This week in First grade...

Writing Workshop

This week in Writing Workshop we will continue working on planning, sketching and writing stories with a beginning, middle and end.  We will work as a whole group to put stories in order. The concept of beginning, middle and end can be hard for some students to grasp.  We will also continue talking about the writing process.  The children will start circling the kindergarten (with red) and first grade (with blue) word wall words during the editing process.  I’m so proud of their writing this year.  Our writing workshop is a serious time in our classroom and the progress I’m seeing is tremendous already……I can’t wait to see all the writing by the end of the year.  Our publishing party on Friday was wonderful.  The students were so excited to finish a story, conference with me and make a cover.  After our publishing party the students shared their work with their classmates in the "Author's Chair".  They voted as a class to read their stories under the document camera so that everyone could see their illustrations.  I write each of the students that share their work a "love" note.  I tell them something I "loved" about their work!  After they share their story, it goes in their blue folder so they can share it with their family.  We will have a box in our classroom library for our work so we can share it with our classmates.

Math

As we enter our second week on addition and subtraction concepts and prerequisites for learning basic math facts we will focus this week on counting on and counting back.  We will do a fun lesson using calculators (which the children always love) for two-more-than.  We will also focus on using five and ten frames to build numbers.  It is important for the children to learn how to identify a quantity without counting each one.  These strategies will be encouraged to be used as we continue with our problem solving which is ongoing throughout all our units in first grade.

Science/Social Studies

We had a great time exploring matter, changes in states of matter, and mass of matter this week. 

During this upcoming week in Social Studies we will be learning the difference between rules and laws and the purpose for them in the home, school, and community. We will examine some ways that rules and laws establish order, provide security, and manage conflict for us.  

READING:

This week we are going to practice retelling stories in our own words.  We will sequence the events of the story in correct order and retell the stories that we read with beginning, middle and ending.  We will also add to our comprehension strategies and learn how to slow down, go back, and re-read a part in the story that we might be confused about.  Strong readers read with expression and use all the clues such as words and pictures to understand the story better.   As part of media literacy, we will listen to stories on line and learn how words, images, graphics, and sound work together to impact the meaning of the story.