January 12th-16th

Hello! Please remember that we do not have school this Friday, Monday or next Friday. Crazy schedule! I already sent the sign up genius for next week.

-Laurel's Field Trip: Tuesday January 20th...sign up if you can help!
- We are in desperate need of Clorox wipes. Send in pack if you are able.
- Children's Theatre Play: January 27th
- American Hero Play: February 19th at 11:00 ***Last week I accidentally wrote that it was the 18th. I was off by a day! So sorry!! It is actually Thursday the 19th. Hope you can be here to see your child preform in the first play of the year! Play lines will DEFINITELY go home Friday! We have a teacher work day, so I will be sure to get those done first. :)


Thematic Unit:

This week we studied Neil Armstrong. He was the first man on the moon! We discussed how this made a huge impact on the world forever. We also discussed characteristics that make a good hero. Everyone has the opportunity to be a hero! We rotated through 4 centers this week but we will also continue them next week as well since we got a little behind. We will not start a new hero next week due to our 3 day work week.

1. Astronaut helmet made of a paper bag. We also discussed oxygen and gravity on the moon versus the earth while we made our helmets.
2. Phases of the moon book. Did you know there are 8 phases? Watch the moon at night to see how it changes!
3. Shaving cream earth or moon painting. You could pick between painting the moon or the earth using the shaving cream paint. By adding shaving cream to the paint, it made the planet become 3d. After you painted, you had to add a sentence relating the moon to the earth.
4. Oreo moon phases. Take an oreo and gently break it apart. Scrape the icing off for each phase of the moon and discuss how it changes. Eat the oreo at the end!

We look forward to making moon sand next week and learning a little more about Neil!

Reader's Workshop:

This week we focussed on comprehension. We learned 3 main things about comprehension and tried to do a better job of understanding our books while we read.

1. When readers really understand, their reading voices sound smooth.
2. When readers really understand, they can picture what's going on.
3. When readers really understand, they can retell their stories easily.

We also edited more of our writing books this week as well. This month we are studying opinion pieces and how to write our opinion on a topic. Thinking of an opinion to write about is surprisingly hard! We discussed the difference about fact and opinion and looked a little deeper at Martin Luther King's opinion speech called 'I Have a Dream.'

Word Study words this week are:
must
was
has
have
had

Hopefully the last week of January we will start getting 10 words each week! With all the days of school we are missing, we are wanting to wait until we have a full week to start this.

Please lookout for a letter coming home soon about starting Bare Books. Remember last year how we worked for months on a book that your child wrote all on his/her own? We are doing that again this year, but it will be a little different. It will involve more time and supplies from home. This letter will be sent via email in the next week or so, so that we have plenty of time to finish. We will still work a lot at school on these books as well. No panicking. ;)

Math Workshop:

We are still studying subtraction this week and reviewing all the strategies we have learned so far. We are having a difficult time wrapping our minds around this topic, so we are taking our time learning it. We worked all week (to get through the entire class) on the true or false subtraction sheet. Last week we played a game with this and this week, we put it on paper to see what we learned. This took forever because it was a multi step process. First you had to solve the equation, then you had to decide if it was true or false, then you had to write the equation in the right column and then you had to check your work! We also worked on subtraction story problems as a class and in small groups. We increased the numbers we were working with from last week to make it a little more challenging.

Have a great week and weekend!
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

January 5th-9th

Happy week back!

Announcements!

1. Be sure you check the school calendar this month. We have a few days off here and there.  January 16th, January 19th, January 23rd are all days that the kids do not come to school!

2. Work on those acrostic poems for Valentine's Day! If you need any help, please let me know.

3. January 27th: Our first big field trip! We are going to the children's theatre in Charlotte like last year. More info regarding chaperones will be sent out soon.

4. First play February 18th Heroes Play!! Our very first play of the year!! Play lines will hopefully be assigned this Monday! With my big move this weekend, it may be a little delayed. But I will do my best to get those out so you can start practicing.

