Monday, December 3, 2012

DAILY REMINDERS:

• Homework:  Spelling worksheet over Week 14 words (saw, out, no, he, that).  Our test will be this Friday.  Please let me know if your first grader did not bring home their spelling list tonight.
• Math Letter:  Your child brought home a math letter explaining the math skills we are working on this week (taking apart 7, 8, 9, and 10, vertical subtraction, subtract to compare, and problem solving by drawing a picture).
• Early Dismissal/Show and Tell is this Wednesday, December 5th at 1:40 (ELL bus dismisses at 1:20).
• Support-A-Family this week:  Personal care items.  Thank you so much to everyone who has donated for this great cause!   

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF YOUR FIRST GRADER:

• Shared Reading:  The story we are reading this week is My Friends.  After reading today, we recalled the events of the story.  Ask your student to tell you the different things the main character learned how to do from her friends.
• Word Work:  We discussed our new spelling words.  We identified the vowel sounds in the words he and she and discussed how the vowel comes at the end of the word and that pattern usually lends itself to a long vowel sound.  We talked about the ou sound in out, the aw sound in saw and how that is in the -at word family.
• Writing:  We worked on our Writing Plan web for our 5 page story.  The first box in the web is for the introduction/beginning of our story (who/what we will be writing about), boxes 2, 3, and 4 are for the middle of the story and the details about what we are writing about, and the last box is the ending of our story.  I emphasized that when we are planning and creating our web, we just jot down ideas.  We save our sentences for the story.
• Math:  Whew!  We took a lot of tests today.  We took an addition time test, chapter 3 test and chapter 4 pretest. 
• Social Studies:  Finally, we took our Unit 4 test covering the Pilgrims, American Indians, past, present, future, transportation, communication, and inventions.