September has come and gone!

We have settled into our first grade routines and have done a great job!  All the children have been  working hard and have adjusted well.  It is so nice to see them forming friendships and getting along with each other.


Fundations

In our Fundations lessons the kiddos are doing great!  We have reviewed all the letters and sounds and have started tapping out our cvc (consonant/vowel/consonant) words.  These are three letters words such as sit, sat and lid.  We are also begining to write our words after tapping them with our fingers.  We have learned our first "trick" words or words that can't be sounded out.  These are first grade words that go on our word wall so that all the students learn to read and spell them.

Daily 5

We have our centers up and running.  The kids have done a great job learning what each job looks like and now have put it together into our daily 5 literacy centers.  We have established routines of independent and small group work and the expectations have been set.  We are moving from one job to the next and are getting so much accomplished in this time! While the kids are working I have been able to meet with students individually to get to know them better.  We will start meeting in small groups soon to read leveled texts.  Daliy 5 on Fridays is fun because we get to do a craft and one of our jobs is katsup and mustard...ask your child what they do for this!

Writing Workshop

In writing we are continuing our small moment stories or story about something that happened to them.  We did a lesson on what a small moment is and compared it to a watermelon seed.  Where the watermelon is the whole big story but is made up of lots of small moment stories which are the seeds in the watermelon.  We even started using writing partners.  We talked about how we have a writing partner to share our stories with and to help us make our writing even better!

Math

In math we are working on adding numbers to 10 with story problems.  We did lessons and played games to learn adding and subtracting up to ten.  The children are learning to visualize the problem and use cubes to solve it.  We use the part/part/whole method to solve these problems.  With the new math program we are using the smartboard to help us learn new concepts.  There are videos and even the funny robot guy.

When you see the math pages come home from time to time not every problem on the  pages will completely finished.  Don't be alarmed by this!  With this new math program the expectation is not all students will be completing all of the problems .  There are certain problems that I look for and expect to be done that pertain to the lesson that was taught that day.  If you see problems come home incomplete feel free to sit down and do them with your child.

Homework

Homework will be in full swing the first week in November.   Poem notebooks started going home this week for the first time.  These will be part of the weekly homework.  The notebooks will come home on Wednesday nights and returned back on Thursday.  Each child is responsible for reading at least three poems to someone at home.  Of course more can be read but this is the minimum.  It is a great way to spend some time with your child.  The kids have read these poems in school so they will be familiar with them.  We will be adding our booktime books, sight word practice, and some math to the homework routine.