This week in First Grade...

I hope everyone had a fun and safe weekend! We had the best day on Friday with all of our Halloween activities and they enjoyed the day! This morning we shared our weekend festivities in Community Circle. This is a time when we sit down in the morning and everyone gets to say a few things about what they did over the weekend. It was fun to hear what everyone dressed up as today!

Report cards are going home today, November 2nd, in the Monday folders. Please read through the green information sheets that accompany the report card and reference it before looking at the grades on the report card. There are a couple of items we'd like to point out before reviewing them.
1. First grade goes by curriculum that is on a continuum. Meaning, under one section, there are several concepts that need to be covered in order to be considered mastery. Therefore, what you see as a 1 or 2 is not a negative grade. It simply means that we have only introduced parts of this concept, so it is done with direct guidance.
2. The grades 1, 2, 3, 4 do not correlate with what we know as A, B, C, D, F.
3. As always, if there are any questions, please feel free to call me during my planning time (12:45-1:35) or e-mail. Because our morning is consumed with getting your child’s day properly started, we are not able to address any questions at that time. However, we're always willing to discuss any matters during our conference period. Please remember that with the first report card many concepts are just being introduced, therefore mastery 3s and 4s are not usually given until the third and fourth nine weeks based on the Aligned Round Rock Curriculum. A "2" on the report card means that your child is exhibiting skill/concept with minimal guidance. Also means they are making progress toward mastery of grade level expectations at an appropriate rate.
I am very pleased with my students and the hard work ethic they put forth into their daily work. That has a large part to do with you and the expectations and support your child receives at home.

This week in Reading workshop...
We will be learning about leaves! We have some great fictional stories to read as well as Native American Folklore! We will be reading from different genres to help us gather information about leaves, why they change and why they fall this time of year!
November reading calendars will be in your child purple folder tomorrow (Tuesday) along with a November reading log. There will be four weekly November reading logs in your child's folder for you to use this month!

In Writer's Workshop...
We are working on publishing our "Three Little" stories! We read different versions of the three little pigs and came up with our own version in our Writer's Notebooks! I am publishing them on the computer and each student will get a turn in the Author's Chair where they will read their story to the class and then bring it home to share with you!

Work Work words: (long i sound) like, five, ride, nine, time, bike
Vocab words: of, has, want, little, for
Challenge words: properties, scarecrow

In Math...
We are continuing our unit on Number Sense. This week we will be focusing on place value, tens and ones. We will also be solving problems using our new skills. Just FYI...your child's assessments for math are kept here at school in an assessment folder. If you would like to view the results please let me know and we can set up a time for you to come in.

In Science...
We are continuing our unit on Properties. Today we did an activity on sorting items by their properties. One group sorted buttons by the number of holes! After each group sorted their items they drew a picture of how they sorted them in their Science Notebooks.

Have a great week!

P.S. Next Wednesday, November 11th is an Early Release Day!