Weeks of December 7-18

Notes:

We are in desperate need of the Elmer's bottle glue for the new year. I would like to ask every student to please bring 2 bottles of glue to school to hopefully hold us through May. Thanks so much!

Dates to Remember:

Remember to turn in those stockings...due Monday, December 14.

December 18 - 10:00-11:00 - First grade holiday party

Our special code word for this week is Christmas. Have your child mention this word to me this week and they will receive 5 pennies in their group penny jar!

Our weekly block schedule will be as follows:

Monday PE

Tuesday PE

Wednesday Art

Thursday Music

Friday PE

Reading - We are meeting regularly with our reading groups. Please have the students read their books at home. Most groups need to be reading daily! We are also incorporating a lot of phonics, word blends, and word groups.

We will be working with the short u vowel sound.

Writing - Our focus this 9 weeks is "Writing for Readers: Teaching Skills and Strategies." Here is a checklist of skills we are teaching:

• Writer cycles through writing process, finishing and staring new stories independently.
• Writer writes 8 + narratives across the unit (not a complete page!)
• Writer often stretches out unfamiliar words and records at least initial sound
• Writer represents (correctly OR incorrectly) all the dominant sounds in a word.
• Writer rereads their own writing with 1:1 matching.
• Writer leaves spaces between most words.
• Writer uses lowercase and uppercase letters appropriately.
• Writer uses a growing repertoire of high-frequency words.
• Writer spells and reads unfamiliar words by relying on analogies to familiar words, not just letter by letter, but also by chunks.
• Writer writes with end punctuation.

Math - In first grade, emphasis is placed on introducing the concepts and allowing for practice, not mastery. Listed are the key questions and observable behaviors we are looking for at this point:

• Can students identify a group of objects without counting?
• Can they make a given set?
• Can they interpret patterns using color, position attributes? Can they extend the pattern?
• Can they identify one more/one less?
• Whe changing one quantity to another, can student tell whether to take some away or to get some more?
• Can the correctly record numerals to 30?
• Do students write numerals without a model?
• Can the student verbalize information from the graph?
• Can the student collect data from a variety of sources?

Science and Social Studies - We are studying Christmas customs around the world.

Thanks for all you do!