Holy Cross - First Grade

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Spelling - Vowel-Consonant-e Syllable

safe

Pete

pine

home

mule

tape

dime

hope

cube

name

Phonics - We learned about a new syllable type - the vowel-consonant-e syllable. This type of syllable is when there is a silent e at the end of a word that makes the vowel sound long. We also have learned all of the long vowel letters/keywords/sounds.

Religion - Our Promise Paper was about kindness. The analogy was that people's actions are like a fruit tree. Jesus is the gardener. He tends to the fruit. Our words are like tending to the fruit. Our words show what's in our hearts. On Wednesday we attended Ash Wednesday mass. Each day during Lent we spend a few minutes watching a Brother Francis video. So far Brother Francis has taught us about the word repent and why Lent is a time to give things up. We also have a Lent journal that we will be writing in weekly. Our first journal entry was "Show Jesus what you you want to tell him today." Starting today, we will have Stations of the Cross on Monday mornings during Lent.

Writing - Everyone has finished their first draft of their how-to stories. This week we will peer edit our stories, add details, and work on our final copies.

Science - In our PLTW unit Animal Adaptations we learned that different birds have different types of beaks. That is a food adaptation. We tested which kinds of beaks were best for different types of food. The "food" we used was marbles, tooth picks, and straws. To show how different types of beaks pick up food, we used a tweezers, a spoon, and a clothespin to act as the beak.

Another science lesson that we did was on a camouflage adaptation. We had to see how many paper butterflies we could pick up? Some were patterns and some were a solid color. We found out the solid colors were much easier - the patterns were camouflaged.

We also had a lesson where we had to match the animal to its adaptation.

Math - In math we worked on adding 10 to a number and counting by tens. When counting by tens, we started at a number other then 10, then counted by 10. For example - 12, 22, 32, 42, 52, etc. We used the 100 chart to help us. We also added more milk rings to practice counting ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands.

Reading - In daily five, we meet in reading groups. When not in a group, we are in centers - read to self, read to someone, listening, work on writing, and word work. In the month of March, we celebrate Dr. Seuss. We have some Dr. Seuss themed centers.