Tomorrow is a Packer Dress Down Day!!!  

First Grade Math - The first unit is a review of things learned in kindergarten.  We have been working on partners and switch partners up to 10.  Today we took our first unit test.  Tomorrow we will start unit 2.

First Grade Phonics - This week we continued working on tapping our c-v-c words.  We are starting to get trick words and words of the day.  As we get these words, we write them out on the dry erase board and write them in our student notebooks.  (The trick words are sight words - words you can not tap out.  Word of the day cards are words that follow whatever our unit is about.  So far our trick words are a, the, and, is, his, and of.  Our word of the day cards are fix and quit.)  This week we also wrote our sentences on letter tiles, found our trick words, and reviewed scooping sentences.  (Scooping sentences deals with fluency - how words flow in a sentence.)  We are also working on dictation.  Dictation is me saying a sound, a letter, a word, etc. and the students writing down what they think it is.

Writing - We are continuing to write in our journals.

Science - This week in science we learned about being a meteorologist.  I also contacted Steve Beylon, a meteorologist from channel 2.  We are working on a date for him to come on into our class for a weather talk.  :)  We talked about how to remember what the weather was like and recording weather.  Then I showed the students a calendar I made on the SMART Board.  Each day we are recording three things - cloud cover, precipitation, and wind.  The last lesson we had this week was about wind.  We learned that the instrument a meteorologist uses to measure wind speed is called an anemometer.  We also learned about the Beaufort Scale - a scale for 0 to 12 that describes wind speed.

Reading - We are continuing to dive into the Daily 5.  Remember, this takes time...a lot of time. :)  This week we worked on listening, work on writing, and tomorrow - word work.  We have practiced each component separately.  Next week we will have rounds of Daily 5 where they will rotate between all of the Daily 5.  We will practice and practice!  Reading groups can't begin until we get this perfect!  We are building our stamina!

Handwriting - We are continuing to work on letters.  Our goal - form letters correctly, write them in the correct spaces, and write letters neatly.

Religion - We are still working on our Creation books!  They are absolutely beautiful!  We have also been reading out of our Children's Bibles.  The students are learning how to look up verses in the Bibles.

Read - Aloud - We are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Just yesterday, Charlie found a golden ticket!  It was fun to listen to the squeals of excitement when that happened.  :)

Reminder - The Spirituality of Change Workshop is on Sunday, September 27th.

A note to the second graders from Mrs. Van Zeeland -

We are off to a great start in second grade math and phonics.  In math, we have practiced counting money and writing it with dollar signs instead of cent signs.  We are telling time to the minute and learning different ways to say the time, such as 10 minutes after 6 instead of6:10. 

 One thing we are starting early this year is learning math facts.  Every child in second grade has math facts to practice during the week. Thursday is our testing day.  I time them for 3 minutes and their goal is to get an 80% or better before moving to the next sheet.  Everyone works at their own pace.  Right now all are in "green" facts.  After the first timed test, some will move up and some will stay in green. At this time, we are all in addition and subtraction.  The last 6 levels are multiplication.  Please ask your child to show you their practice sheets.  They are covered in plastic and can be written on with a dry-erase marker.  Thanks for your help with this.  We will start timed tests next week.  

In phonics, we are reviewing our sounds from last year.  I am impressed by how much they remembered from last year.  Today is our first unit test.  Corrected tests should be coming home on Friday!