Feb. 13-17

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday we celebrated the 100th day of school and today we are celebrating Valentine’s day...what an exciting start to the week!   Thank you to everyone who donated treats for our party this afternoon.   

Next week (Feb. 20-23) I will be traveling to New York to attend an institute at Teachers College at Columbia University.  I will be learning more about small groups and conferring...I’m looking forward to learning new things and bringing them back to our school and our classroom.  While I am out Maureen Kappell will be our guest teacher.  I will be checking email but if it is something that needs to be addressed that day please contact the school office.

See below for some opportunities to volunteer your time to  help with upcoming New Directions’ activities:

http://signup.com/go/TNwaqh

Here is the sign up link for Knowledge-a-thon​

http://signup.com/go/ghdv4U

This is the link for people to donate cookie for the Music and Masterpieces family night

http://signup.com/go/bErwXq

This is the link for people to sign up to help serve the cookies at the M and M family night

Reminder:

We’ll be collecting items for “Birthday Boxes” at our Music, Masterpieces and Munchies family night on February 27th. We'll have boxes out in the lobby to collect donations. Some ideas for items are: cake mixes, frosting, candles, hats, balloons, decorations, napkins, plates, etc

Classroom Need:  We are in need of more pens for writing.  We use the Paper Mate: Flair Pens in black.  If you are out and about and could pick up a pack we would appreciate it!   Thank you!

Upcoming Events:

February 14: Valentine’s Day

February 17: Six Flags Reading Logs Due

February 23: Early Release

February 24: No School for Students

February 27: Family Night: Music, MasterPieces and Munchies

Reading: Students have been really digging in and getting to know their characters! This week we will be paying attention to the illustrations and setting to help us learn more about our characters. We will also be studying tricky words and figuring out what they mean by reading the words around them, making a picture in our mind, and thinking about what makes sense. We will also be working with our partners to talk about what we are learning about our characters and growing ideas about our characters.

Writing: We have begun our Writing Like a Scientist Unit. How exciting! Don’t be surprised if first grade scientists start setting up experiments at home. This week we will be working through the scientific method together by conducting a whole class experiment and writing up a lab report. Our lab reports will include materials, question, hypothesis, procedure, results and conclusions. After we practice doing a couple experiments together, students will be planning, conducting and writing up their own experiments in a couple of weeks.

Word Work: The new words this week are: got, if, did, let, our, house. Please have your child practice these words on a regular basis. As they become fluent with them, it’s helps them with their reading and writing.

Math:  We are finishing up our unit on Friday. By the end of our unit students should be able to count, read, and write numerals to 120, add and subtract 10s, use strategies to add and subtract within 20 and solve story problems and add three numbers to solve story problems. We have been doing lots of work with numbers through 20 and using a variety of strategies to solve problems. This week we will be adding and subtracting tens. We’ll use a hundred grid to help us notice patterns, and count up by 10s starting at a variety of different numbers. You can practice at home by saying a 2 digit number and having your child tell you what 10 more or 10 less is (What is 10 more than 48? What is 10 less?). Then we will focus on adding and subtracting multiples of 10. For example, 80 + 20, 50 - 30.

Content: We will be continuing to investigate liquids this week. We will be studying how they flow and mix by participating in hands on centers, using liquids such as glue, water, shampoo and oil.

February 6th-10th

Hello,

This week in our classroom we began a kindness tree.  Students are collecting all the acts of kindness that their classmates are doing and adding them to our class tree. Hopefully it will be full by Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day!  If you are able to donate something for our party please let me know!

Upcoming Events:

February 7: Early Release

February 9-10: Math Staff Developer here!

February 14: Valentine’s Day

February 17: Six Flags Reading Logs Due

February 23: Early Release

February 24: No School for Students

February 27: Family Night: Music, MasterPieces and Munchies

Reading: In reading we are beginning a new unit, Readers Get to Know Characters by Performing Their Books. In this unit we will focus on ways to get to know a character and pretend we are the characters and perform our books to become character experts. This week we will get to know our characters by using the title, cover and back of book to get ourselves thinking about the character, thinking about what we learn about the character on each page and putting the pages together to see what we can learn about our character, and pay attention to the ending and see what it can teach us about our character. We are getting to know our characters like friends!

