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.

3/25 to 3/29

Hello,

Thank you for meeting last week for conferences.  It was great celebrating growth and setting goals for the rest of the school year.

This year, New Directions Learning Community has a new way for you to order your yearbooks with Network Photography - ordering online instead of using the traditional yellow envelope.

• 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
4/5: 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 will continue to get to know the characters in our books. We will also start reading fiction books and asking at the end, “What was the author trying to teach us?” We will explore how authors use their characters to teach lessons about friendship, perseverance, bravery, kindness, etc. Any books that the students bring home this week, it would be great for you to ask your child about the underlying message of the story and how did they know.

Writing:  This week in writing we are creating our own narrative checklist to help with reviewing our writing and setting goals.  We will launch into writing a series of stories and including thinking of more than one story for our favorite character and modeling ourselves after famous series writers.  We will focus on writing a book one for our series where we will include a lot of details about our characters.

Math: In math this week we are going to continue working with comparison bars. We will work on listening to story problems that are comparing and see what information we know and what we are missing. We will end this week with our Unit 6 test.

Science: This week in science we will be starting our Organism centers. One center will be looking through books, Mrs. Wolf in the library was very generous with gathering books for us! The other centers include iPad research, modifying umbrellas, experimenting with bird beaks, and matching animals to human inventions, known as biomimicry.

3/18 to 3/22

Hello,

I look forward to seeing all of you at conferences this week. We will also have the Book Fair going on if you are interested. Let me know if you have any scheduling conflicts or questions before conferences. Thanks!

Upcoming Events: 
3/19: Conferences
3/21: Conferences
3/22: No School for Students
4/5: Knowledge-a-thon and pledges due, Knowledge-a-thon Dance at night

Reading:  This week we will learn more about the main character in our books.  We will also learn to pay attention to the relationships that characters have in the story.  We will reread and to get to know the characters better so that we aren’t just following the characters but we practically become the character in our reading.  Our voices can show the character feeling and bring the character to life.

Writing:  This week in writing we are continuing to write realistic fiction books. We have created our characters and have been working on storytelling. This week we will work on getting our characters out of problems and learn spelling strategies to become serious spellers! At the end of the week we will take some time to set goals for our writing, using a checklist.

Math:   In math we will learn more about collecting data and comparing our data points. Students have been really working on questions like: How many more? Or how many fewer ___? We will also introduce a tool called a comparison bar to compare data and find out what is missing. We will start working on story problems that sound like this: Emma runs 13 miles. Brian runs 4 fewer miles than Emma. How many miles does Brian run?

Science: This week, students will be introduced to the idea that the natural world can provide insights for designing products to meet human needs. Students will examine the structures of trees that keep them from blowing down in the wind, using their observations to design umbrellas that can stay up in a strong wind.

You can share another amazing story with your child of how living things can guide the design of man-made materials: the invention of Velcro! This video describes the structure of “hook and loop fasteners” and how the idea for Velcro came from looking closely at seeds, similar to how students’ ideas for improved umbrellas came from looking at trees. http://safeYouTube.net/w/JUBb

Here are a few photos of us creating traps for the Leprechaun:

3/11 to 3/15

Hello,

Conference Meal 
http://signup.com/go/pfBkphc

Book Fair 
http://signup.com/go/kQrXeuw

K.A.T. sign up
http://signup.com/go/nBAoaqP

Here are a few photos from our celebration of the end of poetry.

Upcoming Events:

3/19: Conferences (sign up will be open tomorrow)

3/21: Conferences

3/22: No School for Students

Here is the link to our video of what we are learning this week:

https://youtu.be/8XVji2mWEhg