We had another great week in first grade!

Reading - This week we practiced and practiced read to self, read to someone, and listening.  We did add the fourth component - work on writing.  The students are loving the writing center right now.  Some of the choices for the writing center are writing stories, recipes, lists, post cards, friendly letters, cards, and poems, making squiggles, and writing the room.  This week we will continue to build stamina with all four - and then start adding the fifth component - word work.  

Phonics (Fundations) - We are continuing to work on CVC words.  This week we used sentence frames for the first time.  We use the sentence frames to write sentences.  (Here is a picture of sentence frames from the Wilson Fundations website.)

Each sentence frame is one word.  If there is a high part in the beginning the students know it will be a word that starts with a capital letter.  There are also sentence frames for punctuation at the end of the sentence.  This week I dictated a sentence and the students had to write the sentence on their white boards.  We then had students come to the board and put their words on the sentence frames.  

The words in the sentences contain another new thing for us - trick words and vocabulary words.  (The vocab words are also know words of the day.)

In fundations trick words are another word for sight words.  Last week our trick words were 

a, the, and, of, is, and his.

The vocabulary words are words that are something we are currently studying.  Our current unit is CVC words.  Our first vocabulary word was fix.

Writing - We continue to work on our writing skills.  We worked on another sheet with four choices.  This week the theme was - What is your favorite food?  The 4 choices were soup, burgers, hot dogs, and pizza.  We will continue to work on the four choices sheets, write in our Fundations journals, and write in daily 5.  We continue to work on only using a capital letter for the first word in the sentence, finger spacing, using punctuation at the end of a sentence, and drawing a wow picture to go with your work.  We will also continue to work on our handwriting.  We have handwriting pages that we work on throughout the week both during writing and phonics - as well as using our Fundations whiteboards to practice correct letter formation.

Math - This week in math we worked on addition story problems, doubles facts, and identifying rectangles.  We used cubes to work out our story problems and our doubles facts.  Doubles are addition equations where the two partners are the same.  (1+1, 2+2, 3+3, etc.)  We practiced doubles up to 10+10=20.  We learned a fun song called the doubles rap.  You can click on it here.

http://www.viewpure.com/8jOzhiACB68?start=0&end=0

When learning about rectangles, we learned that rectangles have four sides and four angles.  They are different from squares - although squares have four sides and four angles - all four sides are the same size. With rectangles, there are two short and two long sides.  We used geoboards to make squares and rectangles.

Religion - This week we read out of our text for the first time.  Our first chapter was titled Jesus is our friend.  After reading though the assignment was for us to draw a picture of people that we love.  :)  We continue to practice our prayers - this week we added The Glory Bee to the prayers we are learning/practicing.  We continue to work on the sign of the cross and genuflecting.  This week we also started working on our virtues and values cards.  Our first virtue word is RESPECT.  The cards show us what respect looks like and sounds like, shares a prayer, and has a saint.  So far our two virtues cards have shown respect looking like not interrupting others when they are speaking and listening attentively to others.

Science/Social Studies - This week in our Einstein Kit we learned about wind.  We are keeping a wind graph for one week.  We also learned about observing the weather with our senses.  (eyes, ears, hands, and nose.  We're not using the mouth in science. :)  We are also working on a weather calendar for the month.  We keep track of three things.   

Cloud cover (cloudy, partly cloudy, sunny, or foggy)

Precipitation (rain, snow, hail, no precipitation)

Wind (no wind, some wind, strong wind)

We didn't work on a Scholastic News this week - we did the MAP test instead.  We will for sure get to it next week!

A  Few FYIs

*We did our first MAP test Friday.  We will have our second MAP test this coming Friday.  Please keep reviewing mouse skills with your child.  Make sure your child has a good breakfast and gets plenty of sleep.  Thank you!

*Friday, September 18th we will have our first Packer dress day!

*Lysol spray - If you can find any Lysol spray, please think about donating it to school.  We use it at least twice a day every day on the carpets, lockers, mailboxes, chairs, seat sacks, and anything soft that we can't use wipes on.  We would appreciate it so very much!!!

A few recess pictures -

Have a great week!  :)

Our first full week of school is complete!  We had a great week!  Here are some of the things we worked on this week -

Reading - We are working on learning about the parts of Daily 5 reading / guided reading.  The components of Daily 5 are read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing, word work, and meet with teacher.  (Meeting in a small reading group with the teacher.  The reading group consists of readers who are at similar reading levels.)  Daily 5 is going to have to look a little different this year as we navigate how to be in centers while socially distancing and rotating through manipulatives and books.  We are doing our best to make it work!

So far we have introduced and practiced read to self and read to someone.  We call our practice building stamina!  Friday we started talking about the listening center and had a little bit of time to practice that component.  This week we will rotate through these three centers and continue to build stamina.  We may (or may not) get into the next component this week - work on writing.

