This week in First grade...

April 17-21

I hope you had a great 3 day weekend.  We were busy with family and friends! It was lovely to have three days to relax!  Of course, the most exciting part of our week last week was watching our chicks hatch! They are growing so fast! Some even have feathers on their wings! They will be heading to their forever home soon! If you want to give one or two a home and you have not let me know please do so today (Monday).

Reminders:
Monday (4/17): Reading Homework- Self Selected reading
                          Optional Homework will be emailed
Tuesday (4/18): Tuesday folders come home.  Please unload and return on Wednesday.
                           Library Check-out. Please help you child remember to bring their books
Wednesday (4/19): Guidance Lesson with Mrs. Amiri
                                Spirit Night at Newks
Thursday (4/20): Principal's Coffee
Friday (4/21): Reading Log check

This week in Reading and Writing Workshop...
We will be completing our Independent Research Project.  The students have chosen sources, read information, thought about what was important and wrote down brief facts to use on their presentation folders.  We will be finishing our research in the next couple of days then creating our presentation.  Our plan is to share on Friday and Monday.  We will be live streaming our presentations on Periscope.  I will send out a presentation order on Thursday.

Spelling Words for this week...

Rule: The long (o) sound at the end of a word is spelled oe as in toe.  The e is silent.

The long (o) sound at the end of a word is spelled ow as in cow.      

                                  

toe blow  toad  grow  foe  coal  row

Challenge Spelling Words 

Rule: The long (o) sound at the end of a word is spelled oe as in toe.  The e is silent.

The long (o) sound at the end of a one syllable word is spelled ow as in cow. 

The long (o) sound in the middle of a word is spelled oa as in coach.    

                                  

coach oboe arrow known  croak  bungalow  approach

Reading Homework:
To help us prepare for 2nd grade we will begin self selected reading at home. In second grade the students are expected to read for 20 minutes each night from a book of their choice.  As students become more independent they can read silently to themselves.  At our house we split the time.  My third grader reads aloud to us for 10 minutes and reads to herself for 10 minutes.  For the remainder of this year I would like the students to read 15 minutes each night and record their reading on their Reading Log.  Encourage them to read books that are appropriate yet challenging!

This week in Math...
We will be reviewing Telling time to the Hour and we will introduce telling time to the half hour.  We will discuss how the clock counts by fives.  We will relate our study of fractions to telling time to the half hour.

This week in Social Studies...
We will be learning about how different cultures shape our community.  Some of the big ideas from this unit are Communities share different cultures. Family and community beliefs,customs, language, and traditions are important to families and communities. It is important to understand different cultures.

Have a great week!

This week in First grade...

April 10-13

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend of sunshine and outdoor fun! It's suppose to rain all week! We are prepared for an amazing week in First grade! Last Friday we finished our class chapter book The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer.  The students LOVED it! We had so many meaningful conversations about the characters and the plot. It was amazing to see the students apply their learning to the story we all shared.  This book was the first in a series of four books.  The fifth book in the series is going to be released soon! I highly encourage you to read these engaging books with your child at home.  Tomorrow we will begin a wonderful book called Rump! I'm sure the boys and girls will love this one too!

This week...
Monday (4/10): No reading homework this week due to the 4 day week.  TIC TAC TOE homework 
                          will be emailed.
Tuesday (4/11): Tuesday folders will come home.  Please unload and return them on Wednesday.
                          No Library this week.  Students may bring their books and check out independently.
Wednesday (4/12): Our chicks are due to hatch!! Live stream on Periscope
Thursday (4/13): Chick Fest! Dress like a farmer!! We will have a fun day of learning while we wait 
                            for our chickies to hatch!
Friday (4/14): No school. 

In Reading and Writing...
We will begin our last Research project of the year.  This will be a time when students choose their topic, find sources, read, take notes and create a presentation about their topic.  We will work on this project for two weeks!  Tomorrow the students will be presented with books from the library.  They will choose a topic based on the variety of books selected.  

In Spelling...
This week we are working on the long e sound spelled a few different ways.  This will begin our study of vowel pairs. 

