May 4-8

Hello Families!
Happy Mother's Day! I hope this finds all of our moms enjoying a relaxing day with your families. We sure do appreciate you!

We've had some lovely summer-like days, and I can tell that the kiddos are getting ready for those long, lazy days of summer. We're doing our best to keep focused on both the Stormonth Way and our work habits, so a little extra encouragement and reminders would be very much appreciated.Summer also brings to mind BOOKS! It will be extremely important that your child continues to read daily over the summer. Without this reading practice, children tend to drop back two to three levels in their reading. I'll be sending home Scholastic book orders this Friday. Remember that these aren't the only catalogs you can order from. When you access our online account, you can order from any catalog that Scholastic has out. Stock up now!

Here's a sneak-peek at our week:
During Writer's Workshop this week, we worked on our All About First Grade books. Each student selected one of his/her chapters to include in our class book that we will share with our kindergarten friends when they come to visit on June 8th. We also spent a good amount of time looking at our first and second grade checklists, decided what we were doing well with informational writing, then decided what we needed to work on next. We've been goal setting together so we know where to focus during the last bend of this current unit.

In Reader's Workshop we were very busy with our poster projects. We talked about how illustrations have teaching power and how we can use comparisons to help our readers picture the details about our topics. Finally on Friday we shared our poster projects with our peers. After each presentation, classmates told something they learned about the topic and told the presenter something they liked about their poster.

We also selected our topics for our final bit of research in this unit. Your researcher brought home a note on Friday asking for help with finding 2-3 photos of their topic online. Please be sure to send these in tomorrow (May 11th) so that they can use them for their new chapter books that they'll be writing this week. Thank you!

In math we continue our geometry study. This week we learned about equal shares, and composing 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes. After composing these shapes, we used the composite shapes to compose new shapes. 

During science this week, we explored what happens when soils get wet. We moistened samples of sand, clay and humus and tried to roll each sample into a ball. We discovered that every soil component has a unique feel whether wet or dry and that the way it reacts when moist can help them identify it. On Monday our investigation will continue when we see what has happened to the balls of wet clay, humus or sand that we left out to dry. These simple tests are laying the groundwork for students' comparisons of sand, clay and humus throughout the unit. We also performed what scientists call the "streak" test. If moist soil leaves a smear on paper, it contains clay or humus. We found that sand didn't leave a smear, only the wet particles which fell off when it dried. We also found that a sticky orangish or brownish smear indicates the presence of clay, while a blackish, more watery smear is associated with humus. 

Our grade level was lucky enough to receive 25 Chromebooks! Next week we'll learn how to handle them properly and discover what we can do on them! Please be sure your first grader has headphones at school. We have had quite a few of them break over the past couple weeks. This will be VERY important beginning TUESDAY as we start MAP testing that day. MAP testing continues on Friday. 

Thanks for stopping by the blog!

Mark your calendars:

May 12 & May 15: MAP testing. Please let me know if your child will be out on either of these days. Please check with your first grader that s/he has headphones that are working!

May 13: Early Release

May 20: Pedestrian Safety 2-2:30 - Thank you to Katerina Brickman and Jaime Wooten for volunteering!

May 21: You're Invited to a Mini Music Concert in the 

music room 12:30 pm!

May 22: BOOK ORDERS DUE

May 25: Memorial Day holiday

May 27: Early Release

May 28: Schlitz Audubon field trip

June 4: Lion King musical production 

June 5: Travel to BMS in the morning to see their musical production. Special Interest Day in the afternoon.

June 8: Kindergarten students will visit our first grade classrooms!

June 10: First grade's "Show & Share" family picnic 11-12:10pm

June 12: Last day of first grade