Happy Thanksgiving

Hello!  It's a short week so we have a short update.  I hope that everyone gets some time to spend with family and relax over this long Thanksgiving break.  Over the past few weeks students have been writing in their thankful journals and it was neat to watch them reflect on all that they are thankful for.  They brought them home yesterday.  Today we are sharing our Turkeys in Disguise...they all turned out great!

Yesterday the December homework calendar came home.

Upcoming dates:

Wednesday, November 25-Friday, November 27-No School-Happy Thanksgiving!

Monday, December 1st-Kaukauna Christmas Parade

Thursday, December 10th-PJs, Pizza and Publishing Family Night, 5:30-7:00-Information went home yesterday. 

Tuesday, December 15th-11:30 Dismissal

Add a feather to the turkey was a part of our Morning Message today.  Gobble, Gobble!

As always if you have any questions let me know!  Happy Thanksgiving!

-Samantha 

Weekly Update: Nov. 16-20

I enjoyed meeting with all of you last week during conferences.  I appreciate all the support at home and am really enjoying working with this group of first graders J If you brought the portfolio home to take a closer peek at please remember to return it to school.  We are digging deep into nonfiction in both reading and writing and students are noticing connections between what they are doing as readers and writers. What an exciting time to be a first grader!

There have been a few questions about PebbleGo.  It is a website that our school subscribes to and is very easy for first graders to navigate.  It is also a great way for them to explore different science and social studies topics through text and videos. Username: electa  Password: electa

Christmas Parade: A flyer will be coming home with more info. about the Christmas Parade.  Be sure to look for it.  If you would like to to help with the building of the New Directions float check out the VolunteerSpot below. 

Please sign up for Kaukauna Christmas Parade Float Building! 

Here's how it works in 3 easy steps: 
1. Click this link to go to our invitation page on VolunteerSpot: http://vols.pt/uEA4Y8 
2. Enter your email address: (You will NOT need to register an account on VolunteerSpot) 
3. Sign up! Choose your spots - VolunteerSpot will send you an automated confirmation and reminders. Easy! 

Upcoming Events:

TONIGHT! Tuesday, November 17th-Yoga Family Night sponsored by the PSC 6:00-7:00

Wednesday, November 25-Friday, November 27-No School-Happy Thanksgiving!

Monday, December 1st-Kaukauna Christmas Parade

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: Students are becoming experts on so many topics as they continue to read nonfiction. Today we celebrated all we've learned so far by having a grown-up party to talk about what we've been reading the new things we've learned. Maybe you can have a talking party at your house to learn all about what your child has been learning! The rest of the week we will be learning how to tackle super hard words in order to keep learning. Some strategies we will practice are: readers can be persistent when reading hard words, they can  "crash" word parts together by reading the beginning, middle and end and putting the parts together, readers slow down to check that words look right and then reread to check that it makes sense, and readers learn new words as they read.  

Writers' Workshop: We are starting the second part of our All About Information Books-Nonfiction Writers Can Write Chapter Books! This week we will write table of contents, plan and write chapters, write with details by using comparisons, and use different kinds of writing in our teaching books such as: how-to writing, persuasive writing and stories.

Word Study: The words this week are: on, had, my, big, from. We will be assessing these words on Friday. These are words we want students to be able to read and write automatically without having to think to sound them out. Students also continue to work on phonics skills and word sorts at their developmental level.

Math Workshop: This week we will dig deep into story problems with a change unknown or a start unknown. We will be pushing our mathematical brains to solve these problems. Students will work to visualize the story and use  math mountains and equations to help them with their problem solving.  Here is an example of each type of problem:

Change Unknown: Sam had 4 cookies. Kim gave her some more. Then Sam had 7 cookies. How many cookies did Kim give Sam? (4 + ___=7)

Start Unknown: Sam had some cookies. Kim gave her 3 more. Then she had 7. How many cookies did Sam start with? (__ + 3 =7) 

Science/Social Studies:  We are continuing to learn about weather through our centers. Students are becoming weather experts!  Last week we watched a weather forecast and students were super excited about the slight possibility of snow!

Here are some pictures of when we tested wind speed last week. 

