This week in First Grade...

A few reminders to begin with...

1. If you have not returned the At-home Reading Survey via e-mail please do so as soon as possible.

2. If you have not sent a book box (i.e. magazine holder; cardboard or plastic) please do so.

3. Parent/ Teacher conferences are drawing near. I will hold conferences the week of October 6th, on Monday October 12th, and the remainder of that week. I will be posting a sign up sheet in the hallway this week. If you have special circumstances please e-mail me and I will find a way to accommodate you.

4. I sent out an Evite for "Meet Me at the Movies" on Friday, October 2nd at 5:30pm. I hope everyone can make it. We will be seeing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. If not we will have another one in November!

This week in Reader's Workshop...
We will be discussing the features of Non-Fiction texts for our reading strategy. By discussing the features of Non-Fiction texts we can learn information from photographs, diagrams and words! We will also begin working in flexible reading groups for short periods of time as we continue to learn another part of the Daily 5, Word Work.

In Writer's Workshop...
We will continue discussing how to get ideas, where to get them from, how to use our ideas, how to make our picture plan and words match and how to stretch our words to work on writing fluency and identify words we need help spelling. We will focus on writing from our imaginations this week. We will use real stories written by real authors to learn from. The real stories include Skippyjon Jones (a series of books from Judy Schachner) and The Night I Followed the Dog.

Our words to work on this week are: on, not, got, box, hot, top
Our sound is the short o sound.
Our vocabulary words for the week are: at, as, they, jump, but
Our challenge words are: strategies and doubles

In Math this week we will begin our unit on Addition and Subtraction in Problem Solving Situations. We will be learning to solve problems by making our own strategies and sharing them during Mathematician's Circle.

In Science this week we will be continuing our unit on Types of Changes. On Friday we did two experiments involving changes. One was a paper towel t-shirt experiment where we watched what happened when we colored on a paper towel t-shirt with our markers then dipped it in water. We also discovered what would happen if we put some cream in a jar and shook it up! We made butter! Yummy! This week we will make pancakes to discover how heating up a liquid like substance can create a solid object. For our unit we will need pancake mix (the just add water kind), syrup, and butter. If you can send these items please e-mail. If you would like to help us make pancakes please e-mail me and let me know. We will be cooking on Tuesday morning, around snack time (9:30am).

Have a great week!
Mrs.Caballero