Monday, January 28, 2013

It's hard to believe this is the last week of January!  I hope you were able to enjoy the beautiful weather we had today.  I was lucky enough to have recess duty, so I was outside for a little while! (:
DAILY REMINDERS:

• The January Journal Calendar writing pieces (3) are due this Friday, February 1st.
• Don't forget to remind your student to turn in their WRR every week.
• Week 19 spelling test is this Friday, February 1st.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF YOUR FIRST GRADER:

• Shared Reading:  Today we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and learned the other Bossy R sounds (ar, or, er, ir, ur) and listed the Bossy R words we heard in the story.
• Word Work:  This week we are working on Week 19 words (was, who, after, ask, they).  Since we have mastered the strategy of looking for word families in words we want to spell and read, you will be seeing more "review" words on your first grader's spelling test each week.  When I say review words I mean the high frequency words they have been tested over since the beginning of the year.  If your child comes home with a different list than the words I mention in my posts or that are on Spelling City, it is because I am differentiating my lessons to better meet their needs.
• Writing:  I modeled the last page of our 5 page story we have been working on about our family.  the last page is the ending, and we discussed how an author finishes a story.  We are also learning how to design a cover for our book.  As each student finishes their book, they can share their story with the class.  In addition, we are getting a lot of practice with the writing process as we develop our stories (writing, proofreading, more proofreading/editing, illustrating, designing a book cover, and finally sharing as an author).
• Math:  Place Value is our focus this week in math.  We are learning how many tens and ones there are in 2 digit numbers and demonstrating that with the base 10 blocks on tens and ones workmats. 
• Science:  We did not have a science lesson today since Mrs. Lenzen taught a lesson on being a good friend.

Last Friday was the 100th Day of School!  We had a great time sharing our awesome 100th Day of School posters, sorting and graphing fruit loops, and making a fruit loop necklace with 100 fruit loops, designing 100 Day glasses, counting to 100, flipping a coin 100 times and making tally marks showing the number of times we flipped heads and tails, and doing as many jumping jacks as possible in 100 seconds!  Whew!!  We sure were busy!!!