October 12-16

Hello Families!
Our friends all learned a bit about being flexible this week when I was out with a fever on Thursday, and they couldn't find a guest teacher for me. Mrs. Stark joined our friends for our morning routines, however, our afternoon was a bit topsy-turvy! They spent some time in Mrs. Hogue's room and then returned after specials to a new teacher, Mr. L, who ended their day with math. Sometimes things don't go as planned, but we do our best and are flexible. Thank you, friends! It reminds me of a story my husband told me about a speaker they had at USM. The speaker asked the group, "How many of you want your children to have problems?" Very few people raised their hands. The speaker then asked, "How many of you want your children to be problem-solvers?" Lightbulbs... and ALL HANDS up! A good lesson indeed!

I hope you all received a letter from your first grader about his/her writing accomplishments thus far in first grade. It was really fun for us to have a look at the first piece we ever did and compare it to the writing we're doing now. We're really growing as writers, BUT we still have a lot to work on! Goal setting is so important in first grade, and I encourage you to bring this up with your first grader every now and again. Begin the conversation with, "What are you doing really well as a reader/writer/mathematician/friend/scientist/etc. in school? Then follow up with, "What do you need to work on next? What are your goals as a reader/writer/etc.?"

This week in writing we learned how we can use words we know to help us spell new words. We also learned how important it is for our reader that we remember to include punctuation in our stories as well as uppercase letters at the beginning of sentences. Spaces are really important as well. When we forget these things, our story doesn't sound AT ALL the way we want it to! Ask your first grader to tell you my story that I was so proud of about my apple pie. When Mr. Mullen read it aloud, it didn't sound AT ALL how I wanted it to! Why not? 

We ended our week having a close look again at Night of the Veggie Monster. This time we looked at craft moves that George McClements used to REALLY bring his story to life. Ask your first grader to tell you why George used POP OUT WORDS, ellipses, and why he told the exact actions of the characters in his story. These are all powerful ways to really bring our stories to life! 

In reading this week, I have been busy assessing your first graders/ reading accuracy, strategy use, fluency, and comprehension. Once all of the data is collected and analyzed, we will begin strategy groups and guided reading. This meant we were busy building our stamina for read to self and partner reading. We are practicing our good reader habits independently and with our partners. We learned about how we can introduce our books to our partners. Ask your first grader what s/he should include in the introduction and what they should NOT include (not the ending - we don't want to give away the surprise)! We learned that partners don't just tell each other the word our partner is stuck on. NO WAY! We help them by suggesting strategies they can use to try to figure out or fix up the tricky word. Partners always do something at the end of a book as well. Ask your first grade reader to tell you a couple things partners can do at the end of a book. Our week ended with us celebrating all of the habits we have as readers now. We'll write about those habits on Monday as well as set goals for habits we need to work on. Ask your first grader to tell you each.

Next week we'll be reviewing our first 20 first grade word wall words. On Friday I assessed their ability to write these words. If your child has not mastered the spelling of any of them, they will spend next week practicing them in different ways. I'll share this list with you at conferences.

In math this week we began unit 2. We are representing and solving addition story problems by drawing simple shapes to represent the objects in the stories. We then learned how to replace these drawings with circle drawings. Symbols for equality and inequality were learned this week as well. Ask your first grader to tell you what the equal symbol means. S/he should tell you that it means "the same amount as."

Handwriting and Keyboarding began this week. Here we are busy with both of these important skills:

In science this week, we explored temperature and were introduced to thermometers. We used real thermometers to discover how a thermometer reacts to temperature. We also practiced reading the scale on a thermometer by counting by 2s and 10s. Finally, we related the numbers on the scale to hotter or colder temperatures.

We discovered that when we held the bottom of our
thermometers, the temperature would rise. Ask your
first grader to tell you what temperature this
thermometer shows.

All week long our teams have been taking turns recording wind speed, cloud cover, and precipitation. On Friday we also used this data to complete our own wind data graphs. We then analyzed this data to come to conclusions about the wind speed over the past week.

Rohan brought Sparky back and shared the page he added to Sparky's journal. In addition to filling out the safety checklist, Rohan's family also included photos to show Rohan practicing STOP, DROP & ROLL and to show one of their smoke alarms and their fire hydrant. Thank you for doing such a fantastic job!

 

Rohan's special talent was telling jokes and, boy, did he ever have us in stitches!

 


And finally, we ended our week with Chicken Soup With Rice! It was a perfect day to fill our bellies with some warm soup!

As you can see, those who tried it LOVED it! They even
told me I was a good cook! I had to break it to them
that Campbell's made it. :-)

Here's the link for a great contest called "Watermelon, Wondermelon."
http://www.themailbox.com/storage/microsites/images/2015/Watermelon2015-1-Contest-guide-entry-forms.pdf

Please let me know if your child decides to enter for either the watermelon slogan or the artwork. What a great way to encourage some creative writing in only 12 words!

Next week, first graders have off on Friday due to parent-teacher conferences. I'm looking forward to spending some time with many of you talking about your first grader! Until then...

Michelle Mullen

Mark Your Calendars:
*The first and third Fridays of the month are Stormonth Spirit Wear days!

October 28th: Early Release Day

October 22nd, 23rd and 28th: Parent/Teacher Conferences

Friday, October 23rd: NO SCHOOL for STUDENTS

October 30th: Costume Parade & Classroom Celebration

November 11th & 25th: Early Release Days

November 24th: Music Performance
November 26th & 27th:
Thanksgiving Holiday

December 9th: Early Release Day

December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break