August 25th

I wanted to thank you for coming to curriculum night this week. It was so nice to see everyone! I have included information that was presented in this blog if you were unable to attend. Please let me know if you have any questions! 

Our first full week of school was a success! We have been so busy in first grade getting to know each other and our classroom expectations. Routines are so important and so these first few weeks we will be establishing our Daily 5 and guided math routines. We will be working on our beginning of the day and end of the day routines as well. 

** Our class participates in Scholastic Book Clubs. Reading is so important for your student each day. This is an easy way to order books for your home collection! Books ordered each month will be delivered to school and then sent home. Each order earns our class points to get new books for our class library as well! You can send in orders to me OR order all online. Our class code for ordering is JC73X. I will send home the first order form next week. 

The library is a fantastic place to get books for free! :-) Please check out your public library as they will have many of the titles your students love to read in class. We will also be visiting our school library once a week to pick one book each week to read. 

* September 5th is picture day! Picture day order forms went home Friday in your students home folders. Come with your best smile! 

Literacy

Reading:

This week in literacy, we began reading many different stories that link to the common theme of friendship. Stellaluna and "Frog and Toad" are two stories that we will spend some time with in the coming weeks.  After reading each story, students are asked different comprehension questions to get us thinking deeper about them. We will be focusing on retelling this including sequenced events, characters, and the setting. This could also include characters feelings or inferences they have made as they read the story. Inferences are conclusions we come to by using what we know in a text and what we know about the world around us in general and putting those ideas together. For example: "I shivered as the snowflakes fell to the ground." I know that it must take place in the winter or somewhere very cold because the character was shivering and there was snow. I know shivering and snow means it is cold and this means it could be winter. Therefore, the story takes place in winter or somewhere cold.  

Writing and Spelling:
This week we also took our base line spelling test for Words Their Way. This will be used as we talk about which sorts students will begin with. We also wrote our first narrative stories about a our favorite summer memories. This week we will begin our focus on narrative writing and the process that we use in order to create our stories. 


Math: In math this week, we began by taking our first pretest for Unit 1. Within this unit students will be asked to use flexible thinking to solve problems that have them skip counting and knowing pairs of numbers that make 5 and 10. We want students to not only be able to solve addition and subtraction problems but to be able to flexibly think about the numbers 5 and 10. We want them to be able to build and break down those numbers with ease. We will also begin our number corner routines which will be practicing skip counting by 2, 5, and 10, counting money, knowing the sequential order of numbers, place value and what 10 and some more means, as well as other math practice. 

Want more math practice at home? Dreambox is a fantastic App on the iPad or even on your computer. Through Dreambox each student has their own account. They took a pretest to determine where they would begin in the program. As they master skills the program continues to push them forward even into higher grade level skills. It is very important they solve the problems on their own! If parents or siblings are showing or solving for them, the program will increase the difficulty of the skill they are learning and they will be unable to complete the games on their own in class. Dreambox is meant to be an independent exploration. It is ok to teach the skill but not solve for them! Sign in directions went home at curriculum night or Friday if you could not attend.

*Log in usernames and passwords are in your students folder. We placed them in the back of their folder in the clear pocket for easy access. 

*If you missed curriculum night, please read the information below. 
Take home folders will be sent home each night and we ask they are returned to school each day. These are blue folders that have "Take Home Folder" on the front. Please also make sure to check your students folder for work and homework that will be sent home each night. 

Students will have a reading log and are asked to read 15-20 minutes each night. They will also be getting math homework which will begin in the next few weeks. 

Our class behavior plan is a clip chart system. Students begin on green each day and have the opportunity to move to purple or blue for expected behavior during the day. They also have the ability to move down for unexpected behavior. Students can earn stickers for landing on blue, purple, or green at the end of the day. If they earn 10 stickers they are able to pick a prize from our class treasure chest. 

What is Daily 5 and guided instruction? 

As we finish our assessments and look over current levels for students, we use this information to form our instructional groups. During our Daily 5 block I will meet with small groups of students to work on specific skills. While I am meeting with these small groups, students are independently working on assignments at different centers. These include word work, writing, reading to themselves, reading to someone, and listening to reading. At each center they will have a target they are working toward. For example, word work will include students working with word patterns or vocabulary building. Some students may be working on sorting words with short vowel sounds while others may be working toward long vowel sounds. Each activity is set with your students goals in mind. 

Guided math looks very similar. We have multiple centers for students to explore while the teacher is working with small groups or assessing skills with in their exploration. 

What will writing look like in first grade?

This year students will be introduced to three types of writing. We will look at the structure of narrative writing, opinion writing, and informational/explanatory writing. We will also do many writing responses throughout the year and be exposed to other forms of writing such as writing letters. Each form of writing has a specific organizer that we use to outline their thinking and each prompt is connected a text we will read in class. The process follows a similar pattern for each type. 

1. Read a specific text linked to our topic
2. Brainstorm ideas for our topic
3. Talk out our ideas with a friend
4. Plan our writing using an organizer
5. Talk out our stories again, add to our organizers
6. Write our stories
7. Read our writing to a small group or pairs and revise/edit our writing

What is Co-Teaching?

All four first grade classrooms will be co-taught this year. Mrs. Driscoll will be in our classroom during literacy time. Co-teaching will be used in order to support language development as well as literacy skills. 

September Current Events

** Please also check our School Calendar for other events that may not be listed below! Calendar

August 28th - Early Release 2:00 PM

September 3rd - No School - Labor Day

September 5th - Picture Day

September 10th - No School 

September 19th - No School 

September 25th - Early Release 2:00 PM