First Grade

This week we will be reading a non fiction story about the life cycle of a butterfly.

Our strategy focus will be learning how to evaluate a non fiction story. We will use this

story to help us learn how to find the topic, main idea and details of a story.

We will use this story to help us review words with the endings s, es, ed and ing.

In math, we will continue working in Chapter 20 learning about money. We will be identifying and

finding the value of pennies, nickels and dimes. We will be skip counting by 5 and 10. Now is

a great time to take out all that change you have been collecting at home and let your child

sort, identify and count them. Skip counting by fives is like counting nickels and skip counting

by tens is like counting dimes.

In science, we will continue our unit on weather so please take time while at home together

to read the weather report in the paper and or listen to the

weather report on the news. We plan to act as meteorologists daily here in the classroom too.

Please remember to send in your child's permission slip to attend our field trip this Friday to the Roller Rink. Please also remember to send in $10 cash that is needed to attend the trip.

This Friday we will performing our reader's theater plays. We hope you all can come and watch. We will start at 8:30 am so be in the classroom by then please and don't forget your video camera!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Let's hope that those pesky Leprechauns don't come around Room 6 this year or if they do, that one of my students catch them!

This week we will be enjoying the story The Forest which is a non fiction story about the forest. We will use this story to help us learn how to write an informational piece. Our strategy focus will be summarizing a story. Our phonics focus will be on base word with ed and ing endings. We will also be focusing on verbs.

In math, we will be working in Chapter 20 learning about money. We will be identifying and finding the value of pennies, nickels and dimes. We will be skip counting by fives and tens. Now is a great time to take out all those coins you have been collecting at home and let your child sort, identify and count them. Your child will learn that skip counting by fives is like counting nickels and skip counting by tens is like counting dimes.

In science, we will start our unit on weather so please take time at home together to read the weather report in the paper and or listen to the weather report on the news. We act as meteorologists daily here in the classroom already.

We had fun making pancakes this week and special thanks to Mrs. DeFrancesco and Mrs. Rigor who came in to help us.

Special thanks also to those who drove and chaperoned on our field trip to the jr high. We loved seeing the play.

Your child brought home a field trip permission slip to go to the Roller Palladium on Friday, March 30. We will be leaving about 10:00 and returning about 1:15. Please remember to return the permission slip along with the $10.00 in cash. Thank you for following the district policy that states that no siblings are allowed to attend field trips.

Remember, Monday is a holiday so enjoy the long weekend!

This week we will be enjoying the story If You Give a Pig a Pancake along with the other books written by Laura Numeroff. We will be looking at cause and effect along with giving it our best shot to write a story in the Laura Numeroff style.

We will be learning how to use pronouns in our writing and to recognize them in other's writing. Have you seen how well your child edits now? I am so proud of their efforts and the peer editing that they have started to do too!

We will also be learning about recipes and making our very own pancakes!

In math, we will be working in Chapter 17 which is using addition strategies to add doubles and doubles plus one. It also focuses again on adding three numbers and the strategy to do so. We will continue with our timed math. All of these concepts should be the ones you have your child do as his/her daily math homework.

Our class will be attending the play Mulan Jr performed by the junior high students at Aptos Jr. High. If you have not sent in your child's permission slip along with $1, please do so ASAP. If you are a driver and or a chaperone, please add $1 for you too.