First Grade News: Myself, Others and a Caring Community!

We are well on our way here in first grade! Students are mastering our routine and schedule for each day and are already correcting us if we've missed or forgotten a part to the day, especially recess, not that we would forget that important part!

The other important part they are adjusting to is being away from mom!!! We have several times a day when we are reminded how hard summer to school transition is. " I miss my mom"

During our first part of the day, literacy learning, students are working on their tic-tac-toe boards. This week in word work we have focused on word families with the short a such as: at, and, ag, am.

They have had time to practice their reading stamina by silent reading in the room in their own "bubble of space". In writing they learned how to write a thank you card and had the chance to "write the room" using their white boards.

Ipads were also introduced into the classroom as well as the computers. Students had the opportunity to go onto 2 different apps focusing on handwriting and spelling. They visited starfall.com to make a calendar and work on short a words. Feel free to use this fun, educational website at home with your child. It is a great way to allow them to be on a computer and practice reading skills at the same time!

In math our focus continues to be on number sense. This is a huge focus in first grade and has many different elements that will keep us busy most of the year. This week we focused on making 5, 6, and 7 with addends. We learned that it takes 2 parts to make a whole, meaning 2 blocks plus 4 blocks equals 6 blocks.We've also started our focus on skip counting and will reinforce that each day with our calendar/number corner routine. We used the human sized hundreds chart to discuss skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. We also used the dice with the human sized hundreds board and created addition equations. ( Our camera is acting up and we didn't take many pictures this week). We are getting used to terms like addends and sums. The students are familiar as a whole with skip counting by 5's and 10's coming out of kindergarten, so that was a review. We count by 5's in number corner each day too. Feel free to ask your child to practice these with you while in the car or any other down time you may have together.

Number Corner with Addie and Ella transcribing

In social studies we have focused on our theme: Myself, Others and a Caring Community. We have read 2 books, Incredible You! and The Important Book. In the book, Incredible You! there are 10 different ways to let your greatness shine through. Students were given the direction to pick one way they liked the best and rewrite it and illustrate what it looks like. We are making it into a beautiful class book!