This week in First grade...

Sept. 28- Oct. 2

What a week! I'm so grateful to Mr. Sparks for keeping our classroom rolling so the students could learn! I was so happy to see their sweet faces this morning instead of the boxes in my house!  The Caballeros are officially moved in and have about 7 boxes left in the house!  Now we can get back to school and concentrate on learning!  The boys and girls worked really hard last week even with our little hiccup with the technology in our classroom! We have individual pictures tomorrow!!  I placed a sticker on each child as a reminder.  If you plan on purchasing the pictures please do so by tomorrow (Tuesday).

Homework this week: We are learning about Count on Strategies.  Find an example of how you used a count on strategies at home.  An example might be when you are making dinner.  You start with 2 tablespoons of water and add 1 more (2+1=3).  You can take a picture, make a video or write it on paper! We will share our strategies on Friday during math!

IMPORTANT REMINDER

Monday: Tuesday: Individual student photos
Tuesday folders come home. Please return signed Tuesday folders every Wednesday morning.

Please make sure you check your child’s Daily Folder each night and initial the day to show me you saw the information.
Wednesday: Counselor Lesson with Mrs. Reyes

Thursday:

Friday:

Monday,October 12: Student Holiday

GROWTH MINDSET
This week in growth mindset, we are going to practice how to give each other constructive criticism.  What is the best thing to say to each other in order to improve each other's work? We will learn how to start with something positive, saying something nice about each other's work. Next, we'll say something that can be improved and then end our talk with something positive again.  " I really like how your picture and your words match in this story, you could add more words to make your story more interesting, you are such a great story teller!" 


This week:

 READING

This week we will work on a comprehension strategy; making predictions.  Reading is thinking.  As we start to read a story, we will look at the picture on the front cover, read the title and try to guess what the story is about based on the title and the picture.  When we read stories, we stop from time to time and predict what might happen next.  Sometimes our predictions are correct and sometimes they are not.  We will learn how to use all the clues in the story and things being said so far, to make the best prediction possible.

WRITING

We will continue writing stories about our lives.  This week we will learn how we can "zoom in" and write about a small moment in time with details.  Our job from here on is to discover those small moments in our lives.  A small moment happens over a few short seconds or minutes.  For example, it could be about a moment that I was riding my bike and I fell into a mud puddle and hurt my knee, or about a time that we were in the car, coming back home and we had to stop the car in the middle of the street, because a deer was standing there and wouldn't move.  We will learn how we can expand our small moment with details and write it over a few lines.  We will also use our fingers and tell our small moments across our hand so we can record the beginning, the middle and the end of our small moments.

MATH

We have been practicing how to use the number line/number track to find specific numbers and find out one more or one less.  This week, we will take that knowledge and apply it in addition. The strategies that we work on are "Count On Addition Strategies for Basic Facts". It is essential that all students are able to successfully calculate both mentally and with paper and pencil their basic facts. Count On strategies include Count On 1 (+1 facts), Count on 2 (+2 facts) and Count on 0 (+0 facts).  This week we will focus on Count On 0, count on 1 and turn around strategy.  If 12+1=13 then 1+12 is also 13.  We will apply this Count On strategies in problem solving.

SOCIAL STUDIES
We will continue learning about our state's symbols: The flag, Texas motto, Texas song, and the Alamo.

SCIENCE
In science we will continue learning about properties of objects.  We will also make some observations and see what happens when objects are heated or cooled.