Rule: The (e) sound in the middle of a one syllable word is spelled ee as in feet.

The (e) sound at the beginning of a word or in the middle of a word can be spelled ea as in beach.

beach   cream   deep   seed   real   sheep   team

Challenge Spelling Words for April 10-13

Rule: The (e) sound in the middle of a one syllable word is spelled ee as in feet.

The (e) sound at the beginning of a word or in the middle of a word can be spelled ea as in beach.

The (e) sound in the middle or at the end of a word with more than one syllable can be spelled e-consonant-e as in athlete.

The (e) sound at the end of a word with more than one syllable is spelled y as in candy.

squeak   complete   penalty   fourteen   flea   season   hungry

In Math...
We will begin a unit on Fractional Parts.  The questions we will ask ourselves are "How do I know if I’ve shared something fairly? How exact does measurement have to be?" We will also spiral back to telling time during this unit. We will review telling time to the hour and learn about telling time to the half hour.

In Science...
We will wrap up our unit on Animals. We will review the 3 types of animal groups we focused on. Birds, Fish and Mammals. We we discuss how the food chain works in nature. We will also learn about the life cycle of a frog.

We will live stream at least one of our chicks hatching! I will send an email when we begin. It usually takes a while for them to get all of the way out of the egg so hopefully no one will miss it!

Have a great week!

This week in First Grade...

April 3-7

I hope everyone had a chance to swing by for Family Dinner Night AKA Caraway City Limits.  My family got our pizza, enjoyed chatting with those of you that we saw and stayed for the Auction and Raffle.  It was a great fundraiser for our PTA! We are so lucky to have such an active PTA whose number one priority is our students! Congrats to Henry! He won our First Grade Ice Cream Party Raffle!!

This week in First grade...
Monday (4/3): Reading Homework will come home.
Tuesday (4/4): Library Checkout. Please help your child remember to bring their books
                        Tuesday folders will come home.  Report cards will come home.  Please sign the
                        envelope and return it to school on Wednesday.  The report card is yours to keep.
Wednesday (4/5): Early Release Day school will be dismissed at 12:00pm. We will have lunch in
                             the classroom on this day.
                             Guidance Lesson with Mrs. Amiri
Thursday (4/6):
Friday (4/7): Reading Homework is due.
                     Family Fit and Fun Night at 6:30pm

In the future...
No school on Friday, April 14th

This week in Reading Workshop we will be enjoying different stories themed around Chickens.  We've been doing a lot of hard work as researchers so we are going to take a week to remember that sometimes readers like to read for entertainment! We will review the things we know about fiction and ways we monitor our comprehension as we read.  We will also practice recording our thoughts and feelings about our reading in our Reader's Response Notebooks.

This week in Writing Workshop we will be reviewing different types of writing as we are wrapping up our chicken research.  We will write a letter to our future chicks when we review the parts of a letter.  We will review ways that writers form a story such as planning the beginning, middle and end.  We will also review poetry and write a poem or two about chickens.

This week in Science we will wrap up our coop designs.  I will hang them in the hallway when they are complete.  We read books about chicken habitats and watched youtube videos about chicken coop designs.  Our favorite was Becky's Homestead.  Her videos taught us all about chickens and about the different types of coops you can build for your chickens.  We are so excited for our babies to hatch! After we wrap up our designs we will move on to mammals.  We will learn about mammals movement and body parts.  We will learn about their habitats, how they depend on their environment to find shelter and get food and their life cycles.

This week we will have our first Spelling Test.  In second grade Caraway students begin taking spelling tests.  They have a pre-assessment on Monday then practice during the week and take their post-assessment on Friday.  I would like to give my students an idea of how that will work so we are going to follow that model.  The students will be given 7 words to practice during the week.  This week we will practice at school.  They will also have three application words.  This will be a total of 10 on their post-assessment.  This week we are going to review long vowel sounds.

Our words will be...
lake, rose, play, grape, under, cape, mate

The three application words will follow the long vowel pattern. We will practice with this skill during the week.

Have a great week!