4/29 to 5/3

Hello,

May! This time of the year always seems to go by very quickly because we are doing a lot of exciting things in first grade. We are planning our end of the year field trip and mapping out the end of the year- crazy!

Teacher Appreciation Day Sign Up:
https://signup.com/go/bYpfVap

Upcoming Events: 
5/15: Field Trip: Building For Kids
5/24-5/27: No School for Students
5/29: Field Trip: Walking trip around town  Permission slip will be coming

Reading: This week in reading we are beginning our non-fiction book clubs.  We will be working on writing post-its in our books to help us have conversations about our topics. We will continue our conversations by using “I agree/disagree because…” “I learned…”

Writing: In writing this week we are continuing our new unit Writing Projects. Students are exploring different genres.  They will be choosing a mentor text and creating the materials they need for their genre.  This might mean designing their own writing paper. 

Math: In math this week we will be practicing telling time to the hour and half hour. Then we will end the week with exploring shapes and their attributes. We will learn about squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles. We will also start talking about fractions. How we can split those shapes into equal shares.

Social Studies: This week we will begin our unit on communities. We will learn about Rural, Urban, and Suburban.  We will also design maps and see where our community fits into the world.  We will study community helpers. 

Here are some photos of our stores! Using money to buy things we need and want:

4/23 to 4/26

Hello,

I hope you had a great spring break! The students loved sharing this morning about all the fun things they did over break. I’m excited to be back and to finish out this year strong!

Teacher Appreciation Day Sign Up:
https://signup.com/go/bYpfVap


Upcoming Events: 
4/26: Field Trip Forms Due
5/15: Field Trip

Reading:  We are continuing to explore reading non-fiction cover to cover. We will start off the week learning how to make strong stop and jots and how to give a great retell in nonfiction. We will end the week learning about ways to talk about what we are learning and strengthen up our partnership time.

Writing: This week we will be concluding our Realistic Fiction unit with an On-Demand. We will be starting our next writing unit at the end of the week. The next unit is called: Writing Projects. Students will get to choose the genre of writing that they are interested in and do some writing within that genre. This week we will explore different kinds of writing and different styles that they might be interested in trying out.

Math:  In math we are starting our last unit: Telling Time, Measuring, and Shapes. We will start off by working with clocks. Our goal of this first part is telling time to the hour, to the half hour, understanding how time is organized, and the difference between analog and digital clocks. We will also talk about the difference between a second, a minute, and a hour.

Social Studies: This week we will be opening up our own store! Students will be creating a product to sell to the class. Each student will be given 10 dollars to spend in the store trying to be conscious of things they need vs things they want.

Have a great week!

4/8 to 4/12

Hello,

Thank you for helping study for KAT last week!  It was a fun week and all the students did great.
Our class did a great job and we celebrated with some treats that I brought in for them.
They deserved it after all of their hard work.

We are making our book boxes soon, if you did not have a chance to bring in a cereal box, please do so this week. We will start creating our book boxes tomorrow.

Upcoming Events:

4/15: Family Night 5:30-7:00

4/17: Early Release

4/17: Book Orders Due

4/18-4/19: No School

4/22: No School

Reading:  This week in reading we are beginning a new unit, Reading Non-Fiction: Cover to Cover.  We will begin by sorting our library and getting familiar with the non fiction books that we have.  We will review charts that we have used in past units to help us as we dig into the non fiction books.  Later in the week we will look at text features such as table of contents, headings, pictures, labels and diagrams.  We will make a plan for how to read each section of the text.  

Writing: In writing we are continuing to add to our series books.  We will continue to use a mentor text to help us describe the setting, make action exciting, and give details in both the picture and words. We will work on adding patterns to our book to stretch out parts of our stories.  One way to do that is to work in three details, or three examples, when describing something.  

Math:  In math this week we will continue to work on two digit addition.  Last week we introduced several strategies for students to use.  This week we will continue to practice the strategies and start using the most efficient strategies.  Ask your child to show you which strategy they like best!

Science: We are finishing up our organisms unit and moving on to our social studies unit of needs and wants. 

4/1 to 4/5

Hello,

Happy April and happy KAT week. Thanks for practicing the KAT questions at home, the kids have been really excited about the chance to win a pizza party! The pledges and knowledge-a-thon will be on Friday. Also, maybe see you at the dance on Friday!

For writing next week we will need cereal boxes to create a book box to house all of our series writing. If you could please bring in a cereal box by Friday that would be great!

Today is the last day to order yearbooks!

• To order your yearbook (the deadline is April 1, 2019): 
• Please visit www.networkphoto.net
• Click on the Fall Prepay tab
• Type "New Directions" into the space there
• Click on "New Directions" and follow instructions
• If you have any questions, please contact Network photography or the New Directions Learning Community office

Upcoming Events: 
4/1: Yearbook orders due
4/2: Dress like a star (movie star or star in the sky)
4/3: Dress Unique
4/4: Dress like a KAT question or a cat
4/5:Wear Purple
4/5: Knowledge-a-thon and pledges due, Knowledge-a-thon Dance at night
4/17: Early Release
4/18-4/19: No School
4/22: No School

Reading:  In reading this week we are talking about how books are kind of like fortune cookies. How inside of books there are hidden lessons that the author is trying to teach us. For example some books are trying to teach us to be kind or to persevere. We are going to be looking for lessons and leave them in our books. We will celebrate the end of this unit on Friday with some real fortune cookies and sharing our lessons in our books with another class!

Writing:  This week in writing we will start off the week by looking at an editing checklist and getting ready to share our pieces. We are also going to continue to look at our favorite realistic fictions authors to see what they do to make realistic fiction so realistic. We will also work on turning our books into chapter books: writing a beginning, a middle, and an end. We will end this week with elaborating by using patterns.

Math: In math this week we are starting Unit 8. This unit will go back to adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers. We will learn that there are many ways to solve these problems and make a list of strategies that we could use.

Science: This week in science we will be finishing our organism centers. We will then be picking an organism that we want to research further and create a display that will teach all the we find out. Mrs. Wolf will also be helping them research their organism and create a digital slideshow of all the research they completed.