February 16-19

I can think of almost no better way to start the day than with a good friend and a book!

Hello Families!
We had a short week due to parent teacher conferences and staff development on Monday, but despite it being short, we sure accomplished a lot! And speaking of conferences, I have so enjoyed having time to speak to each of you about your first graders, sharing their successes, their challenges and their goals. I so appreciate your support at home! It truly does make a world of difference. On to our week...

During Writer's Workshop, we continue to focus on writing reviews. Specifically, we were busy adding supporting details to make our reviews more convincing, adding small moment stories as a means of persuasion, hooking our reader with interesting introductions and catchy conclusions, and working with partners to give each other writing check-ups. 

We have our very own mentor authors who share their great work with us!

We LOVE learning from our in-house mentor authors!

"Dr. Carroll" writing a prescription for her writing partner.

Prescriptions included compliments...

and prescriptions - or ways to improve our writing!

Proud "doctors" shared their prescriptions with each other!

Writing partners looking over each other's writing very carefully so that they can let them now what they're doing well and what they can work on next.

"Dr. Kaczor" providing specific feedback.

In Reader's Workshop we have been busy making our reading sounds its very best by paying attention to punctuation, characters and the story line. Partners have been practicing and critiquing their best reading by recording themselves on www.vocaroo.com. You can have your reader do this at home as well! It's a really easy tool that has been extremely motivating to our readers!

One of our Words Their Way groups focused on short e patterns with the nasal _nt. 

Our word was focused on short & long /e/ patterns. We're noticing that there are MANY long /e/ patterns. Examples are e_e, ea, y, ee, e, ei, and ie! This is a pretty tricky one, particularly in terms of spelling and knowing which pattern to use when we're writing. The more we read and experience these patterns and the more we begin to use them in our writing, the better we'll get! As I shared with you at conferences, I've set up a Spelling City account where your child can practice these vowel patterns as well as our first grade Word Wall Words. Here's the link again http://www.spellingcity.com/mrsmullenspellingcity/.

In Math Workshop this past week we were busy with solving teen addition and subtraction number stories. We persevered through a pretty tricky strategy where we used the make a ten strategy to solve teen subtraction. I'm amazed at what these first graders can accomplish together!

We observed our salt crystals very closely.

In Science, we revisited our solids (gravel, tissue, salt) and discovered that the salt really was still in the water after we stirred it in our last session! We discovered it changed a lot!

Our salt crystals changed A LOT!

Next, we experimented with sugar grains and sugar cubes. Ask your scientist to tell you all about the experiment and what we discovered.
    

We observed our sugar grains and sugar cubes very closely as well, then used a Venn Diagram to share our observations.

One partner held the cups while the other stirred for our "Dissolving Race." The same person stirred both cups, because "what one hand does, the other follows!" This helped ensure a fair race.

Next Tuesday we're looking forward to having Mrs. Geinopolos join us for a guidance lesson!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

Reminders:

Please turn in BOX TOPS for EDUCATION to school as we're in the midst of a contest right now! We're hoping to take the lead for the first grade class with the most BOX TOPS returned!

We seem to be at a lull with BOOK BRIEFCASES. Many of our friends haven't been bringing in a signed BOOK LOG each day. These are an extremely important part of your child's development as a reader and an important habit to build as this expectation will continue in second grade and beyond. Thank you!

Mark Your Calendars!

February 18th: Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day/Conferences

March 9: Early Release Day

March 14: Report cards 

March 25-April 3rd: Spring Break
 April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 

April 22: No School for Students

April 27: Early Release Day

May 11: Early Release Day

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 9: Last day of first grade