September 21-25

Hello First Grade Families!
Well, let me tell you... we were really excited for our first Monday together! Everyone enjoyed their first trip to the library this year and came back with some great book selections! These book selections offer a great opportunity for you to read to your child. This way, they are hearing fluent reading. Ask your first grader to tell you what you should do before you read a book, while you're reading a book, and after you read a book.

During Writer's Workshop this week we looked to a couple mentor authors to see how they used details in their stories. We looked at The Relatives Came and The Kissing Hand. Have your first grader tell you about the details that the authors added on each of the following pages and how this made the stories more interesting.

The Relatives Came

The Kissing Hand

We also talked about how we can stay in the moment - even at the end of our stories! Oftentimes, we want to end our story by saying, "Then we went home," or "Then I went to bed." We looked at how some of our mentor authors stay in the moment by telling what was the VERY NEXT THING that happened. We looked another first grader's story about her brother's college graduation. The author, Heather, stayed in the moment - even at the end! Ask your first grader to tell you how Heather did that. What did YOUR first grader do this week to stay in the moment at the end of one of his/her stories?

We also set up writing partnerships and learned how we can story tell with a partner. Have your first grader tell you about each of the steps. You could even try this out together at home! When we're working without our partner, we learned that we need to think about what our partner would want to know and what questions they would ask us about our story. Then we try to answer those questions by adding to our writing.

A tricky thing for first graders to do is to stay in the moment at the end of their stories. Many of us want to end the story with "Then I went home," or "Then we went to bed." Instead, we need to ask ourselves "What is the very next thing that happened?"Again, this is very tricky! We'll spend quite a bit of time working on this!

In Reader's Workshop this week we were so excited to bring our Book Briefcases home for the very first time! Please remember to have your child read the book(s) in his/her briefcase. You should then sign the reading log and send it back to school the very next school day. It is very important that your child gets in the habit of spending this time reading to you daily.

Our lessons this week focused on the importance of rereading our books. Ask your first grader to tell you some reasons why rereading is so important and about how we can "scoop up" words.

We reread Ollie the Stomper and looked very closely at
the illustrations. Ask your first grader to tell you what they
noticed about this illustration. How did that help us to
understand better what happened next?

In math this week we began our first Math Expressions lessons and spent time talking about how we are a helping community. We are ALL learners and teachers who help each other understand and explain. We talked about how we thank people who make mistakes because those mistakes help us all learn how to recognize and correct mistakes. We learned, too, that it is brave to ask for help or say, "I don't understand."

We used a new tool in math this week: Stair Steps! Ask your first grade mathematician to tell you what we did with our Stair Steps and how we used them to learn about 1-more and 1-less patterns and partners of 2 through 5.

We also learned about how we can recognize numbers as a group of 5 and extra ones. 

We also used circle drawings to show our understanding of 5-groups and extra ones. Thanks so much for helping your first grader with his/her math homework this week! There will not be math homework on Fridays, but do feel free to have your child spend some time on Dreambox over the weekend. 

On Thursday we had our first round of MAP testing in the computer lab AND we visited the Book Fair! Thank you so much for adding to our coin collection every day! We raised just over $56! This is money I was able to use to purchase books for our classroom, and Scholastic matches this amount for a school in need! Thank you, Scholastic, and thank you as well to all of our Book Fair volunteers. We are so appreciative of their time and energy!

Mrs. Geinopolos joined us on Friday for another guidance lesson. We met "I Care Cat", read the book Odd Velvet, and talked about being respectful of others' differences. Ask your first grader to tell you all about it! We also saw "the most special thing" in a blue mystery box. Hmmm... what was it? Ask your first grader! And finally, we created a self-portrait to add to our Stormonth Time Capsule that most of us began in K4.

Here are this week's Kings and Queens...

We began our Weather unit on Friday! We talked about what weather is, read a couple poems about weather - a funny one by Shel Silverstein and another called Wonderful Weather. We also used our senses to record our observations of Friday afternoon's weather. We'll soon grow our vocabulary for describing the weather! As part of our lesson, we watched a BrainPop video about the four seasons and the type of weather in each.

And finally, our lockdown/reunification drill was on Friday. The kiddos did a great job while in lockdown, while making our way to our first stop, and again on our way to our reunification site.

Until next time...

Michelle Mullen

Mark Your Calendars:

MAP testing continues this week
PALS testing next week (literacy assessment)

October 7: School Picture Day

October 14 & 28: Early Release Days

October 22, 23 & 28: Parent/Teacher Conferences