Writing: In writing this week we are using checklists to make sure that each and every part of our opinion writing is as strong as it can be.  We will then prepare our book reviews for publication.  We are especially looking at conventions as we finish up this unit.  We will have our on demand at the end of the week.  Our next unit will be Writing Like a Scientist.  

Word Work: The new words this week are: made, ride, get, there, what. Please have your child practice these words on a regular basis. As they become fluent with them, it’s helps them with their reading and writing.

Math:  In math we will continue to practice adding three numbers.  Students are using a variety of strategies to solve these equations!  They are doing great! We will also, start some work with counting.  We will count large quantities of objects by tens and ones, practice counting and writing numbers to 120 and then practice finding 10 more or 10 less than a two-digit number.  

Content: Yesterday we investigated two new solids using the properties of solids that we studied last week.  This week we will begin to observe and describe liquids.  We will look at six different properties: opacity, color, feel, viscosity, buoyancy in water, and miscibility in water.

January 30th-February 3rd

Hello,

The month of January flew by.  Although we are probably all getting annoyed with the snow the kids are still very excited about it!  Today I heard some students talking about how they only need 4 more inches of snow to build a good snow fort!  

Upcoming Events:

February 3: Joint NDLC/Quinney Dance 6:00-7:30

February 6: PSC Meeting

February 7: Early Release

February 9-10: Math Staff Developer here!

February 14: Valentine’s Day

February 17: Six Flags Reading Logs Due

February 23: Early Release

February 24: No School for Students

February 27: Family Night: Music, MasterPieces and Munchies

Reading: This week in reading we are building strategies for understanding our books better. We’ll be keeping track of who’s talking to help us understand what’s happening in the story, really think about what’s happening in the story, grow our thinking with our partners and work on making our reading sound great by reading with expression and fluency.  

Writing: We’ve continued to work hard on writing reviews of our favorite things. We’ve been working on catchy introductions and conclusions (don’t forget to say good-bye). We’ve spent some time editing our latest work for capitals, punctuation and spelling. We are working hard to make sure our sentences start with capital letters and end with punctuation. We will be creating anthologies with our reviews by grouping them together with other reviews that have the same main topic. The next part of this unit is writing book reviews. We’ll be using all we know about review writing to write persuasive book reviews. We’ll learn how to give sneak peeks of our books but not spilling the beans!

Word Work: The new words this week are: now, has, mom, dad, brother, sister. Please have your child practice these words on a regular basis. As they become fluent with them, it’s helps them with their reading and writing.

Math:  This week in math we are practicing solving teen addition and subtraction problems with various unknowns.  We are also practicing writing our own teen story problems to solve.  Students are continuing to practice using the make a ten strategy to build fluency. At the end of the week we will introduce solving problems with three addends.  To make this easier they will be encouraged to look for partners that equal ten then add the last number.  An example would be  6+4+3=  They should notice the 6+4=10 then add the 3 with answer being 13.  

Content: We are continuing to learn about the properties of solids. So far we have investigated color, shape and whether our solids roll or stack. This week we will be investigating more properties of solids in centers, including if they are magnetic, if they sink or float, hardness and how far rolling solids roll.

Have a great week!
-Samantha

January 23-27

Hello,

January is flying by! New Directions week was a great success, even with our unexpected day off of school. It was great to see so many kids with school spirit. Progress reports are being finished up this week, and will go home with students on Monday. It’s amazing how much first graders have grown so far this year!

Upcoming Events:

February 3: Joint NDLC/Quinney Dance 6-7:30

February 6: PSC Meeting

February 7: Early Release

February 9-10: Math Staff Developer here!

February 14: Valentine’s Day

February 23: Early Release

February 24: No School for Students

February 27: Family Night: Music, MasterPieces and Munchies

Reading: We continue to work on being in charge of our own reading. Last week we added the strategies of reading words part by part and using words we know to solve words we don’t know (our word wall words come in handy for this)! This week we will be trying sounds many ways to figure out words (we are learning vowels can make LOTS of different sounds), using our sight words (which are also our word wall words) to read fluently, setting new goals using the new strategies we’ve been learning, and working hard to understand our books, which might include rereading at times. We are really focusing on having readers take charge of their own reading and trying more than one strategy to help them figure out tricky words!

