20th Day!

“I’m a 10 because I like school.” is a common thing you hear during our circle time each morning. Each day, the kids are invited to sit in a circle and tell their classmates how they are feeling for the day, with a “10” meaning a great day and a “1” meaning a bad day. This has been a great way for us to learn things about each other and to share things in a safe environment. I’m so excited that the kids are liking school! I really feel that we have fallen into our routine and have learned classroom rules and expectations. We have had a great first 20 days!

Reading

Small group reading is up and running in full swing. The kids go through four reading centers each morning. They spend time in a fluency group reading and re-reading poems and books. Repeated practice makes people better readers! They also spend time in a Word Journeys group sorting words with spelling patterns and writing these patterns. This is also the group where they take their spelling test using the words from the refrigerator note homework. They also spend time working with words in our word work center. They have been manipulating sounds in words to make words, rolling dice with letters to make real and nonsense words and also working on rhyming patterns. Their last center is in the guided reading group with instruction at their level. We have books at their instructional levels that we read together and work on certain phonics patterns as well as comprehension and decoding words strategies.

Whole group time still involves writing interviews each day. We choose a student and ask them 5 questions. We then write a paragraph together about each child. I type those interviews up and they put them in their binders to re-read during fluency center. We’ve also been working on segmenting sounds and using this strategy to write with invented spelling. The number of words on our word wall is growing too! We are learning new words every day!

Math

We’ve still been spending time this week counting collections of buttons and jewels. Most of the students have found out that grouping by 10’s and then counting their collection is a much faster strategy than counting things by ones. This has also carried over and helped them to solve some addition problems this week. We discussed many different ways of solving addition problems too! We are at many different stages of problem solving right now. Some students are solving problems by counting out individual cubes, some are counting on from the larger number, and some are grouping and counting by 10’s. It’s fun to see the different strategies they come up with and how they grow in their problem solving.

Science

We now have about 20 monarch chrysalis’ in our classroom. We are patiently awaiting their emergence from the chrysalis next week!

We made sequencing flip books about a butterfly’s life cycle using sequence words. Emma’s mom came in on Friday to help us with some butterfly crafts too! They really brighten up our classroom!

Other News

Reminder: Refrigerator notes come home on Mondays. This page has the spelling pattern that your child will be working on for the week. Please help your child practice a few times each week!

Take Home Books: Beginning in October, each child will be bringing home a book each night. These will be books that they are able to read independently. We will ask that parents listen to their child read the book and sign the slip they bring home. There will be more info coming on that!

The kids look forward to Friday mornings to hear the football players read. Each week, a football player comes down to our classroom to read. This past Friday, we had Tom Devereaux read to us.

Homecoming is coming up at the end of the month. Color Day is on Wednesday, September 28^th. First grade’s color is tie dye. We will be doing this as a class project on Friday, September 23^rd. Therefore we are asking that each child bring a white or light colored t-shirt to tie dye. This does not have to be a new shirt. We will wear the t-shirts on color day and also again in the parade on Friday, September 30^th!