January 14-18

Reading

We are starting a new mini-unit tomorrow. We wrapped up our animal homes unit and we will now be focusing on homes around the world. This week I will intro it with our book of the week Homes Around the World. During this unit we will be learning about homes, shelter, cultures and material used to build. We are continuing to work on comprehension skills like making connections, visualizing and predicting. I will also be teaching students ways to read difficult/new words. 

Phonics

Review of long and short e sounds and intro to long and short u.

Writing

We are writing about animals we know and continuing to work on writing sentences correctly (capital, spaces, ending punctuation, one idea).

Math

Numbers to 20. Ten-frames. Comparing and ordering numbers. Number riddles.

Social Studies

Homes and people around the world. Geography. Martin Luther King.

Other stuff:

I am still collecting boxes for building homes at the end of this unit. 

The first three chaperons that email me can come on the field trip to Kohls Children's Museum on Friday, February 8th for free and all others are welcome at $6.50.

Mr. E

Ten frames

I am sending home laminated ten frames today. These are tools that we use to help count and see the importance of ten. We will be using these over the next month or so with adding and subtracting too. Keep it at home and use it with your child to help them understand the concept of ten. They should not count them individually because they know when it is full there are always ten. If one is empty they know it is one less than nine. If they are all full and there is one more outside then they know it is 11. This is how it is used. Get them used to using it.

Thanks,
Mr. E

January 7-11

We are getting back into the swing of things this week.

Reading
Our book for this week is called Building Beavers. We will be learning about beavers and where they live. We are continuing to focus on the question: What is shelter and why is it important? This is our last week learning about animal homes as we move to human homes next week.

Writing
Tomorrow we are making a book about our classroom resolutions for 2013. These are basically rules/procedures that we/I was getting a little lax on enforcing in December. So now we are all reminding ourselves of things we need to do better in school. Please read over this book with your child. We will also be writing about our friends on Wednesday. You can be in conversation about your child's friends over the week to get them thinking and writing more with more detail!

Math
We are learning numbers to 20. This is an important week because the teens are the toughest numbers for students to memorize and write. We will be starting to use ten frames to help learn the concept of composing and decomposing numbers (the number 12 is made by 10 and 2). I will hopefully be sending home ten frames for your child to practice with at home.

Social Studies
Being friends

Science
Beavers building

Phonics
long e and short e sounds (long e= tree, short e= bed)

We will be having a spelling test on Friday. I will send the list home tomorrow I hope. Spelling tests are nothing to stress out about. Just getting your child used to word families and spelling tests that they will take in first grade. Have fun with them and please don't put pressure on your child when practicing/taking them.

Mr. E

Pre-winter break week

Reading:
VISUALIZING! Visualizing is a comprehension skill that teaches readers to make pictures/movies in their head as they read a story. They use the pictures to do that but should also be making their own pictures in their head. I am introducing this skill using Polar Express. We will listen to it with no pictures, draw our visualizations and watch the movie at the end of the week. You can practice this skill at home by reading to them and just having them close their eyes and listen to the story. They can even draw while listening to stories.

Writing:
Writing winter holiday stories using story webs.

Math:
Size and position

Social Studies:
Different cultures/our own cultures. Winter holidays.

Wish List:
I am looking for small/cheap, new/used toys that I could put in my classroom store.

Mr. E

December 10th week

Today we started a wonderful week of learning and fun.

Reading:
We are reading three different books this week. They are focusing on hibernation. We are learning all about hibernation as winter approaches. The students will bring home a cool interactive worksheet on Thursday that I am excited for. We are working on the comprehension skill of making connections. Ask your child what making a connection is when they are reading. They should be connecting things they read to experiences they have in real life.

Writing: 
We are focusing on what makes a sentence a sentence. This has been a struggle for the students to grasp so I think after this week they should have a better grasp. Just so you are aware, I am using these terms when describing a sentence: a sentence is one complete thought, it has both sight words and usually sound out words, it has a capital at the beginning, spaces between words, and ending mark. After winter break we will be working on making paragraphs so please help your student master writing sentences first. Our writing topic this week is what foods we like. We are also still working with story webs.

Math:
One less/one fewer. I am introducing the basic principals of take away. We are doing a fun snowman/name activity in math. And make sure to ask you child about using the activoters today during math. They loved it.

Science:
Hibernation.

Social studies:
Working with a partner.

Keep working on sight words at home. Play some fun games with your child to help them memorize the words.

Thanks,
Mr. E

reminder

As the holiday season is upon us. I ask you to please save any boxes during the season and send them in to school. In February we will be constructing homes out of different material and will need boxes to use as the houses. Thank you.

This week

Parents/guardians,

I apologize for not getting this out by Sunday night the past couple of weeks. I will try my best to post on Sunday nights so you all know what to expect for the week. Thanks again for the classroom donations. We should have enough disinfecting wipes to get through the cold season now! Besides having the time of our lives being in wonderful community with each other, this is what is going on in room 110 this week.

Reading:
We are reading Life in an Ocean. This book is piggy backing off Animal Homes from last week. We did a great partner sorting activity today where the students sorted the animals by where they live. The kids are getting really into this unit already and are expanding their vocabularies with words like: predator, prey, shallow, hibernate and nocturnal. This is the second week I have been meeting with small reading groups. This has been great for the kids to get more attention with students at their same level. In most groups, we are learning the steps to solving words we don't know in the text. Here is the progression so you can teach it at home: sound it out, use the picture, skip it and read the sentence without the word in it.

*Last week we started the Daily 5 which has been going great. We do it from 10-11:15ish each day. It is similar to centers but the five stations never change names (only the writing task and word work task change weekly). Here is what the Daily 5 includes: read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, word work, work on writing and meet with Mr. E. We have also been given an aid that comes in the room daily from 10-11. (which is why I changed the times and no longer need parent volunteers) The students do three rounds a day so they don't do everything daily but they get to all the spots over the span of one week.

Writing:
We are learning how to write sentence (capital, spaces, ending mark). This week we are writing about things we see in the classroom. I have also started introducing story webs so students can organize their ideas before writing.

Math:
We are composing and decomposing numbers, which are essential skills (number knowledge) for adding and subtracting later in the year.

Science:
Animals. We have a class frog named Fin (Finny). They love him. All students will get the opportunity to take Fin home for a weekend or night and take care of him. Their is a journal that travels with him too.

I sent home stuff last week. The writing journals (prompt journal and "free" journal) stay home. If your child brought home a green or yellow word book please send it back to school so they can use it during writing the rest of the year.

Mr. E