First Grade: January 2015

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Jobs in Our Classroom

Ask your first grader about their classroom jobs. Kids work in partners to help our classroom run smoothly! They are hard workers!

Monday, January 12, 2015

We are learning to write how-to stories. How-to stories are stories that teach something, list materials, have steps to follow in order, have illustrations that match each step and use words that tell us to do something. We made a snowman on our new smart board using words that told how to put it together. Then kids got to make their own snowmen and write how they did it!

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Feeding The Birds

We saw this beautiful cardinal at our bird feeder yesterday morning. We keep our feeders full so the winter birds can find food.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Penguins!

We began our penguin study by making folders to hold our work and making passports for our trip to Antarctica!

Soaring Bald Eagles by Katherine Martin-James
Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox
The Magic Hat by Mem Fox
Zoo-Looking by Mem Fox
Time For Bed by Mem Fox
Opposum Magic by Mem Fox
Koala Lou by Mem Fox
Wilfred Gordon Mcdonald Partridge by Mem Fox
Night Noises by Mem Fox
Town Mouse, Country Mouse by Jan Brett
The Hat by Jan Brett
Kwanzaa by David F. Marx
Henry and Mudge and the Sparkle Days by Cynthia Rylant
The Mitten by Jan Brett
Annie and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett
The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
Boo! by Robert Munsch
The Fire Station by Robert Munsch
Colorful Leaves by Maria Fleming
Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty
What is a Scientist? by Barbara Lehn

Your first grader is learning to be an independent thinker and problem solver. Give your child opportunities to be more independent at home-chores, helping with their school lunch or snack, writing a list, etc. If there are things your child does on their own, let us know so we can share that news with other families!

The concepts of addition and subtraction are tricky for some first graders. Kids can learn to "memorize" math facts but understanding HOW to add and subtract and use strategies for solving each kind of problem is more difficult. We always stress that the answer is important but not as important as how a child solves the problem. Some strategies we use are to draw a picture of the problem, use a number line, create a 10-frame to visually "see" the problem, and use your fingers! They are handy counters that are with us always! Kids can use their fingers to see and solve 3+5 as well as 46+ 7 (we keep the bigger number in our head and count on using our 7 handy fingers!)

When listening to your child read, let them use these strategies they are learning at school: look at the picture, get your mouth ready to make the first sound of the tricky word, think about what would make sense as you read, check the letters in the word after you read it to see if they match.

Remember, we can't "sound out" all words so we are helping kids use many other strategies as they read.

We are learning about congruent shapes on our calendar this month.

We are continuing to tap out words that are hard to spell and are working on adding /s/ to the ends of words.

We continue to work independently during our daily 5 time and are working hard in our reading groups. Everyone has shown improvement in their reading skills!

We love to read quietly for 20 minutes every day and have books in our book bags that are just right for us to read on our own!

We are using small geoboards in number corner each day.

Kids have begun their own how-to story and have chosen a topic they feel they are experts in and can write about easily.

We continue our study of snow, winter and how the seasons affect things over time such as trees.

First Grade

Welcome to First Grade!