Word Study

On Tuesday every week, First Graders will be bringing home a collection of spelling words that have been introduced in class. These are developmentally appropriate and specific to your child. The program is called Words Their Way. Each night of the week they are expected to do a different activity to ensure that these words and the spelling principles they represent are mastered. For example, if the student can spell CAT or BAT they can also spell SAT, MAT, RAT, THAT, PAT, etc. The sort is modeled on Tuesday in class so your student knows how to do it. 

Tuesday: Do the word sort they did in class again at home and glue it into their book. The sort should be cut and in the bag at the back of their blue Word Study notebook. Group word families (words that rhyme).  

Wednesday - Friday: Pick one of the six activities from the Choice Board in the front cover of their Word Study notebook to practice with each night. 

Monday: Return your notebook to Ms. Shirai.

Thank you for taking the time to work with your child! 

Halloween Celebration Friday!

We will be celebrating Halloween on let last day in October before the break - this Friday!

Our stellar PTA will be coming around to classrooms to give treats and there will be an in-classroom vote for spookiest and coolest costume so please dress up if you can!

First grade has their extended PE block that afternoon, so if the costume is difficult to be active in, please bring some gym clothes to change into at lunch recess. 

Week 8 - Wrapping Up Our Who We Are Unit on Senses

First grade has been wrapping up our unit on the senses by thinking about how we might live in the world without one or more of our senses. We learned a little about Helen Keller, Ray Charles, and Louis Braille. We were also introduced to Frank Morris and his guide dog Buddy. We have been singing the song "Make New Friends" with sign language and practiced the ASL alphabet by learning how to spell our own names. 

It has been exciting to hear about the actions students are taking at home. Some have told me about noticing the guides at train station or guide dogs for helping the visually impaired. Many have told me about using their taste and sense of touch to explore foods. To help wrap up the line of inquiry about how we can live without one or more of the senses, the home learning this weekend is for students to notice and either photograph or draw braille, signals with sound and other things that help people who have lost one or more of their senses. 

In literacy we have been working on our spelling through word sorts, writing personal narratives in Writer's Workshop, and practicing talking with our reading partners about characters and settings in Reader's Workshop.

In maths we continued our exploration of 2D shapes by identifying, naming, describing, and comparing triangles, hexagons and trapezoids using their attributes (sides, vertices). We created composite shapes by composing 2D shapes.

In arts, we are learning elements of lines and patterns to create "texture monsters".  

Week 7 - How We Care for Our Senses

First Grade honed their skills of Communication and Self-Management by creating a skit to teach others how to care for their senses! We learned how each person in a group has a job to do that helps the whole group.

In maths, along with our usual number sense practice, we used our sense of sight to sort 2D shapes and describe the attributes of a shape using the language of geometry. We inquired, "What is a rectangle?" and after initially describing a shape with 4 sides and 4 corners, I drew a trapezoid. Then they realized they had to use more specific language. We finally concluded a rectangle had 4 corners and 4 parallel lines, 2 that were the same and 2 that were longer. 

In writers workshop, we continued our small moments narrative writing learning that writers stay in the moment even at the end of their book and beginning our writing partnerships. In readers workshop, we practiced more ways to partner read (choral and see-saw). 

This week we also learned the fifth Life Skill to keep us and others safe: 

Be respectful: I treat others how I want to be treated.
Our Question: Are you being polite or rude?

Here’s your family mission:

As a family, begin to look for how your family is polite. Record three ways your family practices being respectful. 

TIP:

The difference between being respectful and careful is that being careful is a physical action whereas being respectful also occurs in speech.

Friday we celebrated a bit of Oktoberfest! We celebrated by making Alpine hats and eating pretzels provided by the PTA. 

Parent Teacher Conferences

19th - 23rd October

Online

You will receive invitations for our PTCs shortly, when you will be able to meet with your homeroom teacher and see how your child has settled into the new school year. 

Please note - we will hold all meetings online. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Have a wonderful weekend!

 

Week 6 - Safe Pockets

This week in first grade we started to learn about 5 life skills that keep us and everyone around us safe:

This week we talked about being helpful, careful, patient, and responsible. Next week we will talk about the last skill: being respectful. 

Every day we look for students displaying these 5 skills and make it the basis of conversations we have about keeping ourselves and others safe. When a student cannot make appropriate choices, then their kangaroo will leave their safe pocket and go into mine. It stays there until I see that child making the right choices.

For example, I might see a child grab a paper from another child’s hand. “Riley, is that polite or rude? Grabbing another person’s work is disrespectful. Jamie has worked hard on that paper. Move your kangaroo into my Safe Pocket.”