Writing: Students did a great job decorating their writing folder! The have so many ideas of things they can review. We talked about how some things review writers can review are things (movies, books, games), and places (restaurants, stores, vacation places, cities). Help your child be on the look out for things he or she can review! We are learning how review writers can hook readers with questions and then tell their opinion. Review writers give reasons for their opinions and examples to really try to convince their reader. We are learning that review writers can compare their topic to something else to make their opinion stronger and then can add a small moment story about a time with their topic. We have some very convincing first grade writers!

Word Work: The new words this week are: with, come, how, not, out. Please have your child practice these words on a regular basis. As they become fluent with them, it’s helps them with their reading and writing.

Math:  We just completed a couple of mid year assessments to determine the skills first graders have mastered and areas we still need to focus on. We have just started our next math unit, Place Value Situations. In this unit we will be working on solving problems with teen numbers and finding patterns and relationships with numbers up to 120. This week we will be solving teen addition problems with unknown partners (14 children are playing games. 9 of them are girls. How many of them are boys?), solve teen subtraction problems (13 giraffes march in a parade. 7 of them go home. How many are left?) and solve and write addition and subtraction problems to find teen totals and unknown partners.

Content: We have just started our solids and liquids unit. What another exciting hands on science unit for students! In this unit students will learn about the properties of solids and liquids. This week we will be learning that solids can be described by their properties such as color, shape, ability to roll or stack, hardness, magnetic attraction and whether they float or sink. We’ll be performing tests to investigate these different properties. In a couple of weeks we will begin to investigate liquids. This fits nicely with our next writing unit, Writing Like Scientists, in which we conduct and write about our own experiments!

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

January 9-13

Hello!

It's nice to be getting back into the swing of things! We have been reviewing some classroom expectations this week...it gets tough when we have a lot of inside recesses.

Upcoming Events:

Monday, January 16th-Friday, January 20th-Celebrate New Directions Week!

Monday, January 16th-Family Night-Art Night 5:30

Wednesday, January 18th-No School-Staff Inservice

Thursday, January 19th-Family Night-Gym Night/Jump Rope for Heart

Friday, January 20th-Half Day

Reading: Readers are working hard to be in charge of their own reading. We are focusing on using the right tool for the job and doing a triple check by asking, “Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense?” We’ve been using our reading strategies chart to help us set goals for which strategies we can use to help us.  

Writing: We are continuing to judge our collections. Students are very motivated to write their opinions about the “best in class” in their collections. We used our opinion checklist to help us set goals to add more to our writing. We learned how writers can disagree with each other respectfully and give examples and reasons for their opinion. We will be learning how writers can use what other people say (quotes) to make their writing even more convincing. We will be spending a bit of time editing and publishing these pieces at the end of the week before we begin writing persuasive reviews. Writers will be reviewing games, toys, movies, restaurants and anything else they are able to review. Writing folders will be coming home tomorrow to be decorated with ideas of things that students can review such as restaurants, movies, toys, places, or books.  

Word Work: The new words this week are: for, of, said, want, love.  We have also added the word because.  We are using the word because in our opinion writing and it will be helpful if it becomes one of our snap words!  

Math:  We will be finishing up our Place Value unit this week, with our assessment on Friday. We are reinforcing the concepts of adding a one-digit number to a 2-digit number, comparing 2-digit numbers and representing 2 digit numbers with ten sticks and circles.

Content: Yesterday in content we read two different books.  We drew pictures of our family and wrote about what we like to do with our families after we read the book Families are Different.  We also read When I Was Young in the Mountains.  It was fun to look at how things have changed.  Many were surprised that they didn’t have pencil sharpeners and that they had to get water from a well!  Later this week we will look closer at Families Then and Now and we will also talk more about our relatives.  

Let me know if you have any questions!
Have a great week!
Samantha

Weekly Update Jan. 3-6

Hello,

Welcome back! I hope everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing break. With the new year brings many new units of study in first grade. See below for what is coming up this week.

