October 26-30

Hello First Grade Families!
What a fun week we had! Here are all the details...

In Writer's Workshop we used our editing checklists to check each page of our Small Moment stories that we published this week. This took us quite some time, but it was time well spent! We wanted to be sure our readers would be able to read and understand our wonderful stories! 

We also spent time putting the finishing touches on our stories - a catchy title and a cover page. We looked at how other authors designed their title pages and used some of those craft moves in our own work. They all turned out amazing!

On Thursday, we invited some Stormonth staff in to our classroom to leave us feedback on our work. Mrs. Fliss, Mrs. Hoffman, Mrs. Armstrong, Mrs. Grambow, and Dr. Dalzin all came and left comments for us - we are so grateful! THANK YOU!

We celebrated each other's writing by going on  a gallery walk of our own and leaving comments for our classmates. Watch for your writer's feedback page to come home this week. 

We spent some time painting pumpkins and cutting out details for them. We then wrote an All About piece about our pumpkins. Because these were rather simple sentences, it helped us to really focus in on our use of capital letters and punctuation. Stop by our hallway to see our pumpkin patch and our All About My Pumpkin pieces.

In Reader's Workshop we continue to revisit cross-checking where we think, "Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?" This is great language to use with your reader when they are solving tricky words. We also talked about how readers review what they know before they start reading. This was a great reminder to us to practice our word wall word baggies before we read during Read to Self. Another word solving strategy we learned was skipping tricky words, reading on to the end of the sentence, then thinking about what would make sense and going back to reread. We also continue to focus on story elements. 

Next week's Word Wall Words:

but

not

what

all

over

In Math, our focus was on subtraction. We're learning strategies for subtraction, including making a circle drawing so that we can see our total, what was taken away, and what is left. One thing I noticed was tricky for many of my mathematician friends: figuring out the subtraction equation when given  a circle drawing with the break-apart stick and some of the circles crossed out. 

Your first grader should be able to provide
the subtraction equation for this circle drawing:
5 - 3 = 2

Ava created an adorable cutie Jack o' Lantern!

   
We practiced adding 2 to numbers to 10 then
used our best strategies to block our partner
from getting 4 in a row and to get 4 in a row ourselves!

We practiced adding and subtracting with
increasing levels of difficulty!

We played BOO BUMP! In this game we had to add
three dice together then put a unifix cube on the total.
If our partner was on that number, we could BUMP them!
The goal was to get rid of our 10 cubes first.

In the afternoon we took part in The Pumpkin Seed Project. This is an annual project that classrooms across the US and Canada participate in. It reinforces many math skills! Thank you to the Reisel & Kaczor families for donating our pumpkins! Here's a link to the slide I created for the online project. 
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14q44MfxsosBkQsume4CmMrLL-I99VH5b8RPv4IILWIQ/edit#slide=id.g6fcd71f79_0_323

The parade and Thriller dance were so much fun!

How fun it was for me to see many of our friends out Trick or Treating on Whitney Road on Saturday! Looking forward to another great week in first grade!

Until then...
Michelle Mullen

Mark Your Calendars:

RED RIBBON WEEK IS THIS WEEK!

Monday, Nov. 2nd: It's not silly to be respectful - Wear SILLY SOCKS!

Tuesday, Nov. 3rd: Team Up - Respect Your Teammates - Wear Your Favorite TEAM SHIRT!

Wednesday, Nov. 4th: Support Healthy Choices - Wear RED!

Thursday, Nov. 5th: It's Not Crazy To Be Kind - Show Us Your CRAZY HAIR!

Friday, Nov. 6th: It's No Sweat to Use Good Manners - Wear SWEATPANTS/SWEATSHIRTS!

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