Hello, Room 4 Families. It was great to meet many of you on Curriculum Night!  I hope you found it informative and useful.  

Reminders:

•Please sign-up for our 20-Minute Fall Conference.

•Please consider being a Mystery Reader in Room 4. 

The sign-ups for both of these are found on the right-hand side of this page.

Below are some things we have been working on during the past two weeks:

Phonics

We have reviewed the following letters with their keywords and sounds:

t, b, f, n, m, i, u, k, o, a, g, d, s, e, r, p, j, l, h, v, w, y, x

Can you tell me the keyword and sound for _____? 

As we review each letter, we review the correct way to form them and then practice writing them.  We “sky write,” write them on our whiteboards, and then practice writing them in our handwriting books.  We go through all of the lowercase letters first (these are what children see the most of in print) and then move on to the capital letters.

What does it mean to “sky write?”  Can you show me how you would sky write the letter t?

Reading

For the past week and a half, I have been reading with children to help them find some “Just Right Books.”  This has been a quick, informal reading so that everyone has a bag of books to read during our Independent Reading time.  Sarah Sontag and I will work together to do formal reading assessments with each child, individually, to determine their reading levels.  We look at accuracy, fluency, and comprehension skills.  

We have been working on establishing our expectations and routines for our Readers’ Workshop time.  This will be the time when I meet with children in small groups to work on reading and comprehension skills.  While I am meeting with small groups, the other children will be practicing through Independent Reading, Lexia, trick word practice, and other phonics activities.  

This week we learned 3 ways to read a book.  Here is the visual I shared with your children:

Math

First graders have been practicing careful counting skills.  We shared strategies that help us count accurately and efficiently.  

Many children use subitizing.  What is subitizing?  It is the ability to recognize the total number of objects without counting.  We do this with the pips on dice.  The ability to subitize is a foundational math skill.  One tool we use to help us subitize is a ten frame.  Here is a picture of one:

Children learn that there are 5 spaces on the top row and 5 spaces on the bottom row.  When they see a ten frame that is filled in like the one below, they should be able to subitize the 5 on the top row and add 1 more to make 6. Some children will subitize the 6 as a whole. 

At the end of this week, we began work on comparing numbers using the symbols < and >.  These are mathematical symbols children need to recognize, just like they recognize +, -, and =.  Some children liken comparing symbols to mouths and say the mouth eats the bigger number.  That does not help the children recognize what each symbol means.  Here is how I taught them how to remember what these symbols mean:

                                                                                                                               

The numbers to the left of a number line are less than the other numbers.  The numbers on the right of the number line are greater than the other numbers.  This (hopefully) helps the children remember which symbol means less than and which means greater than.  

We learned two games that we played during our math stations, Monster squeeze and Comparing Number Shapes.

Ask your child to count a collection of objects.  (between 12 and 40) Ask them to show you some of the counting strategies we learned.  

•move and count

•arranging in 10 frames (we use ten frame mats in class)

•counting by 2’s

•subitizing smaller quantities and adding together (I see 4 and 4 which makes 8 and 3 more makes 11.)

I told the class that a good mathematician counts twice to check for accuracy.  Good mathematicians also make mistakes and learn from them.  :)  

Science

We started our Air and Weather unit.  We have explored what air can do with various objects.  This past week we started making parachutes.  We will finish those next week and explore how air interacts with parachutes.  (air resistance)

Your children are learning how to make scientific drawings.  We call these ABCDE drawings.  Accurate, Big, Colorful, Detailed, Explained (adding labels).

What was your favorite part of exploring what air can do?  Did anything surprise you?

Writing

During our writing times, we are writing about things that have already happened in our lives.  These can be everyday things.  I used the example of taking our dog out in the morning and getting covered in wet, cold, grass clippings.  Not fun!  

We learned to make a quick picture and then write.  During our next writing block, we went back and added more details to our story.

What are you writing about in your journal?  Tell me the story.

Social Studies

We are reading books about belonging.  They have led to some wonderful discussions!  Here are a couple of the books we have read and discussed:

 

Tell me about Molly Lou Melon.

SEL (Social Emotional Learning)

Room 4 has been working on building our classroom community and getting to know each other.  We do a lot of this during our Morning Meetings.  During Open Circle we have decided on non-verbal signals we will use in class.  This week, we learned ways to help us calm down when we are frustrated, angry, excited, or scared. 

Why did you learn about calming down in school?  When could you use these strategies at school?  Could you use them anywhere else?  Which one worked best for you?

Have a great weekend!  To those who celebrate Rosh Hashanah, happy new year!