The listening center apps/websites that we use are Raz Kids, Vooks, Epic, and Storyline Online.

Read-Aloud - Every day we end the day with a few chapters from a chapter book.  We are starting the year off with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

Phonics (Fundations) - We have been working on reviewing all of the letters, keywords, and sounds.  We have been practicing the correct way to form the letters and use the correct spaces.  We have been using our white boards to practice our letters and dictation.  We have working on tapping out sounds.  We are currently working on CVC words (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant).  We used our magnetic tile boards for the first time on Friday to practice making CVC words and tap them out.  I've attached the letter keyword sounds poster and the handwriting lines for you to see what we are working on.

Henry practicing letters

Writing - We have been working on our writing skills.  We have fundations journals that we use to write.  So far we wrote in our journals about what we did on the weekend and something we are thankful for.  ( - After reading a book about being thankful! )  We also have been working from some sheets that give us four choices of something.  For instance - What is your favorite bug?  There are four choices.  You choose one (or more) and write your sentence.  We are working on only using a capital letter for the first letter of the sentence, using finger spacing, using punctuation at the end of the sentence, and drawing a "wow picture" to go with your writing.  

Math - We use Saxon Math - which is a spiraling curriculum.  It goes over many topics multiple times over the course of the year.  Some things we've worked on so far have been counting with pennies, ordinal numbers, basic shapes, beginning addition equations, beginning story problems, left and right, splitting something in half, and a basic graph, just to name a few topics.  We worked with our wrap-ups for the first time this week. Wrap-ups can be a little tricky!  They rocked it!  Reminder - the students do not need to do the side B "homework" side of the Saxon math.  Side B is exactly what we did in class.  If you want your student to do it at home - of course they can do it.  It does not need to be returned.

Religion - We read another story out of our Children's Bible - the story of Adam and Eve.  We have been working on saying prayers - The Our Father, The Hail Mary, and Bless Us O Lord.  We also sing the Johnny Appleseed prayer often.  Have your child sing it to you!  :)  We've been practicing the sign of the cross and how to genuflect.  This week we will start working out of our Religion book for the first time.

Science / Social Studies - We are working on a weather unit in an Einstein Kit.  So far we have talked about our favorite weather, weather words, using our senses with weather, and what a meteorologist is.  We also use Scholastic News for science/social studies.  We read a Scholastic News each Friday.  So far the topics our our Scholastic News have been "Let's Stay Healthy" and "Thank You Community Workers".

***A few FYI's***

Dress Code - A few reminders - The colors for bottoms are navy blue, brown, khaki, and black only. The bottoms are also to be cotton twill, broadcloth, or corduroy.  (uniform type bottoms)

Hoodies are never allowed in the classroom - with the exception of Holy Cross sweatshirts on spirit wear Tuesday.

The dress code is in the handbook for your reference.  If you ever have any questions about the dress code, just ask.  :)

MAP Testing - First grade will be MAP testing Friday, Sept. 11th and Friday, Sept. 18th.  The MAP test is done on a laptop with a mouse.  Please take some time to go over how to use a mouse with your child.  There are many children who are unsure how to click, double click, etc.  Practicing how to use a mouse will be incredibly helpful for the test!  Make sure your student has a good breakfast and gets plenty of sleep!  :)

A few recess pictures -

Have a great week!  :)

We had a great first week of school!  

On the first day of school we read a book called First Day Jitters.  After reading the book we talked about how we were feeling about the first day of school.  We used the Smart Board to show our feelings with emojis.  Then we graphed our results.  Some students chose more than one emotion.  :)

Another activity we did on the first day of school was make a chain.  Each day in first grade we talk about what day of school it is and how many days are left.  Each day we add a number to our days of school chart.  We will also take a link off of our chain.  The chain we made on the first day has 180 links for 180 days of school.

A third first day of school activity we did was make a puzzle.  Each student was given one puzzle piece and they decorated it any way they wanted.  When everyone was finished, we put the puzzle together.  I laminated the puzzle and made it into this beautiful bulletin board!  

We need to have rules in school!  We spent some time reading some books including Try a Little Kindness, Do Unto Otters, and How to Lose All Your Friends.  We then came up with rules for our classroom and ways to be a great classmate.

We spent some time getting to know each other.  We brainstormed a list of words of things about us / things we like to do.  We then made these beautiful cloud/rainbow projects that are hanging in our classroom.  The rainbows have the words each student chose about themselves.

We had a few days of indoor recess the first week of school.  Here are a few pictures from recess.

The first week of school we read the story of Creation out of the Children's Bible.  We also watched a video from The Beginner's Bible of the Creation story.  We are currently working on our own creation books and they will be coming home this week.

We attended Mass for the first time.  The Mass day for 1st grade this year will be Friday.  On the way back from Mass, we stopped to take this cute picture!

Have a great week!  :)