November 2-6

Happy November! Can you believe it's already November? Thankfully we have been given a bit of an extended Indian Summer this past week - what a delightful week it was! Here's what we were up to in first grade:

 In Writer's Workshop we began our How-To writing unit. We began the unit with an independent how-to piece based on a writing prompt. These pieces are being used by me to help determine next steps in each child's development as a how-to writer. They'll also be used at the end of our unit so that we can see how much we've grown as how-to writers! Our next experience was a collaborative how-to piece about our pumpkin seed sorting experience last week. Next we tried our hand at our own how-to pieces. I'm so impressed with the work all of our writers are doing! We also created a Mudge art piece and completed this by following the steps on Mrs. Mullen's directed art how-to piece. We discovered that Mrs. Mullen left out some steps, so we needed to revise her piece so that it made sense to us as we created the project. We read several How-To books as well and for each talked about what craft moves we noticed that we'd like to try in our own writing.

We can learn a lot from mentor authors!

 On Friday, we created an anchor chart of many, many things we can teach others to do, because writers' lives are FULL of things they can teach! Help your first grader brainstorm ideas for how-to pieces that they can write. We found that it's helpful to think about our day from the beginning to the end. For example, in the morning I brush my teeth; I could teach someone how to do that! I'm an expert at it! 

In Readers' Workshop we talked about how readers are brave - they don't give up when they come to tricky words! We worked with a partner to read a new poem called November. When we got to tricky words, we didn't give up! We encouraged our partners to try many different strategies, always with a focus on meaning or "what makes sense." We focused on the importance of setting in stories and also discussed how we should name the characters by name when we retell our stories to someone. That way they know EXACTLY who we're talking about and they can understand the story, too. We worked with our partners to retell and filled out a checklist indicating whether or not we remembered all of the important parts of a retelling. On Friday we read the latest issue of Scholastic News which focused on Veteran's Day. We used key details in the text to answer questions about the article. 

In Math Workshop this week we further developed our understanding of how addition and subtraction are related. We also practiced more with understanding and writing vertical equations. 

In Science we practiced reading and writing temperatures. After that we completed The Water Mixing Experiement! Ask your first grader about all of the steps we needed to follow and what we discovered.

Ask your scientist to tell you about our results. What surprised us? Why? 

Our Words Their Way rotations are going very well! Check in with your first grader about what s/he is learning during this time. Some are working on blends, some on vowel patterns, and some on digraphs ch and sh. 

It was a fun week to recognize RED RIBBON WEEK! Here are just some of our CRAZY HAIR-DOS! Thank you for sending healthy snacks each day!

Next week's Word Wall Words: 

were

when

your

said

went

***This is a tricky group of words. I encourage you to have your first grader practice reading and writing these at home. Spelling City is a GREAT online site to do just that!

Until next time...

Michelle

Mark Your Calendars:
Please help support our annual Food Drive! 
It runs from November 9-20

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