This week in First grade...

March 25^th – 29^th

Reminders:

The eggs are safely in the incubators!  We are expecting baby chicks on April 10^th.  If you are interested in giving some of these babies a home please let me know!

Friday, March 29^th Spring Holiday

**STAAR testing on April 2 and 3.  No Parents allowed in the building!**

Friday, April 12^th  Family Fun Night

Reading Workshop:

In Reading Workshop we will continue our unit on Research!  We will learn about paraphrasing and synthesizing information.  We will review taking notes as we read our research books.  We will write notes on sticky notes and then synthesize that information and write it in or own words.  The end product will be written during Writer’s Workshop.

Writer’s Workshop:

In Writer’s Workshop we will practice recording our learning as we finish our whole class Research book.  We will begin working on our independent research project.  Each student will choose a topic, a book and record their learning in their Research folder!

 Math:

In math we will begin our unit on Fractions!  We will discuss and examine whole shapes and things as well as half shapes and things.  We will learn to write a fraction and describe objects using fractions.

Science:

In Science this week we will begin our unit on Chickens!  We will learn about a chicken’s life cycle, the development of an egg, adaptations of a chicken, what they eat, habitat and species of chickens.  We will read information to help us learn about the new additions to our classroom!

This week in First grade...

Welcome back!!

March 18^th – 22^nd

Reminders:

Thursday, March 21^st Class Pictures and Spring Pictures

Friday, March 29^th Spring Holiday

Friday, April 12^th  Family Fun Night

Reading Workshop:

In Reading Workshop we will begin our unit on Research!  We will learn about asking questions as we read to examine different subjects.  We will determine what we want to learn from a source and stretch our thinking!

Take home readers this week will be a script for a Reader's Theatre play.  Your child will bring their script home each day to practice reading their lines and the story so they are familiar with the plot.  The scripts will travel to and from home in your child's blue folder.

Writer’s Workshop:

In Writer’s Workshop we will learn to record our learning as we make a whole class Research book.  We will take an idea, gather information about it and create an “All About” Book to share with others.  We will think about being an expert on a subject!

Math:

In math we will work on Problem Solving.  We will experiment with a variety of problems and strategies that we’ve learned throughout the year.  We will stretch our thinking and be able to show how our brain solves a problem.

Science:

In Science this week we will begin our unit on the Seasons.  We will examine our seasons and how seasons are different around the world.  We will think about what we’ve learned about the sun and discuss the reason why we have seasons.

**This week we will set up our incubator to begin hatching chicks!  They will be in the incubator for 21 days!!**

Mar 4-8 



REMINDERS
Thursday, Library Day
Tuesday, March 5th Kindergarten Roundup
Wednesday, March 6th Early Release Day
Mar. 11-15 - Spring Break
Tuesday, March 19 - Skate Night 


This week: 


READING and WRITING

This week we will focus on two reading strategies to comprehend the text better: visualization and understanding the use of sensory language. As we read beautiful stories with descriptive language such as the Scarecrow, When the Relatives Came, The Owl Moon, and Hello Ocean, the children will learn how to visualize realistic pictures in their head to understand the stories better. When we visualize, we can hear, smell, taste or see images in our head. These are called sensory images. The students will learn that these sensory images can only be created in our head when we read a very detailed description of something which often uses more than one of the 5 senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste or touch). In writing we will learn how to describe things using our five senses. We will work with simple concrete objects and will write a description of them using our five senses.



MATH
This week in math we will review addition and subtraction through problem solving. We will learn how to apply our reading comprehension strategies to understand a math problem and solve it. Math problems does not involve pictures. We will practice how to visualize a problem, draw a picture, making connections between the problems by asking ourselves if we have done a similar problem before, and use the hints in the words to make inferences. The students will practice how to carry out a plan by determining the importance. They will also practice how to restate a the problem to make sure that they understand what the problem is asking for.



SCIENCE
In Science this week we will learn about weather. The students will write a description of weather such as warm or cold, wet or dry, cloudy or windy, every day this week in their journal. They will also write about weather using descriptive language such as sunny, hot, bright and so on. We will learn about different kinds of weather: sunny, windy, cloudy and rainy weather and learn how wind blows, and the clouds and fogs are formed.