THANK YOU to our Halloween party planners, Michelle Hess and Amanda Sudimack for a great afternoon. Also thank you to the many others that helped run the party and join in the fun. I would also like to thank the parents that joined us on our walking field trip to the fire station. We are writing thank you notes to the fire fighters this week.
Please remember that there is no school on Friday of this week in honor of Veteran's Day. We will take our spelling test on Thursday of this week.
Book orders are due on Monday, November 9th. We are now doing the ordering online at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs. The user name is FenclFirstGrade and the password is Rm 103. You can order from Seesaw November, Lucky November, and Winter Gift Books.
FIELD TRIP: Please return the permission form and fee for our December 1st trip to Seussical if you have not already done so.
LANGUAGE ARTS
The students are enjoying our unit about "Animals". You may have heard about our reading of Mr. Popper's Penguins. The students are enjoying this very old and very silly tale. We have recreated the nest of Captain Cook in class. It is filled with an odd assortment of things including checker pieces, buttons, an old lemon, spools, etc. Some of the children have brought things in for this nest. We are still in need of a lollipop, golf ball, harmonica, pipe, ash tray, golf tee, and a radish. We have learned that the following items are not readily found in today's world: telephone slug, parchesi cup, darning egg and a buttonhook! We've been having fun building this nest, though.
Our phonics work has included rhyming, blending, and identifying final and medial sounds. We are using a sound spelling chain to spell a variety of words that just differ by one sound from word to word. The students are doing very well with this.
Our comprehension work is focusing on identifying the main idea and details. They use prior knowledge of the topic and text structures to find the important points of a selection. We continue work with antonyms and the use of prefixes like un- and dis- to change the meaning of a word to its opposite meaning.
We are also using Daily Oral Language (DOL) sentences to practice appropriate punctuation and capitalization skills. Students rewrite incorrect sentences and tell the punctuation rule that supports the change.
SOCIAL STUDIES
This week's lesson addresses natural resources. The first graders are learning what a natural resource is, and the variety of ways people use natural resources in everyday life. This unit also covers weather as it relates to seasons, which is a great connection to our science unit. Next week we will learn about different kinds of communities: cities, towns, and suburbs. We continue with our map skills, using a map key to compare a city to a town.
SCIENCE
This week we have begun recording the daily weather in three categories: cloud cover, precipitation, and wind. The use of a weather calendar will allow the students to summarize data, draw conclusions and make predictions.
Just as the students made their own wind flags, they will also make their own model thermometer.
MATH
This week we are working with odd and even patterns and number grid patterns. I will be sending home a number grid for the students to keep at home to discover skip counting patterns, and do addition and subtraction problems.
Math explorations this week cover sorting, pattern blocks, covering shapes, and number patterns.
Next week we will be doing a lot of work with the number line and reviewing the basic number line concepts:
•number lines can go in any direction
•the arrows at the beginning and end of number line show that numbers go on forever in either direction
•a number line can start with any number
•a number line can extend to the left of zero (negative nunbers)
The students will use the number lines to add and subtract to solve penny stories.
We will then move later in the week into telling time to the half hour. This is a skill to practice daily at home if your child has not yet mastered it. If he/she has mastered it, it's always fine to keep working forward identifying time at quarter intervals and five minute intervals. Even though mastery is not expected yet, telling time is a life skill that should always be practiced with analog clocks.
CELEBRATIONS
As we work on our second 100 Green Light Reading Books we are connecting this to a Scholastic Reading Incentive led by Eli and Peyton Manning. Their drive is to donate 1 million books to kids in need. This Classrooms Care Program challenges classrooms to read 100 books towards this cause. We will be adding our Green Light totals to Eli's team!
