February 27-March 3

Hello Families!
Due to being busy with report cards and preparing for conferences, our blog will be a short one this week. Thanks for your understanding!

We had a great week celebrating Dr. Seuss in both Writers' and Readers' workshops!

We interviewed each other about favorite Dr. Seuss books, favorite places to read, etc. 

We read Hop on Pop on Tuesday and enjoyed Hop-on-Pop-popcorn! Thanks to the Handal family for supplying the treat!

 In addition to these fun activities, we focused on fluency in our reading, wrote a book review of our favorite Dr. Seuss book, paid attention to word wall words and word patterns to make our reading easier, wrote about what we like about ourselves after reading The Sneetches, and we paid attention to the Dr. Seuss' message or lesson in the book The Sneetches and Horton Hears a Who. Ask your first grader about the lessons in each of these stories. 

During Writers' Workshop, we also read a Scholastic News article about Ayanna Najuma. Then we each wrote her a letter telling her what we learned about her as well as something that we wanted her to know. The letters your children wrote were amazing, and I can't wait to show them to you during our upcoming conferences! While we do hope to hear back from Ms. Najuma, it simply felt good to share our appreciation with this amazing woman. Please ask your first grader to share with you what s/he learned about her. 

Writing a letter to Ms. Najuma

During math this week, one of our activities focused on organizing and counting large groups of objects. We worked together to create 10 groups then counted and checked our work with each other. 

Then we used our Secret Code Cards to show our total. 

We also spent quite a bit of time with our 120 number grids as we learned how to add and subtract decade numbers from double digit numbers. Your mathematician should be able to mentally add and subtract 10 from a decade number mentally and use a number grid to add and subtract groups of tens from double-digit numbers. For example: 82-40 and 37+60

Writing the numbers in our own number grids helped us to see the place value patterns.

On Friday during Science Workshop, we checked the growth of our alfalfa and ryegrass since last Friday when we cut the lawn. We noticed that the alfalfa didn't grow back as much, but the ryegrass did. We also documented growth of our wheat plants. Many of us now have two leaves and our roots are darker in color. 

Next week we'll begin our poetry unit in both Readers' and Writers' workshops. We'll also complete our unit 5 math assessment. 

Until then...

Mark Your Calendars!

Monday, March 6th: Report Cards some home. Please remember to sign and return the manilla envelope. Thank you!

Wednesday, March 8: Early Release Day

Parent-Teacher Conferences: 3-6:30PM

*Monday, March 13th: JUMP ROPE FOR HEART! 

*This is the corrected date. 

Tuesday, March 14th: Irish Dancers performance

Thursday, March 16th: Parent-Teacher Conferences 4:30-8:00PM

Saturday, March 18th: Rolling on the River event

Wednesday, March 22: Early Release Day

Parent-Teacher Conferences 3-6:30PM

Thursday, March 23: Musical (2pm & 6:30pm)

Monday, March 27-Friday, March 31: Spring Break

Wednesday, April 12: Early Release Day

Friday, April 14: NO SCHOOL

Monday, April 17: NO SCHOOL/Teacher In-Service

Wednesday, April 26: Early Release Day

Thursday, April 27th: Field Trip to Growing Power 9-11:45am

Monday, May 8th: Field Trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo 9am-2pm

Wednesday, May 10: Early Release Day

Thursday, May 11th: Guest author Lester Laminack joins us at Stormonth!

Wednesday, May 24: Early release Day

Monday, May 29: NO SCHOOL

June 1: BMS Musical "Into the Woods"

Tuesday, June 6th: SAVE THE DATE!!! 

Annual Family Picnic! 11:30-12:40

Thursday, June 8: Last day of First Grade! 

See you later, Second Grader!