May 9-13

This is Mrs. Mullen's character Elizabeth. Ask your first grader to tell you about her!

Hello Families!
What a fun week we've had welcoming many new friends to our classroom! New friends you say? Yes, and here's a sneak peek!

We've begun our character units in both reading and writing, and we're getting to know characters in the books we're reading and the characters we're writing about during Writer's Workshop. We're doing a lot of thinking about our imaginary characters. Ask your first grader to tell you about his/her character's name, age, likes/dislikes, friends, favorite color, favorite things to do, etc. Hopefully they'll have LOTS of information to provide you! Ask them, too, about the adventures their character is going on. These should be REALISTIC and should include a problem and a solution. On Friday we spent time talking about dialog, and it was really helpful for us to draw pictures of our characters - then they could actually use them to act out dialog! 

During Reader's Workshop we've been reading independently and with partners and learning about the characters in our books by rereading, noticing their relationships with other characters, introducing the characters to our partners, and connecting parts of the story together. We've also been using "stop and jot" to help us remember important parts of our books and to help us remember character traits. 

Our last guidance lesson was this week, so we surprised Mrs. Geinopolis with thank you cards. Your kiddos wrote such sweet and specific notes to her - I was all teary-eyed reading them! Mrs. G has really had a positive impact on your kiddos, and we've been so lucky to learn from her. She'll be missed!

We took part in the Pedestrian Safety program on Tuesday and had a great time learning in the Safety Village and outside while crossing the street together. Thank you to our volunteers Katie McGregor and Ruchita Varma for joining us!

 

 

During Math Workshop this week we continued to explore different strategies to solve double-digit addition. Common errors I've noted are kiddos forgetting to line up the ones and tens properly and forgetting to add the extra ten. We also completed our addition and subtraction fact fluency checks. As a reminder, it is a first grade goal that your child knows addition/subtraction facts within 10 fluently, or automatically. They should be able to write down the answer within 3 seconds. When kiddos know these facts fluently, it frees up their brain to focus on more challenging math material. This will be very important that they have this in place as they enter second grade. If your child is not yet fluent with the facts through ten I strongly encourage practice with them throughout the summer. 

Many of our friends prefer to use the "Show All Totals" strategy.

In Science this week we planted cucumber seeds in three types of soil: sand, clay and humus. We made predictions about what will happen. Ask your first grader what s/he thinks will happen and why. We also planted seeds in open tubes so that we'll be able to observe the root structures later on.

We carefully added water to our open tubes.

Once the water began to drip out of the bottom of the tube, we stopped.

We planted seeds in humus, sand and clay.

A Note of Thanks:
Thank you to the families who donated tissues this week. We have plenty now to help us get through this last month of first grade. We appreciate your helping hands!


Here are some important reminders...

Your child should have come home with a note on Friday, May 13th requesting that they bring coins from home for our final math unit: Money. They need:
10 pennies
10 nickels
5 dimes
4 quarters
*Please send by Tuesday, May 17th. Thank you!



Please RSVP for the Volunteer Breakfast

Book Orders are due on Friday, May 20th. When you order online, you can order from any catalog - not just the two I sent home. There are TONS of great deals on terrific books. This is a great opportunity to stock up on summer reading (see the orange section below). 


If you didn't turn in your child's Progress Report envelope after our last marking period, please do so ASAP. I'm missing quite a few. Thanks!


Your first grader should continue to read daily at home and return his/her reading log each morning. Developing this habit now will benefit your child greatly. We've been talking so much about our reading brain being a muscle, and when we don't use it we don't grow as a reader. This will be extremely important during the summer months. During the summer, find time to visit your local library, have your child read daily, be sure your child sees you reading for different purposes, and continue to read to him/her daily as well and have conversations about the books you're reading. Include both fiction and nonfiction in your child's literary diet. The gift of reading is one that lasts a lifetime!

A Request:
We'll be setting up a store as part of our money unit. If you have any trinkets around the house that you're looking to get rid of, please send them our way. We'd love to put them in our store! Thank you!

Until next time...
Michelle Mullen

Mark Your Calendars: 

May 20: Music Mini-Concert 1:50-2:20

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 2: FAMILY PICNIC 11:30-1:00pm

June 6: We'll celebrate Iris' summer birthday

June 7th: We'll celebrate Lucia's summer birthday

June 7th: Volunteer Breakfast in the Board Room 8-9am (please RSVP) followed by our assembly at 9am

June 8th: We'll celebrate Allison's summer birthday

June 9th: Last day of First Grade
Field Day 1-3pm: The Field Day Committee is looking for volunteers for this special event!

SEE YOU LATER, SECOND GRADER!