September 15-18

Hello Families!

What a great way to end our week together - with our assembly honoring our police officers! Each of our friends created a card to say "Thank you for being a friend" that we passed along to the officers along with a poster that we all signed. It was a great way for our entire school community to gather together to say thank you to the men and women who do such a great job of helping to take care of us and keep us safe.

One of our read-alouds this week was Ralph Tells A Story.
Ask your first grader to tell you all about it! What did
Ralph discover about himself as a writer? How can
that help you as a writer?

In Writer's Workshop this week we continued writing our small moments stories. We thought about times when we had strong feelings; these are GREAT to write about! Revision strips or "flaps" helped us to add these strong feelings to stories we have already written. In fact, they were stories we thought were finished, but when we went back and reread them, we discovered that we could add more to them! We began with just adding our feelings and the feelings of others, but then discovered that there were other details we could add to our stories as well! We also spent a couple days on spelling strategies we can use when we come to tricky words. Ask your first grade writer to share with you some of the strategies s/he can use to help him/her spell tricky words. And finally, on Friday we focused our learning on zooming in on one small moment. We compared this to a "watermelon story" as opposed to a "seed story." Ask your first grader to tell you an example of a watermelon story and an example of a seed story.

We began our book shopping routine this week! Your child
has been assigned one day per week first thing in the
morning to choose JUST RIGHT books. Ask your reader
to tell you how s/he  knows if a book is JUST RIGHT.

In Readers' Workshop this week we continued to build our good reader habits by reading more and more. We didn't just read more and more; we also kept track of our reading by using a post-it note to tally how many times we read each book. We soon began to see that the more tally marks we had, the better we were reading the book! Practice, practice, practice! These tally marks allowed us to determine how many books we read in a day. From there we thought it would be a great idea to set a reading goal! Hmmm... yesterday I read 7 books... How many might I read today? What's my goal? So... we began setting goals for our reading time and discovered that we can spread that goal out across our day! We can read in the morning, we can read during the school day, we can read when we go to childcare or get home, AND we can read before bed! That's a lot of reading, and we all know... The more we read... (ask your reader to tell you the rest!).

 We received our first Scholastic News magazine this week and really enjoyed the lesson which included a short video clip, an online version of the magazine with opportunities for us to stop and talk about our learning, and an online activity. These magazines will come home after we have read them in class. Please revisit these with your first grader.

Our new poem this week came from Maurice Sendak's book Chicken Soup With Rice. It was the poem "September." We read it together, found words we learned in K5 and looked really closely at the word September. We clapped the syllables and found the vowels in each of those syllables. We also noticed that there is an -er at the end, and we've been noticing that -er EVERYWHERE!

Ask your first grader how they played
the new game "BUMP!"

Some of our friends have demonstrated understanding
of adding more than two single-digit numbers so they were
challenged with "LOVE BUG BUMP!" where they added
three dice together!

 In math this week we continued to work with partners to practice our math games and learn a new one. We also completed a packet with the numbers 3-9 where students had to come up with many different ways to show a number. These told me so much about your mathematicians in terms of what they know and can do, what is tricky for them, and what they're ready for next. The foundation we have laid the past few weeks will be invaluable as we begin our regular math routines next week. Students have been developing their independence in following the structure and expectations of our math workshop, and I have been learning so much about them as mathematicians in the process!

We were also introduced to our touchscreen Chromebooks! We each learned how to care for them and how to access and navigate on Dreambox.

Please be sure to check your child's Friday Folder next MONDAY as they will have their first Math Expressions math homework! They are all anxious to begin this first grade home routine!

Mrs. Geinopolos joined us for our first Guidance lesson this week. We talked about how there are no bad feelings - all feelings are OK. What's important is what we do with those feelings. She showed us our bin of Calming Tools. Ask your first grader to tell you about some of the calming items and why they might use them.

More fun with Brain Breaks this week to get our brains and bodies ready to learn!

We had another great week of Kings and Queens. Here they are...

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it for our Parent Information Night this past week! If you weren't able to make it and you have questions after reading through the packet that was sent home, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Thanks for stopping by the blog! Next week will be our first Monday together which means LIBRARY DAY - HOORAY! We're so excited!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

IMPORTANT NOTE: Thank you to Iris' mom for already visiting Dreambox and bringing it to our attention that our iPad code has changed! Mrs. Hogue did some investigating for us and got our new code. Please make note of it: 

shxn/9wwa 

Mark Your Calendars:

MAP testing begins next week

Monday, September 21: Bring your DIMES in for our coin drive!

Tuesday, September 22: Bring your QUARTERS in for our coin drive!

Wednesday, September 23: NO SCHOOL

September 24-26: Scholastic Book Fair!

September 25: Reunification Drill

October 7: School Picture Day

October 14 & 28: Early Release Days

October 22, 23 & 28: Parent/Teacher Conferences