Welcome back to school and let's all hope we have electricity for the entire week!

First Grade

This week and next we will be enjoying the story, Me On The Map, and our strategy focus will be summarizing a story. Our comprehension strategy will be making generalizations about what will happen next story.

As part of our social studies curriculum, we are starting our study of holidays around the world looking at the different parts of the world and what holidays and traditions are celebrated. We will be asking you to talk with your child about the different traditions your family has and holidays that your family celebrates. Look for the Traditions Homework Activity that will be coming home soon.

In Phonics, we will be focusing on long /a/ sound, silent /e/ words and words ending in /ng/ and /nd/.

I will continue teaching phonograms, one at a time, to the class. Knowing these will really help your child with his/her reading and writing.

Our new word wall words are.......house, out, were, way, may

In math, we will be review solid shapes and reviewing how to sort figures by different attributes. We will also learn to identify the faces of solid figures. This is all in Chapter 27 in our Houghton Mifflin Book.

First Grade

This week in reading our strategy focus will be on learning how to ask a questions about what we have just read. We will be working on comparing and contrasting also this week. We will learn about antonyms, opposites, too and play a fun memory game with opposites.

As part of our social studies curriculum, we are starting our study of holidays around the world looking at the different parts of the world and what holidays and traditions are celebrated. We will be asking you to talk with your child about the different traditions your family has and holidays that your family celebrates. Look for the Traditions Homework Activity that will be coming home soon

In math, we will be continuing our study of fact families. Your child will be working on making 2 addition and 2 subtraction equations from each fact family. An example would be looking at the fact family, 2, 4, 6 and then writing the equations 2+4=6, 4+2=6, 6-4=2 and 6-2=4.

I will continue teaching phonograms, one at a time, to the class. Knowing these will really help your child with his/her reading and writing.

Our new word wall words are.......could, how, now, old, than

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! I am so thankful for this bright wonderful class I have and the awesome parents who consistently send them to school each day ready to learn all that they can!

Enjoy the Knots on a Counting Rope activity. My students and I had great conversations about the boy and his Grandfathers' special relationship. I know that you all will have a wonderful time telling your child more stories about his/her birth, first few years and the many fun adventures your family has experienced in the past.

I hope you all have a restful three day weekend! I know that I will! Here is a peek at the coming week!

This week in reading our strategy focus will be on sequencing the events in a story. Have fun doing this at home with the stories you and your child read.

Is your child showing you phonograms in the words that he/she is reading? They are doing it in the classroom all the time! It is amazing how quickly they are learning their phonograms and using them to read unknown words! I will continue teaching phonograms, one at a time, to the class.

Our new word wall words are.......down, words, would, water, why

We will wrap up our study of seeds this week by making our best guess playing the "Mystery Seed" game with the seeds that my class brought in.

We will begin our study of times now and long ago with a look at our baby pictures noticing how we all have changed over the years.

October 31-November 4

Have you seen our garden? It is doing fantastic and we think we will be eating our salad sooner than we think! We have had such a great time this week writing in our science journal and illustrating how our garden is growing!

This week in reading our strategy focus will be on drawing conclusions in the stories we read. Have fun doing this at home with the stories you read with your child.

I will continue teaching phonograms, one at a time, to the class. Knowing these will really help your child with his/her reading and writing. As you go through your child's folder each night, have them tell you about their Total Reading paper where they writing down the phonograms I dictate, the words I dictate and the silly sentence on the back.

Our new word wall words are.....over, these, other, her, when

We will start our study of seeds in Science this week .Look for the Mystery Seed Activity Page to arrive at your home this week and please help your child with this activity.

In math, Chapter 10, we will be studying data and graphs. Please continue working on subtraction and the relationship between addition and subtraction. The kids have loved playing with the deck of cards to help them with addition and subtraction and if you haven't heard about this game yet, please ask your child to explain it to you. It is a blast and very helpful!

We are looking forward to a fun filled Halloween starting with our school wide parade and then our Halloween Workshops. Thanks in advance to all of you who are helping with this fun day! See you in costume Monday morning. If you want to have your child change out of his/her costume after the parade, just put a change of clothes into his/her backpack and they can go change when they want.

See you Monday and don't forget your camera!

This week in reading our strategy focus will be on asking questions and classifying. This week we will be reading non fiction stories and using these to help us create our own non fiction stories. Also this week we will be looking at /r/ cluster words, contractions and verb endings with /s/, /ing/ and /ed/.

We will start our Writer's Workshop Program where the students will learn the stages of writing and have the opportunity to write their own stories. This is an exciting time for them as they get to use all their skills and creativity as their become illustrators and authors! Look for your child's story to come home and please help them remember to bring it back the next day.

We will be start our study of seeds and plants as we plant our garden today! The kids are so excited to plant and watch their garden grow!

In math, Chapter 7, we will continue learning about subtraction and the relationship between addition and subtraction. So now it is time to get out the subtractions flashcards and add them to the addition ones you are already using daily with your child. I am really seeing the difference when your work with your child using flashcards so please keep it up!

This week, each day, I will be introducing a new phonogram.. We will begin with sh, th, er, ee, and wh. Please make note of these when you are enjoying stories with your child at home.

Our new word wall words are.....also, after, there, then, once

Have a fabulous weekend!

Week of October 17

It was wonderful to have the opportunity to speak with all of you during conferences this week but boy I am happy to get back to a full school day! Those shorts days are crazy!

This week in reading our strategy focus will be on predicting and inferring. This is a fun way for us to pretend we are the author of the story! Also, in our stories this week we will be looking at verb endings, short /i/ words and words in the /ip/ family.

We will be planting our garden this week thanks to our garden volunteers and studying about the 4 seasons.

In math we will start learning about subtraction and the relationship between addition and subtraction. So now it is time to get out the subtractions flashcards and add them to the addition ones you are already using daily with your child. I am really seeing the difference when your work with your child using flashcards so please keep it up!

Our new word wall words are.....your, want, because, many, most