The Week of Dec. 6

 Upcoming Events

Secret Santa Gift Making Workshop

Dec. 21 from 8:30-9:30

Classroom Holiday Party /Early Release Day

Dec. 23 - Students will be dismissed at 11:30

More information to come this week!  

Winter Break 

Dec. 24- Jan. 2

All School Community Meetings - Each and every Friday from 7:50-8:15

Spelling and Fundations 

Last week, we focused on a review of letter id and sound, and worked with glued sounds (am, an, all). We also began a short study of long vowel sounds and silent e words. The students enjoyed playing partner games to help practice these skills. 

Readers' and Writers' Workshop

We began new units of study in both reading and writing last week. We began exploring nonfiction texts and how to read and write them. Here are some of the big ideas we will be working on in reading.

In writing, we began studying some cool new nonfiction mentor authors and books. We read several Gail Gibbons books together and created a Notice, Name and Why chart. When we return from winter break we will begin researching and writing our own nonfiction books! 

 Animal Adventures/Animal Biodiversity

We began our first science unit of study! The first and second graders had to figure out a mystery animal by uncovering its attributes. Later, we sorted animals into groups based on common attributes such as: feathers, bones, lays eggs etc. Later we had to sort some very challenging animals into groups using their attributes too! We created a "driving question" board, where students jotted down questions they would like to answer in future lessons. On Friday, we had a new mystery to figure out. Why would a wild animal visit a playground...We learned to observe and keep track of our thinking too. 

First Grade Math  

In math, we wrapped up our unit of study on addition strategies. We began a new study of 3D shapes and have been enjoying learning some important math vocabulary words. Students learned about spheres, cubes, rectangular prisms and cylinders. We learned to identify the edge, face and vertices of a 3D shape. In Unit 3, we will continue with addition and subtraction strategies and work on becoming more fluent with our facts to ten. We will work on place value, adding ten and subtracting ten from double digit numbers. 

 Read Aloud - New Genre

Realistic Fiction 

The first and second graders read Owl Moon together on Friday, and talked about a new genre of fiction book...Realistic Fiction! Together we compared this story to other fiction books we have read together. Later, we drew and painted our own winter scene!