News You Can Use!

Literacy 

Treasures:

This week, the children worked with beginning consonant blends (scr, spl, spr, and str). The children read different realistic fiction stories about families. Most of our stories this week were about Grandparents. The children worked with identifying setting and characters. They identified the different settings throughout the story and discussed what the characters did in each new setting. 

Grammar Packets:

This week, the children were introduced to contractions. They learned that a contraction is a short form of two words. The words are put together and letters are left out. An apostrophe shows where letters have been left out.

On Thursday, the children became doctors and performed Contraction Surgery. They took different two word combinations and turned them into their contraction form. After cutting the two words apart they put them back together with a band aid (apostrophe). What a great kinesthetic exercise to help them understand the process of turning two words into their short form (contraction). 

On Friday, each doctor was awarded their very own “World’s Best Doctor” badge and their My Contraction Surgery Book to bring home.  

Writing:

This week, the children completed their How-To publications. You can view their completed writing on the previous blog post titled, How-To Publications. Click on your child’s name to read their How-To. The children did an incredible job!

Math 

In Math, the children reviewed different fact strategies that they can use to help them solve their basic math facts. We went over different strategies for: +0, +1, doubles, sums of 10, and doubles +1 and +2. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the children were introduced to the function machine and What’s My Rule math problems. They worked on finding the rule and missing input and output numbers.  

On Thursday, the children enjoyed reviewing all they learned during Unit 5 by playing, “Math Review Mimio Vote, Unit 5.” Once again our classroom turned into the set of a game show and each contestant had their very own clicker to answer a set of math questions. The questions covered all of our topics from unit 5.

On Friday, the children took their unit 5 test. They did a great job, I am proud of how hard they worked! Look for your child’s test in their red folder this coming Monday. 

Social Studies

This week, we started our new social studies unit. The children listened to a book about citizens and rights and responsibilities. They learned about the qualities and responsibilities of a good citizen. The children then discussed how they are good citizens at school, home, and in their community. Each child wrote about what makes them a good citizen. Their writing is displayed in the hallway. 

On Friday, the children listened to the story, America the Beautiful Together We Stand. During the story, the children previewed some of the U. S. Symbols that we will begin researching next week.

Groundhog Day Fun
On Friday, the children listened to the book, Groundhog Day. They made a groundhog crown and learned a poem about groundhogs day. Here is a video of the children reciting the poem.

The children also made predictions on whether the groundhog would see his shadow or not. We graphed our predictions and it turned out that half of us think the groundhog will see his shadow and the other half think that he will not. What will it be, six more weeks of winter or an early spring? On Monday, we will look back at our graph and see which half of the class made the correct prediction. Your child can share what they learned this weekend about the groundhog and his shadow!

Star Student

Chloe was our star student this week. Thanks Chloe for sharing all about you!

Royal Reader

A special thank you to Chloe’s Mom, she joined us this week as our Royal Reader. The children enjoyed listening to the two stories that Mrs. Leung read, The Day It Rained Hearts and There Is a Bird on Your Head!

Notes:

-Thank you to all the first graders for the wonderful healthy treats this week. What a delicious surprise! 

-February 7th is 100th Day. I can’t believe we have almost been in school for 100 days! In your child’s red folder you should have found a note about dressing up for 100th day. The children are very excited to show us what they think they will look like when they are 100 years old. Be creative and have fun! I can’t wait to see what the children come up with!

Have a great rest of the weekend!