As we move into January, New Directions begins to think about enrollment for next year. We have several informational sessions scheduled during the month of January for any families who would like to learn more about New Directions for their child. Word of mouth is the best way to spread the great things happening at New Directions, so if you know of any families who would be interested in sending their children to New Directions, here are the dates of our upcoming information sessions:

Thursday, January 12th-6:00-7:30 PM District-Wide Info Session held at Tanner Early Learning Center

Monday, January 16th-6:00 -7:00 PM Info Session at New Directions

Wednesday, January 18th-10:00 AM-1:00 PM Open House ant New Directions

Tuesday, January 24th-6:00-7:00 PM-Info Session at New Directions

Families can also call Mrs. Frischmann at 766-6116 to set up individual tours.

Upcoming Events:

Monday, January 16th-Friday, January 20th-Celebrate New Directions Week-look for more info to come about this great opportunity to celebrate our school!

Monday, January 16th-Family Night-Art Night

Wednesday, January 18th-No School-Staff Inservice

Thursday, January 19th-Family Night-Gym Night/Jump Rope for Heart

Friday, January 20th-Half Day

Reading: We’ll be starting our “Readers Have Big Jobs To Do” unit. As students begin to reach the end of first grade reading benchmark, the focus is on having them realize they’re ready to take on the important jobs readers need to do. They have strategies to be in charge of their own reading and get through the hard parts by themselves. In the first part of this unit we will focus on stopping when we run into difficulty and use the strategies we’ve been learning all year to help us out. Readers need to notice when there’s a problem and then fix it! Next we’ll spend some time expanding our word-solving strategies now that we are reading trickier books than we were in the beginning of the year. We’ll also spend some time monitoring for meaning, always making sure that what we read makes sense. Lastly, we’ll put it all together and problem solve on the run and read with fluency.

Writing: We are starting our Writing Reviews unit. In this unit students will be writing opinions. In the first part of the units first graders will be reviewing their collections. Collections could be marbles, shells, bouncy balls, Shopkins, markers, matchbox cars, etc. Next first graders will focus on writing reviews about anything and everything: toys, restaurants, video games, etc. The unit will end with students’ writing book reviews. They will summarize, evaluate, judge and defend their judgments. Students are very motivated to share their opinions :)

Word Work: No new words this week;

Math:  We are continuing our Place Value unit, which focuses on 2-digit numbers and tens and ones. This week we will be counting on from a 2-digit number to find a total using our fingers and drawings. We will also practice addition 1-digit and 2-digit numbers and comparing 2-digit numbers.

Content: We will be starting our Families Unit. We will be learning what a family is and how families today are the same as, and different from, families long ago.

December 19-22nd

Hello,

The countdown is on to winter break and excitement is in the air in first grade! We’re thankful that the temperatures have warmed up a bit so we can burn off some energy outside :)

Tomorrow is Grinch day in our classroom! Remember to wear green...or if you choose dress like a Who!

Upcoming Events:

December 22nd-Holiday Colors

December 23rd- No School- Start of Winter Break

January 3rd-Classes resume

Reading: We are spending this week wrapping up our nonfiction reading. We have chosen a topic we are researching and getting ready to teach to Ms. Zobel's class.  In January we will be digging into more decoding and comprehension strategies as we move up the levels as readers!

Writing: We are finishing up our All About books this week. When we come back after break we will be starting to write reviews as part of our persuasive writing. Look for more information in January about sending in a “collection” to help with this writing work.

Word Work: No new words this week. We will be reviewing the words currently on on our word wall and using them to help us spell other words.

Math:  We are continuing our Place Value unit, which focuses on 2-digit numbers and tens and ones. We’ve spent some time adding 1 or 10 to a two digit number and noticing the difference. We will also be adding tens and ones to decade numbers (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90).We will spend some time adding a 1-digit number to a 2-digit number and explore the counting on strategy to determine the total.

Content: We are continuing to research and study how Christmas is celebrated around the world.  So far we’ve studied Germany, Mexico, Italy, England, Sweden and Australia. We are adding our learning to our Christmas Around the World booklets, which we will be bringing home at the end of the week.  When we return from break we will be beginning our family unit.  

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