expectations for the assignments so you know exactly what your child should be doing! Reading: Continue to use Lexia and stamina read daily. You can use Raz-kids for supplemental reading material. Writing: For writing this week, FIRST print out a three-page booklet on Monday. If you don’t have a printer, then just staple 3 pieces of paper together to make your three-page booklet. You can begin a new story for writing on Monday and continue to add to it on Tuesday and Wednesday after seeing the writing lessons. You can implement the skills from each mini lesson to enhance your current writing. On Thursday, use this day to add anything you need to your writing and use the Writing Review Opinion Checklist and Writing Review Opinion Editing Checklist to revise and edit your final draft. Once you have completed your final draft, upload your writing to Seesaw on Thursday. This opinion unit is three weeks long, so there will be a total of 3 Thursday Seesaw postings (4/23, 4/30, and 5/7.) We will use these 3 pieces of writing for assessments. These topics could include but are not limited to: best restaurant, best color, most ideal pet, best place to go on a field trip, best place to go on a vacation, best toy, video game or movie. You can choose one of these a week to write about or make up your own opinion piece. Writing tip: using a folder or gallon size baggie to keep your writing and writing resources (such as word charts, Transition chart, checklists, sample writing text) separate from all your other papers is a good way to keep what you need within reach. Math: In math this week, you are going to complete the assigned activities just like you did last week! Remember, you should be completing the entire first template! You can complete the second template or go on Zearn if you would like some extra math practice. This week there is an assignment on Thursday called Module 4 **Student Check-in**. For this assignment, you need to complete all 5 pages on your own! Your parents or older siblings can help you read the problems, but you should be solving them by yourself. After you are done with all 5 pages, you can submit them right away! You will not be going over your work with a parent or adult for the check in. This check-in will help me see how you are doing with the math lessons and what areas are still a little tricky for all of us! Remember to try your best! Specialists: This week there will be no science or social studies. Instead, check out your Enrichment Class on Seesaw to do some fun Library, Music, PE, Second Step, and PBSES activities! To get to the Enrichment Class on Seesaw, login to Clever and click on Seesaw. Once you are in Seesaw, go to the upper left corner where it says which class you are currently signed into. Click on the class and in the drop-down options you should see Enrichment Classes. Click on that class and you will be able to see all your Enrichment assigned activities! To get back to our class’ Seesaw, go back to the upper left class options and click our class name in the drop down! Extras: We have loved seeing your hard work posted in Seesaw! When you are submitting pictures of your completed work to Seesaw, try to make the picture fill up the whole template so it is easier for us to see your wonderful work! It has been so fun to hear your voices on Seesaw so if you would like to record yourself reading your story with your assignment you can! Also, please remember the assignments on Seesaw are now mandatory and we should see every student posting their work! All work should be submitted by Saturday evening at 7 PM. As always, if you have any questions or concerns please let me know! Have a wonderful week! Dear Parents and Families,
We hope that you all had a pleasant spring break and are gearing up for our Essential New Learning starting this week! The Essential New Learning will now be covering new curriculum and will be our “school” for the rest of First Grade. We know this will be new for all of us and we will continue learning as we go, so please know we are not expecting perfection right now! This first week we want you all to get into a set routine of when you plan to read, write, and do math at home. Routine is so important and the more you can stick with a routine, the easier this remote learning will go! All assignments for the day will be posted around 9:00 AM; you can plan a schedule with your student and adopt a routine that works for you! In addition to this, the first week we are focusing on participation which means completing assignments and turning them in. As we move through the weeks, we will be using some of the assignments for grading. We also wanted to express our expectations for remote learning and have provided specific details for each core subject below: Reading: The reading lessons will be posted on Seesaw. The first week will concentrate on establishing good reading habits and getting familiar with posting work on Seesaw. After the first week, we will focus on Comprehending Fiction and Nonfiction. Twenty minutes of Daily Independent Stamina Reading is still expected aside from the reading lesson. Writing: During writing lessons and activities our expectations will be students doing their own work, so that we can evaluate what they are understanding, which will help us guide our instruction for the coming weeks. When your student comes to a word they do not know, please do not help them spell the word at first; instead help them sound it out and write the sounds they hear. After they try, then spell it correctly with them. You can also encourage your child to look in books to find the correct or use the Frequently Used Words Chart to locate the