After the student moves their kangaroo, I require a right act. I acknowledge the right choice and the kangaroo goes back into their safe pocket quickly.

The Safe Pocket is based on teaching children new life skills and gives new chances in every moment to self-­correct. 

Home Connections:

Being Helpful

My words and actions help not hurt others. Our Question: Are you being helpful or hurtful?

Family Mission:
Discuss the importance as a family to be helpful to one another. “Catch” your child being helpful in words or actions.

Being Careful

I treat friends and things in a gentle way. Are you being gentle or rough?

Family Mission:
Discuss the importance of being careful with your belongings and your family members.

“Catch” your child being careful with household belongings and their toys.

Being Responsible

I do the right thing and can be trusted to do what needs to be done.

Our question: Are you being trustworthy or careless?

Family mission: 

Discuss the importance of being trustworthy and doing what needs to be done even if no one is looking or telling you to. For example, bringing dishes to the kitchen when they are finished eating or picking up something they see on the floor and putting it away instead of walking past or stepping on it.

Alternative: Give your child a "job" to do at home each day and track/reward them for doing their job!

Continuing our unit on Who We Are, the students tried out what it might be like to lose one of their senses. We also started to put everything together by asking ourselves What [have we learned?]? So what [seems important here]? Now what [should we do with what we've learned]?

In language, we have been building our knowledge of spelling through Word Sorts at our just right level. In readers workshop we are learning different ways to partner read. In Writer's Workshop, we are starting to practice taking a big watermelon idea and turning it into a seed idea. 

In maths, we are practicing:

• solving addition story problems with sums to 20 with situations of adding to and putting together, with unknowns in all positions
• using strategies to add with sums to 20
• solve for the unknown in an addition equation involving 3 whole numbers
• modeling with mathematics
• using appropriate tools strategically

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend!

Week 5 - Communication and Self Management

This week in Unit of Inquiry, First Grade saw how the skills of communication and self-management are necessary to work as a group:

(IB PYP Poster Pack BUNDLE By Megan Schreiber)

We split into groups to create a page to add to our senses book about the function of each sense and then presented that to the class. 

Look at what we created:

Ask us how one of our senses works!

In maths we practiced result unknown, change unknown, and start unknown story problems using our rekenrek number racks. We focused on using 5 as a landmark as an addition strategy and started to think about finding a double to add on and compensation to make a double. 

In literacy we practiced stretching our words to write all the sounds we hear in words. We also are learning new literacy stations this week and next week. Home learning will be picking an activity from our Words Their Way Choice board to practice our latest word sort with.

In arts, we have our first museum wall of the year, celebrating our still life paintings. 

We also used our sense of sight to imagine what our symmetry paintings could be. We also practiced keeping a beat with our hands while singing a different beat using ti-ti ta (eighth and quarter notes).

Please don't forget to place your Scholastic book order by Friday, October 2nd. Every dollar you spend helps build your child's love of reading and earns our school bonus points to use toward new books for our library!

Have a wonderful weekend enjoying the beginnings of fall weather!

Week 4 - Focus on Function

First grade dug deeper into our Who We Are Unit this week by unpacking the central idea. We rephrased this big idea into our own words:

Topic: The Five Senses

Big Idea (in our words): We use the senses to figure out what things are.

After sorting some of our questions from the Wonder Wall, we notice a couple asking about one of our key concepts: function

So we started to learn about how we hear and how and why we taste, recording those in our journals.

Also experimenting with mystery shakers using our sense of hearing, touch (heavy/light), and smell to figure out what was inside.

 

In literacy, we are working on small moment stories using the writing process:

1. Think of an idea.
2. Touch and tell across the pages.
3. Sketch.
4. Write.
5. Revise.

We are also building good reading habits:

1. Take a sneak peek at the beginning.
2. Check your sneak peek.
3. Do something at the end.
4. Read more and more.

For homework this week we have a new Words Their Way Choice board. Students will pick one activity from the Choice Board to do with the words they sorted in class today.

In maths, we worked on our number sense by building our own rekenreks (number racks) practice quickly recognizing how many objects are in a collection, without counting from 1. The number rack is a math tool made up of 2 strings of 10 beads; each string is broken into a group of 5 red beads and a group of 5 white beads. These groupings invite students to think in groups of 2, 5, and 10, rather than counting by 1s.

If your child is already familiar with combinations to 10, try challenging them by:

• creating a story problem to match the equations
• write the fact family for the equation 
• 5+4=10
• 4+5=10
• 10-5=4
• 10-4=5

In arts we completed our Still Life Paintings and began learning the song Make New Friends with sign language.

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Have a great weekend everyone!

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