August newsletter

School Day 12:      Tuesday,  August 31, 2016

Routines:
We have had a terrific beginning of the year. We have been spending time establishing our norms and first grade routines. The children are learning how important it is to transition quietly and  to speak in a low tone of voice to help create a calm learning environment with our open classrooms. We are trying to fill each others buckets with kindness. All of the children are doing a great job.
Literacy:
We are starting to practice our routines for Reading Workshop in the
morning. Our morning consists of:
A. Opening:  Attendance, lunch count, kids "shopping" for new books to read
B. Morning Meeting/Calendar
C. Reading Workshop
1. Reading mini-lesson
2. *Independent reading-  teacher is conferring with students or pulling a reading group
3. Partner reading- teacher is conferring
4. Share out our good work and story
5. Handwriting
6. Work-work (spelling patterns)

*We have been building our stamina for independent reading.  Just like running a marathon, the children have been practicing so they can build up their stamina. Our goal for the Fall is to read for 20 minutes quietly each day in first grade while the teacher confers with students. By spring the goal is 45 minutes of independent reading.*

Word Work/Spelling- Children learn the spelling patterns in first grade to better help them understand how words work and apply this knowledge to their writing. We are beginning our work with short vowels. This week we learning about short A in the pattern -at. Next week we will learn about short A in the pattern  -an and -ad.  The following  week we will learn about short a in the pattern  -ag and -ap.
Please have your child practice reading and spelling correctly sight words:
the, was, went, with, when

Handwriting- Legible handwriting is our goal in first grade. We will practice handwriting everyday the first quarter. Please, encourage your child to use correct letter formations and good handwriting on homework, too!

Math: Math in Focus is the curriculum in all elementary schools in Clayton.
We started Chapter 2: Number Bonds up to 10  this week.  Number bonds is a way for students to visualize numbers and decompose (break apart) and compose (make) numbers.

Being able to visualize numbers is the key, and giving the students a graphic like the number bound is one way to help them do this.









Another way for students to think about numbers is to play “Bears in a Cave” If I have 5 bears (cubes or beans) and 2 are outside the cup (cave) how many went in to the cup/cave? (3)

Did you know that all children have access to Think Central the Math in Focus website?
https://www-k6.thinkcentral.com/ePC/start.do
This website has lots of resources for you or your child to help with math.
 Just login using your child’s name:
firstnamelastname and the password: cgmcgm11.



Social Studies: We finished our first unit “How Do We Get Along.” We learned how important it is to follow rules, be a bucket filler (kind) and solve problems peacefully.

We talk about "filling some one's bucket" which means being kind to someone. If we forget, then we talk about how the other person feels- usually bad or sad. Plus, we talk about how we feel when we are not nice- usually bad or sad. Developing empathy in our students allows them to understand how the other person is feeling.

Books about Bucket Filling

Look for Scholastic Book Orders to come home.  
Scholastic Book orders are DUE:  next Friday, Sept. 9th.

If you order, there are 2 ways to pay:
A) Return order sheet and a check made out to Scholastic.
B) Online order with your credit card.
1. go to www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
2. use my class activation code: fmr3g
3. shop and pay.

Number Bonds

Number bonds is a way for students  to visualize numbers and compose/decompose numbers. 

Being able to visualize numbers is the key, and giving the students a graphic like the number bound is one way to help them do this.

Another way for students to think about numbers is to play “Bears in a Cave” 
"If I have 9 bears (cubes or beans)  and 6 are outside the cup (cave) how many went in to the cup/cave? "(3)

Did you know that all children have access to Think Central?

https://www-k6.thinkcentral.com/ePC/start.do

This website from Math in Focus has lots of resources for you or your child to help with math. 
Just login using your child’s name:

firstnamelastname and the password: cgmcgm11

Get Along Recess

Since school started we have had a Get Along Recess at the end of the day. Some of the lessons we have practiced on the playground are: ask others to play, share equipment, safety on the playground, turn taking, I statements, and being kind. Research shows that children make friends by playing and having friends helps children feel more comfortable in school. We will continue to play together next week in the afternoon.

