Friday, December 2, 2016

December 2, 2016

Our learning this week!


Reading: This week in reading, have been learning about the different text features in non fiction books! We focused on things like the table of contents, diagrams, labels, and the glossary. This ties right in to our writing! We are learning how to read non fiction books as well as become authors of non fiction books at writing time!

Writing: We started our non fiction writing unit last week! We learned how to "take notes" and research a topic. We all learned together researching ants. We finished taking notes on ants and are now turning our notes into a non fiction book.








Math: We have been learning all about graphs! We had quite a bit of knowledge on graphs already because we graph our weather daily! We have been focusing on talking about what we notice about the graphs using words like most, least, more than, less than, fewer, and in all! We will be finishing up our graphing unit next week!




Science: Not only are we still learning about animals with our cpszoo project, but we also started our space unit. This week we talked a little bit about the sun and the earth. Yesterday, we went outside and measured our shadows at different parts of the day. The kids were AMAZED at how long our shadows were at 8:30 in the morning compared to 10:00! We had such great conversations about why they were so different!


Important Dates:


December 7th - Field Trip to Rock Bridge High School Planetarium
(please help your child remember to return his/her permission slip)

December 15th- Candy Grams are due (this is an optional activity - funds help BEU PTA projects)

December 20th - Holiday Party (1:30-2:00)

December 21st - January 4th  Winter Break 






Monday, November 21, 2016

November 21, 2016


Last week we had so much to celebrate!  Thank you to all the Veterans and Grandparents that joined our class for that special day!  It was so nice to meet all of you!










Happy Birthday to Aislyn last Friday!  We were so excited to celebrate with delicious cupcakes!

Congratulations to Mary Jane for getting invited to eat "Lunch with the Principal" last Friday!

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Our learning this week!



We had a tour of the book fair on Monday to make a wish list of books that we love!  Seeing Clifford was a fun surprise for the kids!  Don't forget to stop by the Book Fair after conferences!  The book fair will also be open on Monday morning during our Veteran's Day Celebration!  
Our learning for the week:

Reading: This week in reading, we talked about making connections.  This is a great skill to practice at home!  Every time you read with your child, it is so helpful to talk about the story and think about what the story reminded you of.  The kids LOVE hearing stories about these connections and it helps them to become better at it!

Writing: We finished up our Narrative writing unit. The kids worked so hard on their stories and I was so excited to get to share them with you at conferences. Our next writing unit will be on Non-fiction. In this unit, first graders will get to do some research on an animal of their choice, and make a non-fiction book about that animal. I can't wait to see how these books turn out!

Math: This week we learned all about Time. First graders learn time to the hour and half hour. We also learned the difference between an analog clock and a digital clock. Next week, we will be exploring a new math tool called a rekenrek. We will be adding and subtracting using the rekenrek.

Important Dates:


November 15th - Picture Retakes

November 16th - PTA Meeting (6:30-8:00)

November 23rd- 25th - Thanksgiving break

December 7th - Field Trip to Rock Bridge High School Planetarium
  

Friday, November 11, 2016

Fall Party!

Fall Party Pics!

Thank you to all the parents who came out to celebrate with us at our Fall Party!  A special thank you to all the parents who volunteered their time to make our party a success!  These first graders had so much fun!!


















Thursday, October 20, 2016


Friday, October 21, 2016

Photo:




We had a special guest reader this week!  Coach Consiglio volunteered to come in and read "The Great Fuzz Frenzy" by Janet Stevens!  We had such a great time listening!  Thanks, Coach!


Our learning this week:

Reading:  This week in reading we talked about a few different ways to figure out tricky words when reading.  We learned that a lot of words have endings (for example:  s, ed, and ing). When we see a tricky word that has one of these endings, we can take off the ending and see if we can figure out the main word first then add the ending on to make it "make sense" when we're reading.  We also learned that when we come to a tricky word, we can break it into parts to figure it out.  We can use a finger or a little slip of paper to cover up part of the word so it isn't so overwhelming with longer words. 

Math:  We have been working on subtraction in math and this week we learned several strategies to help us subtract with word problems.   We learned how we can draw a picture to help us find the answer, we also used the part part whole model to help us subtract.  Lastly, we learned about fact families.  We can take three numbers like 7, 3, and 10 and make two addition and 2 subtraction sentences using only those numbers.  We will be learning about time in our next math unit.  First graders learn about time to the hour and half hour.  


Writing:  We are getting close to the end of our personal narrative writing unit.  Writing a "seed" story can be very tricky for many first graders... however, it has been so fun to see the growth of these writers since the beginning of the year!  We have a couple more topics to cover in this unit.  We worked on opening sentences (lead) this week and will be working on closing sentences (ending) next week.  I can't wait to share your child's writing with you at conference time!

Science:  Our new CPS zoo animal this week was a camel!  Did you know that camels have two rows of eyelashes?  Also, did you know that camels spit when they feel threatened?  These are just a few of the facts we have been learning about camels! 


Important Dates:


Friday, October 28th - Fall Party (2:30-3:10)

Monday, October 31st - No School (Teacher Workday)

Monday, November 7th - Parent/Teacher Conferences
please see your child's Friday Folder for more info.

Tuesday, November 8th - No School (Election Day)

Thursday, November 10th - Parent/Teacher Conferences
please see your child's Friday Folder for more info.

Friday, November 11th - No School (Teacher Workday)
  

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Field Trip to Peach Tree Farms

Field Trip to Peach Tree Farms

We had such a great time on our first grade field trip to Peach Tree Farms!  Thank you to all the parents that volunteered their time to join us!  It was such a fun day!  Here are a few pictures from the day!