This week in First grade...

I can't believe today is already Wednesday. As you can see it's been a whirlwind of a week.
You have, by now, found new calendars for January in your child's take home (daily) folder. The expectation is that they read 10-15 minutes aloud, nightly (5 days a week; 200+ minutes / month) to improve their reading fluency, comprehension and overall self esteem as readers. Please record the number of minutes on the appropriate date. I will take the calendars out at the end of the month and replace them with the new months calendar. Tomorrow I will announce to the students that it is also part of their responsibility as a growing 1st grade to make sure their reading minutes are recorded. At the end of the school year we will have a reading party for the students who met their reading goal from January to mid May.

On Monday we will be welcoming a new person to our classroom. Ms. Brittney Ham, a student teacher from Texas State University, will be joining our class to share in the learning experience. She will gradually take over teaching with my assistance and guidance for about 8 weeks. After that she will take full responsibility over teaching and planning lessons for 2 weeks and then gradually I will take over the responsibilities as she phases out her experience. She will be with us until the end of April. I'm very excited for the students to get to work with her!

This week in Reader's workshop...
We are reading biographies about men and women who lead the Civil Rights movement. We are making connections to events that have happened in our own lives that made us feel not as important as someone else.
Take home readers will begin coming home each day (Monday-Wednesday) with new books each day. The students will be working on a strategy for comprehension through a genre that we will study. Please help your child remember to read their book each night and bring it back for a new one the next day. Two days a week the students have free choice home reading.

In Work Work...
We are reviewing vowel pairs this week. No words.

In Writer's Workshop...
Our little writers have been introduced to their writing partners. Each partner set has a "partner place" in the classroom where they go to work. We discussed the importance of having the right tools for writing so it's just as important to have a buddy also. The students agree on who is partner one and who is partner two. They read each other their stories and ask each other two questions, "Are you done with your story or will you add more?" "How will it go?" They also give feedback to each other about their story. This will help the students write as readers and read like writers.

In math...
We will wrap up our unit on 2D and 3D shapes. We will have a short assessment at the end of the week. We will begin our unit on money next Monday. This unit will cover identifying money and counting small equal amounts (i.e. 1 nickel is 5 pennies). We will also be grouping the students according to ability level, as determined by a pre-assessment, and the students will be going to another classroom to work with a different teacher and group of students. This will allow for focused instruction based on what the students already know.

In Science...
We are learning about Systems and how parts of an object work together. For example, a train and it's parts are a system. Without wheels to go on the track a train would not work properly. Today the students wrote what they thought a system was on a sticky note and also tried to think of an example of a system after we did a little background reading.

On Friday we will have Show and Tell in the afternoon. Please assist your child in finding an example of a system to bring. They will need to be able to explain it's parts and how they work together.