Library Time

 Mr. Bober, our school librarian, had spent a year in Washington D.C. working for the Library of Congress and we are so glad to have him back. He read a story to our class and gave a lesson on how to use a shelf mark and where to get "just right" books for first grade students.

Easy Readers section near the computer station.

Mrs. Anderson is our new library assistant. 

"Always use a blue shelf marker." said Mr. Bober.

Story Time.

Norms For Our Class

We had an assembly to learn about or school norms. The students learned that some rules are the same for everyone at our school. Then we went back to the classroom and talked about  our class norms. The students suggested rules that they needed in order to learn. They came up with:

BE KIND

Raise Hands

Share

Wait our Turn

Walk in Halls

Silent in Stairs

Say Please, Thank You, Excuse me

 Next, we made a school rules sheet to help parents know our norms at Captain.

Partner Work

Students work with partners throughout the year. These partnerships are the person who sits next to your child and are the same for reading, writing and math. This week we started partnerships for reading and math. The students read to each other in reading and played "top-it" in math. Top-it is a fun math game that can be played at home. One can use a deck a of cards. The Ace becomes a 1 and the jack is a 10. The King, Queen and Wild card are discarded.  All cards are mixed up and placed face down between two students. Each students take a card and looks at it. Whoever has the bigger or greater card wins the round and takes both cards. The game ends when all cards are chosen from the middle pile. We will play this game several ways this year:
1. the directions above
2. each player chooses a card and the winner is the one with the lesser/fewer card
3. each player takes two cards and adds- whoever has the greater sum wins
3. each player takes two cards and subtracts-who ever has the the lesser sum wins.

Please look at the pictures of our partner work.
Partner Work in First Grade

Wonderful Week

This has been a magical week getting to know each other. We have practiced saying each others names in Morning Meeting.  One of our chants has been,

Say your name and when you do.

We will say it back to you.

Hi_________!

We talked about the school and classroom rules. All the rules can be under the umbrella of BE KIND. The students already know: walk in halls, wait their turn, share, raise hands, not interrupt, and listen. 

They have demonstrated these skills even before the lesson on rules. Way to go parents!

Reading: We read several books together. The students love to hear a story. Many commented that they also love when their parents read to them! The students are already reading books at their tables every day. Today we "shopped"(choose) books that are at the just-right level for each reader. Each child has a book basket with 10 books. About two or three times a week, the students will be able to trade the books and get new ones so they are never bored with their books. Engagement is key is learning to read. We have lots of books in our classroom library at the just-right level to help your child be excited about reading and grow as a reader.

Math: This week students explored with math manipulatives. They demonstrated they could count one-to-one and make patterns. We played ten frame flash as a class and many were very successful with identifying numbers up to 10 just by looking at the ten frame.
LINK:     Ten Frame Flash







We practiced reading numbers one through ten and matching with the numbers. Next week, we will compare numbers using the words: greater then, fewer then, more, less and same. 

Social Studies: Each day we have had a get-along recess. We are working on including everyone in play and building a class community. Children build community by playing! After recess the students gather to reflect as a class on how well they played together and how much fun they had with each other. This week we taught/encouraged the children to be assertive and ask for a play partner and learn their partner's name. Next week, we will learn about how to talk through a disagreement using I statements.

PLEASE COME TO CURRICULUM NIGHT: THIS THURSDAY, AUGUST 25. 6:30 TO 8:30.

Magical First Day

Dear Parents,
Today was magical. I have never had such a wonderful group of students in 21 years of teaching.
We snag songs, read, and drew pictures. We wrote about ourselves and used math manipulatives. Today the students went to Spanish and PE. Also, we had a "get along" recess at the end of the day.
PLEASE SEND SNACK TOMORROW.  We have snack everyday because we have first lunch. The students are hungry by 1:30.

Please Look at a Slide Show of the first day. Click on the link below:

First Day