Thematic Unit:
This week we hit the ground running. We started our new unit "American Heroes" and started with Martin Luther King. He was a great man! He fought for the equality of all people, no matter their race. We learned about diversity and how we are all equal. We also listened to a part of his long famous 'I have a Dream' speech. We rotated through 4 centers....

1. An egg experiment. Take a brown egg and a white egg and predict what they will look like on the inside. They look the same! Just like people look on the inside even if they have different skin colors.
2. Make two clouds. On one cloud write your dream and on the other cloud write Martin Luther's dream. Staple together and stuff with tissues so that it becomes a 3D cloud.
3. Martin Luther King mini book
4. Martin Luther writing sample: Write your dream on green line paper and glue on a piece of paper that has been stamped with two different skin colors of hands that are joining together.

Literacy:

This week in addition to our individual reading and writing goals, we learned how to summarize. This is hard work! First we started by summarizing different parts of one of our favorite upcoming play songs. Then we learned a "thinking stem" that can help us summarize. 'This book is about....' Then we tried summarizing our own writing books. This was neat but we definitely need more practice. You can summarize many things like poems, movies, books and songs. We are also working on acrostic poems. Hopefully practicing at school will help valentine writing go smoothly! We learned about adjectives and how they describe things. Adjectives are most definitely needed for acrostic poems.

Word study words this week: play, say, are, jump, make

Math:

We are still studying subtraction and all the strategies we can use to solve problems. We just started working on solving subtraction word problems. Just like our addition story problems, you must weed through the "fluff" to figure out what you need out of the story to solve the problem. We also added another piece to our game from before break called 'Roll and Record.' This time when you roll your dice and you subtract, you have to add your equation to the column where you record your answer. Then you get to see all the different combinations. We also played another game called 'True or False.' There were different subtraction problems listed and you had to determine if the equation was true or false. Example: 9-1=5 would be false.  8-2=6 would be true.

Happy weekend!
Emily Schultz

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

November 17th-21st

Hello families!

Announcements:

We will be reading the book Stone Soup next Tuesday and making our very own soup creation. Look for a sign up genius tonight! We will be needing bowls, spoons, veggies, vegetable broth etc.

We are out for Thanksgiving break next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. There will be no volunteer sign up genius for next week because there are only two days. There will also not be a newsletter next week. No books or word lists either! We will be busy but because of a short week, we cannot maintain a normal schedule.

Scholastic books....place those orders! They are due soon!

Please remember to send your child to school with a coat! Gloves, scarves and hats are welcome as well. It is cold on the playground!

Thematic Centers:

This week we were studying football. We learned about the Manning family, equipment needed, field regulations rules and more! Mr. Jack came to talk to the class about football as well. He brought several different levels of jerseys, cleats, shoulder pads, gloves, a helmet, mouth guard and some of his ECU bowl rings. It was neat! We really learned a lot.

 

We rotated through 4 centers:

1. A mini book about the Manning family

2. Creating your own football helmet

3. Making your own cheer for a football game and presenting it

4. Creating a pennet for your favorite football team

 

Reader's Workshop:

This week we are still working on our individual reading goals and group word sorts. We also started thinking about how to dig deeper when reading. We are thinking about how to comprehend text and we are learning several strategies to help us. The following strategies have been discussed and practiced both individually and whole group:

 

1. Spinner Spider: Make connections as you read to what you already know (text to text, text to self, text to world).

2. Digger the Dog: Determine important ideas! Dig for important details, dig for important information about the author's message and dig/determine the facts.

3. Rocky Raccoon: Visualize as you read! Put pictures in your head as you read. See and think about the story like a movie going on in your head (What do the characters look like? The actions?)

