November 28-December 2

Hello! It’s going to be December this week!  Wow!  It’s a busy and exciting time of year at school and at home.

I am sending home book orders today.  They will be due next Tuesday, December 6th.  Books make great Christmas gifts.  If you would like me to keep it a secret from your child when the books come in send me an email and we can make a plan for you to pick up the books. You can place your orders online at scholastic.com/readingclub using my class activation code: J4RGH or feel free to send in the paper version with a check made out to Scholastic.  

Upcoming Events:

December 6th- Kaukauna Christmas Parade

December 8th- Pajama Day and PJs and Publishing Family Night. Square 1 Art Orders will also be distributed this night.

December 13th- No School

December 23rd- No School- Start of Winter Break

Reading:

We are beginning the week with some practice applying the non-fiction strategies that we have learned so far in this unit.  Non-fiction books are filled with information in the words and the pictures and there are many strategies that we can use to help us learn as much information as possible.  We are also collecting the key words in books and working to understand them and use then to teach our partners more about our books. We will also be working on reading and rereading our books to try to find just the right way each page should sound and to make our voices sound like teaching voices!

Writing: We continue to work on our nonfiction all about books. First graders are experts on so many topics. We are trying to pick topics that we know alot about. For example, places we go or things we do. Brainstorming ideas for topics at home is a great idea. This week we will be using a table of contents to help us plan out our chapters in our books, planning out what we will write in each chapter, using tips we have been given out teaching books to write our chapter books, using comparisons to help our readers picture our books (shark’s teeth are as sharp as knives), and adding details by giving examples to help our readers learn more.

Word Work: Our new word wall words are and, big, here, little, up. We will be assessing these words on Friday.  Some fun ways to practice them are writing them in shaving cream on cookie sheets, writing them in the air, clapping them as you spell them, or tracing over words with different color crayons or markers. We will also be spending time each week work on phonics skills specific to each student’s developmental level.

Math: We have started our new unit, Place Value Concepts. A parent note came home yesterday with more information and examples. We will be working with numbers up to 100 and counting by 10s. We will be exploring teen numbers and learning strategies to find teen totals. We will learning more about tens and ones in 2 digit numbers up to 100, comparing two 2-digit numbers and using tens and ones to add.

Content: Our field trip to the Building for Kids was a great success. We learned alot about weather by participating in hands on activities, and had time to explore the museum. This week we will begin our weather centers. We will be learning more about clouds, temperature, wind speed and different types of weather. We will be visiting the site pebblego. This is a great site for young learners to explore science and social studies topics. Our username is electa and our password is electa if you’d like to visit this site at home!

As always if you have any questions, let me know!
-Samantha