Spelling - Glued Sounds - ang, ing, ong, ung

bang
ring
song
lung
gong
hang
wing
long
hung
thing

Reading - Our word work centers switched to Thanksgiving centers.  :)  Some of the choices are making words out of the letters in Thanksgiving, putting a story titled Five Wild Turkeys in the correct order, filling in the blanks on some Thanksgiving poems, putting Thanksgiving words in ABC order, matching turkey rhyming words, Thanksgiving word searches, Thanksgiving sight word sheets, etc.  The other daily 5 choices are read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, and work on writing.  We worked in our guided reading groups most of the week.  Friday we started running records again.  This week we will continue with running records during our daily 5 time.  

Read-Aloud - Junie B. Jones First Grader - Turkeys We Have Loved and Eaten and Other Thankful Stuff.

Phonics  - We continued working on the suffix s.  We learned that the suffix s can be used to make a word plural and that it can be used for an action word.  (Ex. pen, pens = plural, and run, runs = action word)  We have been getting some really tricky trick words.  :)  Our current trick words are:

are

were

who

what

when

where

there

here

Today we will have the unit 6 test.  Tomorrow we will start a new unit.  We will be getting four new glued sounds in our new unit.  The new glued sounds are -ang, -ing, -ong, and -ung.  The keywords are -ang fang,      -ing ring, -ong song, and  -ung lung

Writing - We continue to work on our personal narratives.  I met one-on-one with each student and we chose their topic.  We then broke their topic down into 3 parts - big topic, smaller topic, and small moment.  This week we will work on giving each small moment a beginning, a middle, and an end.

We have also been using our November four choices journals, as well as choosing assorted writing activities during our daily 5 block.

Math - We are continuing to work on telling time to the :00 and the :30.  We also worked on learning about odd and even numbers, using dimes, learning about symmetry and the line of symmetry, and learning about beginning fractions.  (1/2 and 1/3).  Our facts that we have been working on are subtracting 0 and subtracting a number from itself.

We used rulers as the line of symmetry.  

We used pattern blocks to make patterns with symmetry.

Religion - We are continuing to learn about gratitude from our virtues and values cards.  We are also continuing with our rosary.  We have been saying a decade of the rosary.

The Promise Paper was from the book of Matthew.  (Matthew 25:1-13)  The theme of our paper was making choices.  Before we went virtual in October, Abbot Gary talked during mass about the Guardian Angel prayer.  We have been working really hard on memorizing it!  

Science / Social Studies -  In our weather unit, we learned about the water cycle.  We are doing a puddle experiment.  We put water (with food coloring) in a bowl.  We are waiting to see how many days it takes for the puddle to evaporate.

This Friday, November 13th - we are having a virtual guest speaker!  Steve Beylon from WBAY will be zooming with us to give us a talk about weather!  Mr. Beylon has come to our school many times - and although I am sad he cannot come this year - I am so excited he is doing virtual weather talks!!!!

Each week we also continue reading one social studies and one science Studies Weekly magazine.  

Hands and Feet Turkeys

Enjoying the weather on a beautiful, sunny afternoon!

Have a great week!

We are back!!!  It was so great to be back in school!  Thank you for all your hard work when we were learning at home!  

Spelling - Suffix s Words

webs

mops

pegs

packs

maps

bells

sheds

pups

chips

rocks

Reading - This week we jumped right back into Daily 5 centers and guided reading groups.  In word work we worked on some Halloween centers.  (making words out of Halloween, Halloween word search, Halloween poems - cloze activities and putting the words in order, making Halloween books, digraph spiders, etc.)  This week we will start working on Thanksgiving themed centers.  

In reading groups this year, we have been using Raz Kids more than actual books.  When we use books in our classroom, we have to quarantine them after use.  With Raz Kids, each student has been assigned their own ipad / tablet.  It has been working wonderfully!  Remember, you can always have you student read on Raz-Kids at home as well.  Each student's level is loaded into Raz Kids.  Once in Raz Kids, if they click on the book icon, it leads them to leveled books at their individual level.  

All of this info, as well as all password info is available on the Home Resources doc.

Read-Aloud - We started reading Junie B. Jones First Grader - Turkeys We Have Loved and Eaten And Other Thankful Stuff.

Putting a Halloween poem together

Making words out of the letters in Halloween

Jack 'O Faces

Read to Someone

Listen to Reading

Making Books

Digraph Spiders

Phonics - This week we learned about a new topic - suffixes.  We learned about the suffix s.  We now know that the blank tile on our board represents a suffix.  We learned that the main part of the word is called the baseword and the ending is called the suffix.  For example, in the word shells, shell is the baseword and the final s is the suffix.  We learned that to mark the word, you underline the baseword and you circle the suffix.  

