Thursday, September 13, 2012

Hello! 

DAILY REMINDERS:

• We have our Week 3 spelling test tomorrow.  The 5 words are go, is the, make, play.  I am also going to give them a PRACTICE dictation sentence, in preparation for next week's graded dictation sentence.  This is not something they will be able to study ahead of time.  If they are practicing their spelling words (high frequency words) every week, they should do fine on the dictation portion of the test.  We always spend a lot of time discussing the 4 parts of a sentence, too.  All sentences must...

1. begin with a capital letter.
2. have an ending mark.
3. make sense.
4. have space between the words.

I will grade them on the spelling of the words in addition to the 4 parts mentioned above.

• Library tomorrow--If your child wants to check out new books, they need to bring their old books to school tomorrow.  If they are still enjoying last week's books, they can keep them for one more week.  Students are always allowed to renew books after 2 weeks, as well.

We had another productive day in first grade!

• We read a poem called "Playing at Recess", and we talked about base words with the ending -ing.  There were several words with this spelling pattern in the poem (running, jumping, kicking etc...).
• Since we have been reading One Red Rooster, which contains several color and number words, we sorted number and color words today for our word work activity.
• For our writing lesson, we started writing a book about what we want to be when we grow up.  We reviewed community helpers from social studies and listed the careers we would like to have when we grow up.  Next, your first grader completed a page for our class book telling what they want their job to be when they grow up.  We had some interesting choices (financial planner, architect, veterinarian....).
• We practiced our Daily 5 activity, "Read to Self".  Since it was almost time for lunch, we only ready for about 12 minutes today.
• We just finished chapter 2 in math, so we took a math test and then a pretest over the next chapter on addition.  In chapter 5 we'll focus on counting on 1 and 2 (3+1=4, 3+2=5), doubles facts (5+5=10), using a number line to add, and drawing a picture to solve problems.
• Our science lesson included a short video about the weather, and a lesson from our online science book.  Ask your child the 3 ways we can measure weather (thermometer for the temperature, a rain gauge for the rain, and an anemometer for the wind).

That's it for today!