word. Every Thursday students will upload a picture of one finished Weekly Writing onto Seesaw. We will use this writing as part of their assessment. Your student might finish more than one writing during the week so they will have to choose which writing piece they would like to submit. Math: The math assignments have been created to work on a specific math concept in each instructional video. Students are expected to solve the problems on their own first; perseverance and problem-solving are skills we work on as first graders! Once students have completed the 5 problems, they are expected to explain their thinking to an adult, older sibling, or record their reasoning to Seesaw. As students explain their problem-solving strategies, they might catch mistakes and be able to fix them without an adult telling them! Remind students that making mistakes and fixing them is proof they are learning! If students do not catch their mistakes, go back to the incorrect answer and go over it with them (maybe use a different color to show where you helped!). Once students have completed their math assignment, they need to upload their finished assignment to Seesaw. If your student did their work on paper rather than edit the provided template, take a picture of their work and upload it; no need to do the work twice! In addition to all the lessons on Seesaw, students should be stamina reading for 20 minutes each day, stamina writing for 30 minutes each day, and go on Lexia for 20 minutes each day. Students can also visit Zearn, Raz-Kids, and other instructional accounts for additional practice. Please remember we are all learning and doing our best during this time. If you have any questions, please reach out! We are here to support every student (and parent) even if we cannot do it in person! Thank you all for your patience and flexibility during this new frame of teaching! We will continue to send out weekly updates and create fun, engaging lessons for your student! We look forward to the day that we will all be back at school! Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns! Kindly, Your Maple Hills First Grade Teachers Happy Friday Families!
I hope you have had fun doing the Seesaw scavenger hunt today! Mr. Crawford and I are about to go out for a walk to do our scavenger hunt! I hope you all have a wonderful Spring Break and take the time to recharge, spend quality time together, and create fun memories! Our Essential New Learning begins on April 20th so be sure to check your e-mails on Sunday, April 19th in the evening for a newsletter detailing what Essential New Learning will be like and what the expectations are. This is going to be our new "school" for the rest of First Grade and will cover new learning content so be sure to thoroughly read the newsletter next Sunday evening. I will also be enjoying Spring Break by welcoming a little puppy into our family and spending time in the sun (hopefully!) so I will not be answering e-mails next week. I hope you all have a great week and are excited for our new learning coming up! Have a great Spring Break! Happy Friday Families!
I hope you have enjoyed your week and have been staying safe at home! I miss all of you so much and have really enjoyed seeing your posts and hearing your voices on Seesaw! There have been so many activities on Seesaw this week so next week we are going to take the workload a little lighter and focus on a couple specific areas in each subject! In reading next week, I want you to focus on reading comprehension more than quantity of reading. What this looks like is reading a book and being able to have "book talk" after. Book talk is when the student can provide all the main details in a story, make connections to the story, expand on the story, and much more! Comprehension is critical to grow as a reader so slowing down, rereading books, and talking about books after reading really helps readers grow! Put your focus on sitting down and reading books this week! For writing, I really want the focus to be on editing. Pick a piece of writing your child has done; this can be something I sent home during school, a story they are currently working on, or a new writing prompt. With this piece of writing, go through the story with your student and pause at the end of each sentence. Ask your student to look for things they can fix. Students should be checking for sight words, punctuation, and capitalization. Choose one story to work on for the entire week! In math, instead of focusing on completing multiple math activities, pick a problem or activity your student has worked on and ask them about their thinking when solving the problem. Here you are listening for their problem solving process: are they able to explain what they did, are they talking about number relationships rather than saying "I just knew", etc. Students should be able to explain how they solved, what strategy they used, and essentially teach you how to do it. This next week the focus should be on quality of work rather than quantity which is why there will not be as many activities on Seesaw. I also wanted to add a "recharge" day so on Friday, I want you to spend some time outside, going for a walk, playing board games, etc. Students (and parents!) have been working so hard and could use a day to relax, spend time together, and possibly go on a neighborhood scavenger hunt! The scavenger hunt will be posted to Seesaw on Friday at 9:30 AM. Thank you all so much for your patience and understanding during this unpredictable time. It is so hard being out of the classroom and I truly hope we can safely return soon! If you have any questions about next week, please reach out to me! |