Writing - We started working on a writing unit.  Our unit is writing a personal narrative.  There are 22 lessons in the personal narrative unit - so it will take us quite some time to get through it.  So far we learned that a personal narrative is a story about ourselves.  Then we brainstormed ideas that we could write about.  This week we will work on choosing our small moment, and looking for our beginning, middle, and end.  We have been reading books that are personal narratives to help us with this.

These lessons happen during our writing block, but the students also have many writing choices during daily 5 - in addition to this specific unit.  One of the choices they will have the month of November is the November Journal - which is a copy of many four choices stories to write.  

Math - We are learning how to tell time.  This week we worked on telling time to the :00 and the :30.  We will continue practicing this.  Learning how to tell time can be tricky!  This week we also learned about subtracting 0 from a number, as well as subtracting the same number from itself.  (Ex. 9-0=9 and 9-9=0)

Religion - We started learning about a new virtue from our virtues and values cards - Gratitude.  We are learning about having an "attitude of gratitude"!  We also learned about All Saints Day.  We read from and worked out of our Promise Paper on Friday.  Friday's paper taught us about Saints, the Beatitudes, and we worked on the prayer The Our Father.

Science / Social Studies - This week I introduced the new resource we got during our online learning - Studies Weekly.  We read through the paper copies and went through the website.  In the social studies edition we learned about the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, and kindness.  In the science edition we learned about solids, liquids, and gases.  Now that we are back in school, we will also continue with our weather unit in science.  We have a few lessons left to go.  

*Some activities from the week*

Making Pumpkins

Hundreds Chart - Mystery Pictures

Celebrating Wyatt's Birthday

While in phonics class, Nora wrote this note on her whiteboard.  I took her picture.  She asked if she spelled "learning" correctly.  We talked about how the e and the a were silent - and how she had all the letters that we hear written down.  This started a whole bunch of notes on whiteboards - which you can see followed.  :)  How sweet!

Have a great week!

 

 Reading - This week we finished all the running records and all the sight word checks.  We started working in our guided reading groups.  When we read stories this year, we are using Raz Kids on the ipads/tablets.  (We aren't using paper books due to covid and sanitizing.  Each student has their own ipad/tablet assigned to only them.  We still sanitize the ipads/tablets after each use.  It's been working great!) Raz Kids is an amazing resource!  To read books in our reading groups, I have been assigning books to the students.  They now know how to log into Raz Kids, find their assignment, and we work together as the group to read the story and learn.  After we finish the story, there is a quiz the students take for comprehension.  Reading groups have starting off incredibly well!  While we are working in groups, the rest of the class is working in the daily 5 centers.  They are getting really good at centers!  The centers are read to self, read to someone, listening, work on writing, and word work.  The writing center and the word work center have been very popular!  :)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - We finished our first read-aloud this week!  We spent a few days watching the movie version this week.  We found that some parts were the same as the book, and some things were different from the book.  It was fun to compare and contrast the two.

Phonics - We finished up our digraph unit on Friday.  Our new topic is bonus letters.  The bonus letters are f,l,s (and sometimes z).  A bonus letter is when a letter is doubled.  Here is the bonus letter rule - If a word is one syllable, has a short vowel, and ends with f, l, or s (and sometimes z), you double the last consonant.  Examples - mess, fill, puff, buzz

Math - This week we worked on story problems, counting backwards, and our new facts are +1 facts.  We used our math offices to look at the 100 chart.  We learned that on the hundred chart - a number directly above is 10 less and a number directly below is 10 more.  A number directly to the left is 1 less and a number directly to the right is 1 more.  We played some fun math games on the Smart Board.  Also - we still are talking about those doubles!

Religion - Our mustard seeds continue to grow!  

This week we started a new virtue card - self-control.  This is a tough one - but so very important!

After talking about the virtue self-control, we also learned about the Fruits of the Spirit.  The Fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  We learned a really fun song to help us remember them.  

Fruit of the Spirit Song

This week we read the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors out of our Children's Bible.  Then we watched a short video of Joseph.  

Writing and Handwriting - This week in handwriting we worked on the letters Ee and Ff.  We continue to work on writing neatly, forming the letters correctly, putting the letters on the correct lines and spaces, and writing our words and sentences with good spacing.  In writing, we worked on writing a recipe.  That was a fun writing!  The students love the four choices writing.  This week our topic was "What is your favorite thing to do in fall?"  After the students finished their writing and illustrating, they posted a picture of their work in SeeSaw and they recorded themselves reading their work.

Spelling - The students did great on their first spelling list!  They studied so hard!  Our spelling words come from our phonics units.  We will *usually* have a list each week - with a test on Friday.  Some weeks we won't have a new list if we don't have a new phonics topic.  I will always let you know if we have a new topic/list or not.

Bonus Letters  - Spelling list for the week of October 5th - October 9th.

shell

cuff

miss

hill

puff

mass

bell

mess

toss

chill

Some fun pictures from the week -

Our first week of online learning.  It's going to be different - but we'll make it a great week!  :)