December 15th-19th

Pajama day and gingerbread house decorating tomorrow!! Do not forget!

Thematic Centers:

This week we did not have a specific theme. We wrapped out gifts for our families, worked on a gingerbread house made of paper and just enjoyed the week before break! We got out some of our favorite old centers like legos, blocks, cars etc. We were able to practice our cutting skills as well!

Reader's Workshop:

This week we really worked on organizing our writing folders. We examined all our books and writing pieces. We took books home that were finished and made a pile of things that we need to finish. We also chose one book to edit with an adult. We worked on adding punctuation, making complete sentences and making sure we have capital letters and adding details where necessary. We also worked on another acrostic poem and talked about other styles of poetry (including couplets like last year at Valentine's time).

We did not do word sorts this week but we did get our leveled book! Work on that this week.

Word study words this week are:
school
street
mother
time
hand

*There are LOTS of tricky phonograms in the words this week. TH makes a different sound in mother and the CH makes a different sound in school. There were lots of questions about these phonograms this week.

Math Workshop:

We have really been working hard on subtraction. We are working on finding what strategies we are most comfortable using. We played 3 games this week. The first two games we already knew how to play. Instead of adding we subtracted. The second game was brand new. We played:

5 in a Row: Roll a number cube and a dice. Take the bigger number and subtract the smaller number. Place your counter on the the number. You need to get 5 in a row.

Roll and record:  Roll a number cube and a dice. Take the bigger number and subtract the smaller number. Record that number on your sheet. Once you fill a whole row, the game is over.

Sports Ball: Roll two cubes. You can either add or subtract those dots to determine what number you want to land on. The first person to cover 10 numbers wins the game! This works on adding, subtracting and it helps with strategizing/solving problems!

Enjoy your long break! See you in 2015!
Emily Schultz

December 8th-12th

Hello families!

We were so excited this week that we got to attend two plays at school. We got to see the Nutcracker and our book buddies play. How special!

Announcements:

1. Please get your scholastic book orders in soon! They are due TODAY. This is a great time to order books for holiday gifts! The more you order, the more we can get for our classroom (which is really neat). We are doing online orders only this year.

2. Gingerbread house making and pajama day is December 18th. Please join us at 1:15 to decorate gingerbread houses! We still need mini milk cartons to pull this off. So far, we do not have any!

Thematic Unit:

This week we studied Wilma Rudolph. What a phenomenal women to study! Did you know that she had polio disease when she was younger? She later became known as the fastest women in the world. She had many brothers and sisters and overcame many obstacles in her life before she became a star. Even with her fame, she remained  humble and true to herself. We rotated through 4 stations.

1. Complete an obstacle course and try to bear your time with each round.
2. Illustrate your Wilma Rudolph fact book.
3. Create your championship medal and create 3 personal goals.
4. Trace and paint the olympic rings and study what the colors mean.

Reader's Workshop:

This week we have been looking at our writing in addition to our individual reading goals and word sorts. We have been discussing what it means to edit our own writing. Adding punctuation, capital letters where appropriate (and in some cases a brief synopsis on the back of what your book is about) are just some of the things we have been discussing. We have also working on our new phonograms. The tricky part here is not necessarily learning the rules....the tricky part is recognizing these in our reading and in our own spelling!

This week we went over "oo," "oy" and the silent e. We call the e on the end of words "strongman e." He is so strong that he makes the vowel in words say their name. In the word 'home' this week, strongman e makes the o say its name. Pretty neat!

Words this week are:
home
boy
dog
book
man

Math Workshop:

We have moved on to working on subtraction! We have learned various strategies and we also learned a new game called "counters in a cup". This game needs two players. The two players decide how many counters they are working with. They put some secretly in a cup and then the other player counts how many are outside the cup. That player then has to decide how many are in the cup. Students are likely to use their fingers or do this mentally. They also record their combinations. We are looking for several things with this one game. How do students figure out how many counters are hiding? How do students record their work? Do students understand that the number showing and the number hidden always equal the total number? Right now we are just trying to understand that subtraction is the opposite of addition. The total at the end will shrink instead of grow like in addition.


Our activities this week in math have addressed the following standards:

-Solving a problem in which the total and one part are known
-Finding and exploring relationships among combinations of numbers up to 10 (or higher for children who need a challenge)
-Developing counting as a strategy for combining two numbers
-Learning the (-) sign

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week and great weekend!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

December 1st-5th

Hello and happy December!

Last week we had a blast. We learned about the first Thanksgiving. We discussed the roll of the Pilgrims and Indians and even made a few crafts to go along with it! We made stone soup (so yummy), apple turkeys, thanksgiving placemats, toilet paper roll turkeys and a card for someone we were thankful for.

This week we were just as busy!

Announcements:

1. Scholastic orders are due December 11th so we can get them in before the holiday break! Please let me know if any of the books are gifts and I will be sure to get them to you another way! This is a great time to order holiday books. I will ask for you to please not order the "First Grade Friends Forever: The Gingerbread Cookie Mystery" book as I am ordering that to give as a gift to everyone! :)

2. Pajama Day and Gingerbread House Decorating December 18th (decorating begins at 1:15). We need the mini milk cartons like last year! Send those in if you have them! Send those in if you have them! We need 20 total.

Thematic Centers:

This week we have been studying golf! We have learned how complicated the game of gold truly is! We learned about gold courses, clubs, tees, attire for golf and some of the rules. We rotated through 4 main centers:
1. Design your own gold course, name it and decorate it by rolling a gold ball in green paint and rolling it on your golf course to look like grass.
2. Make your own patterns in your golf tee pattern book.
3. Turn a golf ball into something else using whatever materials you need!
4. Choose a fact about golf that we have learned in class and write that rule down and illustrate it. This is a hard one because we have learned so much!

Reader's Workshop:

We are still working on our individual reading and writing goals. We are still doing word sorts as well! This is really improving our spelling. For writing this week, we focussed on writing a brief synopsis on the back of our books like we have seen on many books! This is hard but we are just learning. We are also still encouraging students to spell words based on what they hear when they say the word. This is called phonetically spelling. I would encourage you to do the same at home! If your child asks you how to spell something, first tell them to write what they hear. We learned three new comprehension strategies this week. We are already getting so much better with our comprehension while reading and these strategies will really help!

1. Iggy the Inferring Iguana: Infer as you read! Make predictions while you read, draw conclusions as you put information together and reflect while you read.
2. Jabber the Reteller: Synthesize and retell! Put the information together and think about what you read and retell the story or what you learned in your own words.
3. Fix Up Bear: Monitor and fix up! Think while you read to figure out when you do not understand and use the meaning, word clues and picture clues to help.

Math Workshop:

This was our last week to study geometry. Tuesday we filled out the December calendar. Mastering calendar skills is so important this year! Looking at dates, months and days of the week, we were able to learn many new things about a calendar.

We also completed the sheet "three ways to fill an outline." This sheet came home today. Children were to place pattern blocks in the outlines three different ways.
*The standards for this particular assignment were: finding different combinations of shapes that fill the same area, decomposing shapes in different ways and altering designs to use more or fewer pieces to cover the same space.

Students also received a paper with dots and had to connect the dots to make triangles and quadrilaterals. We practiced first on geo-boards (with rubber bands and boards that have pegs) and then again on paper so we could take it home!

We are also learning the Frosty the Snowman Song and it is super fun!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz