What we are learning this week!!!

This week we have been learning a TON!!! The kids have been doing great and they have really shown how smart they are!

 

 

Language Arts:

We are learning about the different forms of punctuation. Students are remembering to capitalize letters that are in the first word of a sentence, and they are remembering to capitalize letters in peoples' names. We are practicing when to use periods, question marks, and exclamation points.

 

Reading:

First grade is grouping together words that end in OT and OP. They have compiled a great list of words that have these two endings together as a group. It is pretty lengthy! Also, we have been practicing reading silently as a whole group and we have gotten ourselves up to seventeen whole minutes without any interruptions! This is quite an accomplishment for us! In addition to this, we have been reading books and writing sentences that include words which have the "short i" sound. Your students are able to identify what the "short i" sound sounds like and which words contain "short i" as opposed to those that don't. I am very proud of how well they've mastered this particular skill! Reading is something your students thoroughly enjoy! They loved reading books from our Robert Munsch collection during our Read Aloud time. They especially loved the illustrations. Now that we are beginning to read from the Junie B. Jones collection (a chapter book with limited pictures), students are really practicing invisioning what the characters look like in the book and what is going on. They are really having to work hard at creating mental images which is something we have begun learning how to do while listening to literature.

 

Math:

In math right now we are working on subtraction. Students are learning how to write number sentences after reading word sentences that ask mathematical questions. For example: What is 2 less than 8? Your student is able to read a question like this and form the number sentence 8-2=6. We have played several small games to strengthen this skill and have reviewed this skill with Exit Slips (small quizzes that have two questions each). Today, students worked with a partner and bowled in class! Fun stuff right (ha ha)? We used empty water bottles and played subtraction bowling. Each pair had five "pins", and they were able to attempt to knock all five down using a small ball. If they knocked two pins down, they would write 5-2=3. They did this a total for three frames and had a variety of problems to solve. Some students were pros and knocked them all down each time so we went over the possibilites as a class to allow for more learning.

 

Science:

In science we have been learning about the life cycle. Monday and Tuesday we spent time talking about the butterfly's life cycle, specifically the Monarch Butterfly. We read a book titled, From Caterpillar to Butterfly. The kids were very interested in all of the fun facts and of course the colorful illustrations within. This informative book was loved by them all! Today we watched a small video clip about the life cycle of a butterfly on Brainpopjr. They LOVED it!!! Because it was short, they watched two more videos as well. One was about the frog's life cycle which we will discuss more on Friday, and the other was about things that melt. Tomorrow we will make a really cute representation of the butterfly's life cycle on paper plates so that your students can show me what they know! I'm sure they're going to really like this!

 

Writing:

Yesterday we wrote in our journals for quite a bit of time. I asked the students to tell me what their opinion was about dogs. They were to write what they thought about dogs and then draw a picture that represented their writing. This exercise was supposed to help them prepare for an On Demand writing prompt that was given today. Students were asked to choose one of three books that were read to them by Mrs. Tipton before she left, and tell which one, in their opinion, was their favorite. Then, they had to write two details specific to the book which would support their opinion and tell why their teacher should read that book again with future students. A picture was also drawn by the students to represent the book that they chose.

 

Reminders:

• Have your child study for his/her spelling test on Friday!
• If your child has come home with a math test that needed a parent signature, please sign and have them return the test tomorrow!
• Please don't forget to check your child's agenda and sign it each night! Thanks!

Announcement:

We are going on a field trip to Boyd's Orchard on October 9th! Your child has a permission slip that needs to be filled out and returned to school no later than October 2nd. All of the information you need is included in the permission slip that was sent home! It should be a very fun and exciting time!

 

Things you can do at home with your child:

-Read with them a short chapter book (or any book without showing illustrations ) and discuss mental images (what do you see, what do you think that looked like, how do you picture that character).

-Ask them to give you a list of OT and OP words.

-Talk with them! About anything! Ask them what their opinions are and then try to squeeze details out of them for why their opinion is what it is! Let's get their brains working!

-Casually work with subtraction (i.e. Mom is ordering us a pizza for tonight. This pizza has 12 slices. If your brother has three slices, how many will be left for the rest of us?)