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

-Samantha 

Weekly News November 9th-13th

We learned a lot about weather and had a ton of fun at The Building for Kids on Friday.  Thank you to the parents who were able to join us!  I am looking forward to see you all this week for portfolio conferences.  This is a great opportunity to share the growth that has been made and set goals for continued growth. 

Upcoming Events:

Tues. November 10th and Thurs. November 12th-Portfolio Conferences

Monday, November 16th-Half Day-11: 30 Dismissal

Tuesday, November 17th-Yoga Family Night sponsored by the PSC

Monday, December 1st-Kaukauna Christmas Parade- Look for more information soon on how you can help with the New Directions Float!

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: This week we are starting our new unit, Learning About the World. This unit builds on students natural curiosity. During the first part of the unit we'll focus on how nonfiction readers become super smart about topics. In the second part of the unit in addition to comprehension, we'll be spotlighting vocabulary. In the last part of the unit we'll be working on building fluency and studying the craft of authors that we can use in our own writing. This week we will focus on previewing our books to get our minds ready, using the details on each page to learn even more, talking with our partners to grow our thinking, and rereading to make sure we understand our books.

Writers' Workshop: We started our All About Information books last week, and students are experts on so many topics! This week we will focus on assessing our writing and setting goals, teaching with pictures and words, focusing on using our spelling strategies to spell tricky words, and using readers to help us add more and take out details. 

Word Study:  The words this week are: day, get, of, like, good. We will be assessing these words on Friday. These are words we want students to be able to read and write automatically without having to think to sound them out. We have been working hard on our handwriting and readability.  Also making sure that we are using a capital letter only at the beginning of our name!

Math Workshop: . This week we will continue to focus on solving problems with unknown addition partners and writing our own story problems with missing partners. We will also be relating subtraction problems to unknown partners and solving subtraction story problems.

Science/Social Studies:  The weather class we attended on Friday provided us with many hands on centers to learn more about air, temperature, fog and clouds. We also enjoyed learning and creating with classmates throughout the museum.

This week we will continue studying weather by learning more about the wind and then beginning some weather centers at the end of the week focused on temperature, seasons, and clouds. We will be using pebblego, books, thermometers and other materials to help us with our new learning!

Have a great week! 

Samantha 

November 2nd-6th News

It sure doesn’t feel like November….warm recesses are always a plus though! We are getting excited for our field trip on Friday to The Building for Kids.  We will be attending a Weather class while we are there that fits in nicely with the beginning our new science unit. 

New Directions is participating in the KHS National Honor Society Food Drive from Oct 26-Nov 6. Please consider donating if you haven't already.

Upcoming Events:

Tues. November 10th and Thurs. November 12th-Portfolio Conferences

Monday November 16th-Half Day-11: 30 Dismissal

Curriculum Updates:

Readers' Workshop: We will be finishing up our Word Detective unit by being word detectives in nonfiction books. We'll be using clues to help us figure out tricky words and what they mean. We'll continue using our strategies of, "Does it look right? Does it make sense? Does it sound right?" when trying to figure out tricky words. We'll also be sharing our new learning from our nonfiction books with our partners. 

Writers' Workshop: As we finish up our How-To writing, we'll be starting our Nonfiction Chapter Books unit. Writers will be bringing home the How-To books they have written over the past two weeks. In our new unit students will be writing information teaching books. In the beginning they will be writing a basic information book similar to a picture book. By the end of the unit they will be creating multiple information chapter books filled with elaboration, interesting text elements and pictures that supplement the teaching of the words. This week we will find a topic we know a lot about, plan our topic across our fingers, and keep readers in mind when writing.

Word Study: We introduced 5 new word wall words today. The words are: look, make, but, give, all. We will be assessing these words on Friday. These are words we want students to be able to read and write automatically without having to think to sound them out.

Math Workshop: We will be starting a new unit, Unknown Numbers in Addition and Subtraction. This week we will be focusing on solving problems with unknown addition partners. For example, We see 9 fish. Five are big. The others are small. How many fish are small?  We will be exploring multiple strategies for solving these problems.

Science/Social Studies:  Students were very excited to create posters sharing their research bats and spiders.  Hopefully they shared them with you at home. This week we will be starting our weather unit. We'll be spending the week building background, including a weather class at the Building for Kids on Friday.

Have a great week and as always if you have any questions please let me know!  

-Samantha