First Grade News for December

Important December Dates to Remember

December 1st - PTG Kids Shop - 5:00-7:00 p.m.

December 4th - Family Coding Night - K4 Computer Lab

December 8th - Report cards sent home

December 15th - K-4 Holiday Concert - 1:00 p.m.

December 19th - Polar Express Day (if the 19th is a

    snow day, it will be on December 20th)

December 22nd - Classroom Christmas party

December 22-January 1st - Christmas vacation

January 2, 2018 - Back to School! - Happy New Year!

    The month of December is going to be a busy one! The children are going to be learning so much! In our Houghton Mifflin reading program we will be working on drawing conclusions, comparing and contrasting, and sequencing events. We are also going to be working on reading, writing and spelling words with r clusters, l clusters, and s clusters. We will continue to add more words to our Word Wall as the month of December goes on. Our short vowels will continue to be a focus, too.

    In math we will continue working on solving addition and subtraction problems. We will also continue to share and discuss our strategies for solving these problems. We have played many games to practice our addition and subtraction, and we will continue to work on these games. We will also work on several activities that will help us work on counting to higher numbers. The children will work on making their own counting strips, which they will make to show how high they can count. I can’t wait to see how high they can go! Before we finish the month of December we will begin Unit 4 - What Would You Rather Be? In this unit the children will be describing and sorting collections and collecting, recording and representing data. The children will even get to write a survey question and ask their classmates the question and collect all of the data!

    In our Lucy Calkins writing program the children will continue to write teaching books, choosing topics they are experts in to teach others. Soon they will begin writing chapter books, learning how to make a table of contents to introduce each of the topics in their chapter book. The children will learn how to write introductions and conclusions for their chapter books, finding ways to keep their readers engaged and interested. We should be finishing our published chapter books shortly after we return from our Christmas break.

    In December the first graders will be doing a  ‘Christmas Around the World’ unit in social studies. The children will learn about the Christmas traditions in 6 different countries - Russia, Mexico, Germany, England, Holland and Australia. They will also make a project that shows the Christmas tradition of each country. It will give the children the opportunity to learn how children around the world celebrate at this special time of the year.

     We want to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season. Enjoy this very special time of the year with your child. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

    PJ &  GAME DAY

On Tuesday November 21st our class will be having a pj day and game time.  We have earned over 1,500 DOJO POINTS! WOW!!!

Please send your child to school with appropriate PJ’s and warm clothing for recess.  Slippers are allowed, too.  

We will set aside some time to play games.  If you wish to allow your child to bring in a game please do so.  We will be responsible when playing the games.

  NOVEMBER NEWS FOR GRADE ONE

Important Dates: Friday November 10th no school

Wednesday November 22nd start of Thanksgiving break

It is hard to believe that we are already in the month of November.  We had a wonderful turnout at conferences, and feel so thankful to be teaching these awesome kiddos.

In Reading we will be taking our theme one/two end of unit assessment.  As we begin theme 3 we will continue with read to self and guided reading using “just right” books.

For comprehension skills we will be working with topic, main idea, details/summarizing, and making predictions. For grammar we will work with sentences and the naming part of the sentence and the action part of the sentence.  In a few weeks…...WE WILL ALSO BE STARTING WEEKLY SPELLING TESTS. Each first day of the week the students will bring home a spelling list and a spelling contract( this gives ideas to help them practice throughout the week).Our test are usually on Friday or the last day of each school week.

In Math we are finishing up Geometry and will be starting addition, subtraction and the number system.  Some goals for our first grade friends are to compose numbers up to 15 using two or more addends.  Students will develop and work with strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems.  They will generate equivalent expressions for a given number ( 10+2+=12 is the same as 5+5+2=12). We will be practicing counting forward and backwards from any given number up to 100.  

By now our first small moment books have been published and we are moving into becoming authors of nonfiction chapter books!  The writers will become a teacher and through their writing they will teach others about their chosen topics.  They will learn how to organize their topics into chapters and will dabble with creating a table of content for their chapter book.  

***A big push for all of the students is to correctly and neatly form letters, and to use capital letters to begin a sentence or thought, and to end that sentence with punctuation.

In Science we will be working with sound.  Students will experiment with different sounds and try to observe that sound is made from vibrations.  

November will be another busy, but fun month full of learning and growing together.