Holy Cross Catholic School - First Grade: May 2022

On the first day of school I had the students write and illustrate about their first day of school. On Friday, I had the students write and illustarte about summer vacation. Then we compared the writing and the illustrating. The students were AMAZED to see the difference! I also had the students write all of the lower case letters on Fundations lines on the first day. We did the same activity on Friday. Again - the difference is absolutely amazing! Here are some pictures of the their work -

Typing - Last week I introduced typing to the students. They are having a great time learning how to type! If your child would like to practice at home, the website we use is called Dancemat. You can access the link here. Dancemat

And here are a few random pictures from daily 5 and fundations

Reminder - Tomorrow is Field Day. Please have your child wear their team colors.

Have a great week!

Spelling - Words with suffix -es

boxes

dresses

wishes

inches

taxes

tosses

dishes

branches

classes

blushes

This is our last spelling test of the year! The words are loaded into Vocabulary A-Z. The test will be Friday, May 27th.

Reading - This week our word work centers will continue focusing on plurals - s, es, y to i and add -s, and irregular plurals.

We have finished up our final round of running records and sight word checks. :)

Our reading goal is to read at least 20 minutes a night at home. Sight words, which are in the Bee Binder, are another thing students can practice at home. By the end of first grade, the goal for the first graders is to know 175 sight words.

Raz Kids is a great way to practice reading and spelling.

To access Raz Kids, you can either go to the website or download the app.

The website is https://www.raz-plus.com/

Once there, go to kids login.
The teacher name to enter is jsullivan100.
Once in, the student will click on their name.
The password is the apple.
Press go.
The student can now click on the purple planet for reading or the yellow plant for spelling. (It says vocabulary)
Then there are some choices.
*If the student would like to read the stories we have read (or will be reading) in our reading groups, they will click on my assignment.
*If the student would like to choose books on their own, they will click reading room.

In reading room, they have lots of options on how to choose the books they want to read. If they want to read books at their level only, they may press leveled books. Every student has their level entered in the website. This allows them to read books at their level, as well as 2 levels above and below.

*If the student would like to practice their spelling words, they will click on vocabulary.

If you are using Clever, this website is linked to our class Clever page. The Clever QR code is in your child's Bee Binder. Once you are in clever and you click on Raz Kids, you just have to put in our class username - jsullivan100.

Science - We have been learning about how our water plants and woodland plants are alike and different and how our water animals and land animals are alike and different. We continue to observe our terrariums and aquariums. We found out we need to add more leaves to our terrariums because our millipedes are eating them to the stems! Our moss is multiplying and our pine tree seedlings are growing like crazy! We have learned about different ways that animals move. We learned about four amazing plants! (saguaro cactus, venus flytrap, giant water lilly, and rafflesia) We have been reading facts about insects and other bugs. We also read a story about animal lifetimes.

Math - Our recent lessons have been about measuring liquids (gallon, quart, liter, and cup), +9 facts, fractions (1/2, 1/4, 1/6), dividing items equally, geometric shapes (cones and spheres), greater than, less than, and equal to, and reviewing basic facts.

Writing - We have been working on writing stories - any stories of their choosing this time! We continue to focus on handwriting. We are almost finished with our second handwriting workbook. We are working really hard on forming the letters correctly, putting the letters on the correct line, spacing, writing capital and lower case at the correct time, and neatness.

Phonics - We are working on when to use the suffix -es. A word uses -es instead of -s if the baseword ends with ch, sh, x, s, or ss. (and sometimes o)

A Few Fun Pictures -