 

Math Workshop:

 

We are still studying geometry! This week we learned a new game called "Fill the Hexagons." The goal of the game is to fill each hexagon with pattern blocks. To start the game the first player rolls the game cube. The player then takes that pattern block (on the game cub) and puts them anywhere on the game board. You need to think carefully because you cannot move later after your pattern blocks are already down! This game requires a little bit of luck but a lot of strategy and thinking.

 

Students also had to create their own shape using any 12 pattern blocks. This was tricky! Coming up with a design without a pattern was challenging but fun. Both of these activities worked on describing, comparing and naming 2-D shapes and decomposing shapes in different ways.

 

We also went on a shape hunt looking for shapes in and around the school! This was a blast. We found both 2-D and 3-D shapes and we are much more aware of why shapes are important. We even talked about the DMV and how the signs test relies on shapes!

 

Happy weekend and happy early Thanksgiving!

Mrs. Schultz



November 10th-14th

We have had a great week this week!

Thematic Unit:

We are studying basketball this week and learning about Michael Jordan. Mrs. Jennifer Stevens who works at our school, played basketball for Texas Tech and came to discuss her career in this awesome sport. We read many books and learned about the uniform, rules, player positions and more. We rotated through 4 centers. 

1. Michael Jordan biography book.....You will notice that the book said Michael Jordan was part time owner of the Bobcats. We explained to the students that the Bobcats are actually called the Hornets now! We discussed what it must be like to convert from being a player to an owner and how much leadership Michael displays. 

2. Basketball Bread making....Take biscuit dough and roll it into a ball. Roll it in cinnamon and sugar. Bake in the toaster and enjoy! This was a hit! Please use the recipe that we sent home and make this at home. So yummy!

3. Design your own basketball jersey!

4. Base ten jersey number....we introduced base ten blocks and discussed the tens place and ones place. Using tens and ones, students had to make their own jersey number.

Reader's Workshop:

This week we are reviewing all beanie baby reading strategies and trying to practice using them! We are reinforcing this by reading in small groups, large groups and one on one. Often times when students come to an unknown word they still want to say "I do not know what that word is!!" We want students to get in the habit of trying to solve the word first using the strategies and then if they still cannot figure it out, they can ask for help. It is always so surprising to them when they can figure it out on their own!

Word sorts are still going well this week. Word sorts work on short vowels, long vowels, blends, digraphs and more. Each week we take two days to get through all the reading groups and we send those books home. Then it takes two more days to get through word sort groups. Your child is receiving small group and one on one instruction in both reading groups and word sorts groups. You will see their first word sort in their word study binder behind the "Extra Work" tab.

Word study words this week are:

up

on

over

at

of

*Of is tricky and it sounds like it would be spelled ov. But that f is making a tricky sound in the word of!

Math:

This was the first week where we started studying geometry! This week we worked on: describing, comparing and naming 2-D shapes and decomposing shapes in different ways. We started with the basic shapes like: hexagon, square, triangle, trapezoid, circle etc. We studied the characteristics that these shapes have and looked at similarities and differences. We also learned how these shapes can fit together to make a new shape. We did not learn any new math games this week. We did complete geometry "quilts" and those went home today. Students were given a blank shape and then asked to fill in that blank shape with many different pattern blocks. Everyone had a different combination which was neat to see! Then students had to count how many of each shape they used and total up all the shapes together. We snuck a little more addition in there! 

Questions we were asking this week for assessment were:

What features of shapes do students notice?

What shape names do students know?

Can students identify shapes in their environment?

Announcements:

1. Next week we will be studying football! 

2. November 26th-28th there will be NO SCHOOL. 

3. We have our first trip to the Laurel's Nursing home December 3rd 9:40-12:00 if you want to join us. Mark your calendars!

4. Sign up genius for next week here: www.SignUpGenius.com/go/10C0C4FA5A82BA4FF2-novembr 

5. Scholastic orders must be placed online this year! Order those books in time for the holidays! :) Class code is: MG2XP

Hugs, 

Mrs. Schultz