This week in First grade...

Sept. 15-19

 We had a lovely time at Parent Orientation last week! Please remember if you have any questions to let me know. I have looked over the results of the Homework Survey and it looks like we will go with Homework goes home on Mondays back on Fridays. We will have a mix of teacher selected (on level) texts, self selected texts to keep interests high and one week out of the month we will have "online" homework through Raz-Kids! I will send more out about that later.

 We are finishing assessments this week and probably next week! Each Reading Assessments takes a minimum of 20-30 minutes per student. These assessment results are part of what we use to write goals for the students at conferences. September 24th is an Early Release Day. I will send out a Sign-Up Genius for conference sign up later this week! Conferences will begin on September 24th and hopefully we can get everyone scheduled for times the two weeks after that!

Looking for fun Reading Apps at home...Check out the Reading Rainbow App.  Today I set ours up for Lily and we were able to download 5 books for free!  It is a subscription based program but it looks awesome and Lily likes it already!


 IMPORTANT REMINDER
Tuesday: Tuesday folders come home. Please return signed Tuesday folders every Wednesday morning.
Friday: Library Day. Your child will be able to check out two books from the library this week. All library books are due by next Friday morning at 8:00. Our Library Orientation is this week!

 Here is what we will be doing this week:
 READING This week in reading we will practice “read to someone”. Read to someone will help us to be a better reader, practice our fluency and mostly it is lots of fun. We will learn how to sit closely to our partner, so our elbows and knees touch. This close proximity will allow us to read with quiet voice such as only our partner can hear us and not the rest of the class. It would also allow both of us to see the words and the pictures. There are two ways to read to someone. One way is to take turn reading a paragraph or a page and the other is to do choral reading, where both partners read together.

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT YOUR CHILD'S LEARNING AT HOME? Spicewood Spring public library has a variety of "I read, you read" books, where there is a harder paragraph for the parent to read and an easier one for the child to read. But you can practice partner reading with almost any book, as long as it is a good fit book for your child.

 WRITING This week in writing we will continue working on our stories. The children have done a great job illustrating and writing about some real events in their lives. We will learn how to write in complete sentences. A complete sentence is a complete thought that tells who or what the sentence is about, and what happened. It starts with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark. We will also learn how writers write with a beginning, middle and an ending. Once we finish writing our stories, we will re-read our stories to make sure our stories make sense.

 HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT YOUR CHILD'S LEARNING AT HOME? Please encourage your child to form the letters correctly. Almost all of the letters in alphabet start from the top to the bottom. Some children have the habit of forming the letters from the bottom to the top and this will affect their handwriting as well as speed in writing. Also please have your child practice writing their names neatly starting with capital letter and then lowercase letters. If you need double lined paper at home, please let me know, I'll be happy to give you some.

 MATH We will continue our unit on place value. We will use number tracks and make numbers using our 10 sticks (10 blocks) and ones. We will emphasize that the place of a digit in a number matters. Depending on where the digit is, in tens place or in ones place, the digit has a different value (example: compare 17 and 71). Last week we worked with teen numbers. This week we will work with 2 digit numbers greater than teens. When studying 24, we will see that 2 is 2 sets/groups of 10 which makes twenty and the 4 is just four ones. When comparing the numbers, we will think about both tens and ones in a number. 24 is greater than 22. The number of 10 sticks are the same but the ones are not. 24 has 4 ones and 22 has only 2 ones. We will emphasize the vocabulary such as greater than, less than, before and after.

 HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT YOUR CHILD'S LEARNING AT HOME? continue counting with beans, macaronis, pennies, buttons, or anything similar. Have your child count the items. Your child can put the items in groups pf 2 and count by 2, or groups of 5 and count by 5 or groups of 10 and count by 10. Let your child practice that 34 is 3 sets/groups of 10, therefore it is 30 and 4 ones. Compare the numbers. Ask your child to show you one more, or greater than the number. Or one less than the number.

 SOCIAL STUDIES This week we will learn about Freedom, Liberty and various United States symbols. We will read, learn and write facts about the Liberty bell, the United states Flag, and our National Anthem. Wednesday is Constitution Day. We will discuss what is constitution and what is a right. The constitution lets the people of the United States know how they will be governed and what rights they have as American citizens.

 THANK YOU! Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Every little bit helps to create a great partnership!