I cannot currently edit my original classroom news page, so please refer to this page instead!
January 23rd- Time flies when you are having fun! We are almost to our 100th Day of school! We will celebrate the 100th day on January 31st. As a reminder, students are to bring a collection of 100 items that is able to fit inside a shoebox-sized box. They will not need a morning snack that day, as I will provide one ( but they will still need a hot or cold lunch!)
Christ Light- We are continuing our study of the Israelites and God's promises to them. The Lord shows us over and over again in Scripture how much He loves us! The first graders are amazed at God's unconditional love for the Israelites. Over the next month we will learn about important figures in the Bible such as Gideon, Samson, and Ruth.
Math- We are skipping chapter 7 in the book for now to focus on chapter 8- fact families. The 1st graders will learn more about the ways that addition and subtraction are related. We will return to chapter 7 at the completion of fact families, and will study money and counting change. This chapter proves to be a difficult one for 1st graders- you can strengthen their skills by counting money at home (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters) and practicing counting by 5s and 10s. Students with a strong background in skip counting prove to be successful in counting money.
Reading- Superkids reading continues! Thank you for continuing to read the stories at home with your child. At this point in the year, your child should be doing most of the reading to you. When he/she comes to a tricky word, remind your child to use their reading strategies (sounding out, looking at context clues, what makes sense, getting your mouth ready for the first sound), etc. Remind your child to try his/her best to read fluently (smoothly, like you are talking...not broken or robot-like!) I would suggest letting your child read it once to you, and then you reading it once, so they are able to hear what a fluent reader sounds like. THANK YOU for all your hard work at home!
Writing- We are working on finishing up personal stories in our writing. Each child chose an event in his/her life to write about. This unit we are focusing on learning how to edit our work- looking for capitalization, spelling mistakes, punctuation, etc. We are working on reading carefully to look for mistakes. I have to say, I am very impressed by their growth in writing, especially over these last few months.
As always, please call or e-mail with any questions or concerns you may have.
