Newsletter March 24th- April 4th

Volunteer Schedule for April
 

 

In Reader's Workshop we finished characters and connections and moved on to a brief unit on harder decoding strategies that are needed now that we are getting into tougher books with longer words. Some of the things we have learned to read include

long vowels vs. short vowels

contractions and compound words

word endings (-s, -ed, -es, -ing)

antonyms/ synonyms

sight words

 
The list is always on my website:

March 31 - April 4	New: draw, very, please, pretty, yes Practice
April 6 - 10	New: every, most, again, does, quick Practice Review:  draw, very, please, pretty, yes Practice
April 21 - 25	New: once, over, rain, walk, house Practice Review: every, most, again, does, quick Practice

Please visit the kidblog to see your child's work and give them some feedback! 
The password is "2013/14". 
Just be sure to sign your comments with who you are, you can just say _____'s Mom/ Dad, so the kids know who you are.

We are going to take a brief break now that we've concluded a unit on "argument" (persuasive) writing and word choice. We won't forget that a persuasive paragraph is much like a nonfiction paragraph and has 5 sentences:
opening
3+ reasons
closing

We will be learning about poetry this week in honor of National Poetry Month! There are many kinds of poems including acrostic, rhyming, and mood poetry and we will use our senses to try our hand at being real poets!

Unit 3: Counting and Place Value
We have learned to talk about, represent, and recognize numbers to 120. For numbers up to 100, we can draw or build them as tens and ones. We can compare numbers using words (less than, greater than, equal to) or symbols (<, >, =). We also learned to justify our answer by saying why. For example: 64 is greater than 46 because it has more tens.

 
We will be wrapping up this unit and taking our post test before the end of the week.

Science focus: 

Newsletter March 17th - 21st

Volunteer Schedule for March
Volunteer Schedule for April

 

In Reader's Workshop we are working on characters and connections. So far we have learned that Good Readers:

• think about the "who" and call them characters
• can identify the main or most important character
• think about what characters do and say
• describe characters using character traits based on what they do and say 
• understand how their characters feel by making text to reader connections 
• look for similarities between characters in different books, text to text connection

 
The list is always on my website:

March 24 - 28	Review
March 31 - April 4	New: draw, very, please, pretty, yes Practice Review: why, new, right, old, think Practice
April 6 - 10	New: every, most, again, does, quick Practice Review: draw, very, please, pretty, yes Practice

Please visit the kidblog to see your child's penguin research papers and give them some feedback! The password is "2013/14". Just be sure to sign your comments with who you are, you can just say _____'s Mom/ Dad, so the kids know who you are.

We are now working on our unit all about word choice
Good Writers: 
tell all about their characters and make them more interesting
give our characters traits by telling what they do and say
give the words our characters say a little "hug" using quotation marks 
use our 5 senses to add details
use "jazzy" and catchy words to make our writing more interesting

Unit 3: Counting and Place Value
We now know that numbers in the teens are made up of a 10 and some ones and that the numbers repeat 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 in the ones place and that the decade numbers (tens) sound like the number of tens they represent. For example, forty sounds like four!
You can help your child at home by giving them a collection of things (pennies, legos, beads, etc.) and helping them recognize that making groups of tens and then counting tens and ones is MUCH faster and more accurate than counting them by ones. 
We have begun to learn about numbers all the way to 120 using base ten blocks, trading ones for tens as we get to the next "decade" number. We are also learning to count on and back from 10 and could use a LOT of practice with this at home. For example: 47, 57, 67, 77, etc.

  

Social Studies focus:

Science focus: 
Next up...

March 3rd - 14th

Volunteer Schedule for March

 

In Reader's Workshop we are working on characters and connections. So far we have learned that Good Readers:

• think about the "who" and call them characters
• can identify the main or most important character
• think about what characters do and say
• describe characters using character traits based on what they do and say 
• understand how their characters feel by making text to reader connections

 

3/3-3/7	New: boy, best, school, girl, take Practice Review: our, read, there, many, want Practice
3/10-3/14	New: end, other, father, brother, friend Practice Review: boy, best, school, girl, take Practice
3/17-3/21	New: why, new, right, old, think Practice Review: end, other, father, brother, friend Practice

Please visit the kidblog to see your child's penguin research papers and give them some feedback! The password is "2013/14". Just be sure to sign your comments with who you are, you can just say _____'s Mom/ Dad, so the kids know who you are.

We are now shifting focus to our unit word choice. Like in reading, we began by focusing on characters and making them more interesting. When trying to give our characters traits, we must tell what they do and say. We even learned about quotation marks! Then we continued to talk about describing words and using our 5 senses to tell about the things in our story.

This week we began unit 3: Counting and Place Value. We now know that numbers in the teens are made up of a 10 and some ones and that the numbers repeat 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 in the ones place and that the decade numbers (tens) sound like the number of tens they represent. For example, forty sounds like four!
You can help your child at home by giving them a collection of things (pennies, legos, beads, etc.) and helping them recognize that making groups of tens and then counting tens and ones is MUCH faster and more accurate than counting them by ones.

Newsletter Feb. 24-28

• Valentines Party- Monday February 24th: Thanks so much to Mr. LeTourneau and Mr. Wolf for their help in holding a belated party. The kids had fun being together in the spirit of caring.

Volunteer Schedule forMarch

 

In Reader's Workshop we introduced our next focus, characters and connections. So far we have learned that Good Readers:

• think about the "who" and call them characters
• can identify the main or most important character
• think about what characters do and say
• describe characters using character traits based on what they do and say

 

2/24-2/28	New: our, read, there, many, want Practice Review: has, how, because, stop, put Practice
3/3-3/7	New: boy, best, school, girl, take Practice Review: our, read, there, many, want Practice
3/10-3/14	New: end, other, father, brother, friend Practice Review: boy, best, school, girl, take Practice

The kids have been working so hard to research and highlight important facts, collect them in a digital web using the kidspiration app, and write nonfiction paragraphs about their favorite penguins. They have all started to post those blogs and I can't wait to share those with you as soon as we are done!
Next up, we will be working on our unit on "Voice"!

This week we focused on fact families which show how 3 numbers are related. For example:
5, 9, 14

5+9=14
9+5=14
14-9=5
14-5=9

  

Social Studies focus:

Science focus: 
Penguins - Want to help your child learn even more about their favorite penguin at home? Check out the 1st Grade Penguins Page!