PBIS Classroom Celebration: A Little Spring Craft....

 

.....and a Little Spring Sledding!

 

Literacy:

During Literacy over the past 2 weeks students have engaged in close read alouds of, “Summer Sun Risin’.”  To deepen their understanding of the content of the story, students have role-played the main events. In their writing, students have described characters, settings and major events in the story using key details. 

During Word Study our work with vowel-consonant-e words has continued practicing spelling and reading words with a long vowel sound and silent e. We will wrap up this unit before vacation. Our next unit will focus on multisyllabic and compound words.  Please keep helping your child practice weekly heart words at home.  Thank you!

Reading fluency work has been focused on partner reading and how to coach a friend when we hear a mistake.

Math Workshop: Story Problems with an Unknown Change

First graders were introduced to strategies for understanding and solving addition and subtraction problems with an unknown change this week. That is, they investigated problems in which a start number and result are known and used strategies to determine and understand the change, that is how many items were added or subtracted. Using the context of pennies in a "penny jar", shells in a bucket, or balls in the gym, athematicians must determine what they know in a problem and then determine what they are solving for. As important as an accurate solution, skills for interpreting this type of problem as an unknown change (rather than an unknown result) are being incorporated into instruction. A home edition of the Penny Jar Game is in Thursday folders this week to support this skill at home. Enjoy!

DONATIONS OF HAND SANITIZER (please!)

 In an effort to keep our classroom safe and healthy, we are STILL in need of donations of large-sized hand santizer with pump.

Thank you! 

Spirit Week!

Literacy: The Sun, Moon, and Stars and V-C-E Syllables

In Literacy we have shifted our focus to learning about the sun, moon and stars.  We have begun to examine literary texts about celestial objects.  First Graders are exploring the question, “Why do writers write about the sun, moon and stars.”  Our work begun this week by focusing on noticings and wonderings about the sun and moon with close viewings of photographs and time-lapse videos.  

Next week we will launch a new unit in word study that will introduce students to the vowel-consonant-e syllable pattern.  Additionally, they will learn that the letter s might say /z/ when placed between two vowels.  Heart words for this unit include: friend, other, another, none, nothing. 

                                                           

Second Step: Emotion Management

Our social emotional learning program, Second Step, begins a new unit this week that focuses on emotion management. In this unit, students are taught proactive strategies to help prevent strong feelings from turning into negative behaviors. When intense feelings are allowed to escalate, strong physiological reactions hamper students' ability to reason and to solve interpersonal and other problems without aggression. The ability to keep strong emotions from escalating and driving behavior allows students the chance to employ many of the other skills practiced this year, such as effective communication, assertiveness, negotiation and compromise, and problem-solving. During today's lesson, first graders learned to identify their own feelings by noticing the physical clues in their bodies.  Using disappointment as the example, activities and discussions revolved around the idea that everyone has strong feelings sometimes.

Unit 5 Common Core State Standards Math Practices

In addition to outlining grade level student achievement expectations for proficiency in mathematical content areas (operations and algebraic thinking, number and operations in base ten, measurement and data, and geometry), the Common Core State Standards also require students to attend to a variety of skills and processes that are considered to be a critical part of student mathematical learning.  Embedded within Unit 5, Crayon Puzzles and Number Games, first graders are gaining experiences with Math Practice 3 (MP3) and Math Practice 7 (MP7).

MP3-Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others )students construct mathematical arguments--that is, explain the reasoning underlying a strategy, solution, or conjecture--using concrete references such as objects, drawings, diagrams, and actions)

What does this look like in Math Workshop: Math talks about solving How Many of Each? crayon story problems often sound like this:
Teacher: (Student), as soon as I read the problem, you told us that you
knew the answer had to be 3. How did you know that so quickly?
What were you thinking?
Student: It's like the one before. We did 3 plus 7 is 10. So 7 plus 3 has to be 10.
Teacher: How do you know that?
Student: It's the opposite; the total is still 10, so if we know one part is 7 the
other part has to be 3.
The teacher holds out a stick of 10 cubes, 7 green and 3 red. The student takes the cubes and switches the order of red and green cubes front to back.
Student: If you start 3 and add 7, it's 10 so if you start with 7 it's 3 more to make 10.

MP7- Look for and make use of structure (students use structures, such as place value, the properties of operations, or attributes of shapes to solve problems)

What does this look like in Math Workshop? As students develop fluency with 2-addend combinations of 10, they also explore other addition combinations by working on the decomposition of teen numbers as one ten plus some ones and write equivalent addition expressions. For example, while playing Ten Plus, students might solve 8 dots + 7 dots on the ten frame cards by "giving" the eight dot frame 2 dots from the 7 frame to make one full ten frame and then adding on the "extras". 8 + 7 becomes easier to work with as 10 + 5, a combination students know "snappy, snappy".
8 + 7 = 10 + 5

Valentine Exchange

Literacy: Vowel Teams and Finishing Magnificent Things

 In our new Word Study unit,  First Graders will be introduced to two more common suffixes: -ed and -ing. They will learn to add these suffixes to words that do not change when a suffix is added. New vowel teams for this unit include: oa, oe, ow, ou, oo, ue, ew, au, aw. Please practice the following heart words at home: any, many, how, now, down, out, about, our. Students should be able to read and write these words.

During Literacy students put finishing touches on their “Magnificent Things.” They wrote informative/explanatory texts in which they named their “Magnificent Thing,” wrote facts about their topic and provided a conclusion (BIG work for first graders!)

Finished and Unfinished Work Holders

Cap for the PomPom Jar

First Grade Art Gallery Display Sign

Math Workshop: Combinations of 10

First graders began a new unit in math this week called Number Games and Crayon Puzzles, the third of four units in the Investigations program that focus on addition, subtraction, and the number system.  Number Games and Crayon Puzzles contains a series of investigations that guide student development of fluency with two-addend addition and subtraction within 10, examine the meaning of the equal sign as a symbol of equivalence, and deepens students’ understanding of addition and subtraction through problems and games that involve finding an unknown addend or an unknown change (10 =___+ 8).

Second Step: Showing Care and Concern

We wrapped up our Second Step unit focused on empathy this week thinking and talking about compassion by thinking and talking about showing care and concern about others. Being able to show compassion helps children get along with others and to feel valued in our learning community. Compassion is empathy in action!

February 14th

We will be having a low-key valentine exchange on Wednesday, February 14th.  If your child wishes to participate in the exchange, please make sure he or she includes a card for everyone. A 1M class list was sent home in Thursday folders last week.

Math: Halves and Fourths

First graders are extending their knowledge of measurement by currently investigating fractions, partitioning a whole into two equal parts first, then moving on to four equal parts next week. Exploration activities include coloring circle, square, and fraction "rugs"with two or four equal parts of different color and discussions involve conversations about what it would look like to "fairly" share cookies, pancakes, or sandwiches with two or four people.  Want to continue these conversations at home? Math vocabulary includes half, half of, one half, halves, fourth, one fourth, a fourth of, fourths, and quarter.  

Reading Fluency

A fluent reader reads at a conversational rate with accuracy and expression. At the end of each daily Fundations (phonics) lesson, students read a story or passage that is directly connected to the words (skills and spelling patterns) that were taught and practiced that day. Students spend time reading and REREADING these stories because studies show rereading familiar passages supports the development of automatic, proficient word recognition which, in turn, allows readers to exert more brain power on understanding and enjoying a text (reading comprehension). A collection of stories is sent home in orange folders at the end of each unit. Please encourage your child to save and practice these collections frequently, accurately, and out loud! This week, some students spent time presenting a choral reading of one of these stories with a partner or two.