December!

Wow, I can't believe that it is already almost halfway through this month.  We are continuing to work hard with all that we do and at times we need reminders on the simple routines and rules of our classroom that we worked very hard to learn the first few weeks. ;)

I look forward to parent/teacher conferences as our time to chat about your developing First Grader. Please keep in mind that conferences are about 20 minutes and I have them back to back both days! I will do my best to stick to the time but you may be waiting for a couple of minutes if anyone comes in late or we go over a minute or two.

We are starting a new unit in Reading Workshop that focuses on "meeting" and understanding/analyzing the characters in our books. You can help to reinforce this at home when your child finishes reading a book to you. Have him/her retell and discuss what they notice about the character, did the character change at all throughout the book, what are words to describe that character, etc.

I am impressed with the hard work that the students did on their very first gumball quiz! We had many gumballs this first week. Please keep in mind that your child may be practicing the same facts for more than a week depending on whether they successfully completed the quiz in that time frame. If your child does not receive new flashcards on a Monday that means they did not complete the quiz the week before and will retake it that week. I stressed to the children the importance of not bragging and being proud of everyone's accomplishments, even if it just means for trying very hard. We are all working at our own pace.

Thank you to those of you that offered to help run a Holiday Workshop next Friday! I will be in touch shortly. If anyone else is still interested that would be wonderful! Please email me to let me know.

The next two weeks will be spent traveling the world and learning about how some other countries celebrate the December holidays! Today was our first country and the students learned about Mexico!

Challenge:  Which continent is Mexico located on?  Please email me by Friday with your child's answer for a prize.
Please remember that your child needs to be the one to answer! :)

Updates

This week the students learned about reindeer in the wild! We read some informational text about the animal and worked to create an organizer with facts about them. The students are working on a booklet about reindeer where they unscramble words to make a complete sentence and illustration. We also worked SUPER hard at putting our facts from the organizer into a piece of nonfiction writing. The students did such a great job, I am so proud of their progress. Those are now hung in the hallway for display with a cute reindeer that they made.

We are working hard at practicing strategies for retelling in Reader's Workshop. The students are learning to identify the setting, to follow the order of events in the story, and to balance the details. We will continue with retelling next week as well, then get into character traits.

Please continue to practice the sight words that come home, especially those particular words that your child does not know automatically (within a few seconds).

Next week we will begin timed Math Fact quizzes with an activity called "Gumball Math".The students will have their own paper gumball machines hung in the classroom and each week that they master a fact quiz (get all correct within the set time), they will have a paper gumball added to their machine. A detailed letter explaining this will come home next week.

Have a great weekend!  Here is a challenge for the students! Please email me your child's answers! 2/3 earn a little prize.

1.  What kind of an animal is a reindeer?
2. A reindeer is an excellent ________________.
3. What word means putting events in order?

Thanksgiving Feast!

We had a great Thanksgiving Feast last Tuesday! The students made adorable placemats (which you now have seen) to tell something that they are thankful for. It also helped to show what a place setting looks like! Here are a few pictures from the feast. I hope all of your families had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Writing Workshop!

We have been working hard at writing our small moment stories. Students have also begun to meet with their writing partners to help them with this process. One goal of meeting with our writing partners is to help the writer think about what details can be added, based on the questions by the listener! It is also a way to help plan out what to write about, by telling a partner first. Here are a few pictures of partners reading their writing at the end of a Writing Workshop time.

Happy Veteran's Day!

Last week we spent some time learning about Veteran's Day and discussing how special and important veterans are. One of the activities we did was to brainstorm a list of words to describe veterans and then we did a directed drawing to go with it. They came  out adorable. Happy Veteran's Day to all the men and women that have served (or are currently serving) our country! We thank you!

Power Outage!

We can work in the dark! So impressed with the students this afternoon. In the middle of Math the building's power went out and we just kept on working hard.

Some Pictures

Tomorrow is our assembly for the election! Students are encouraged to wear red, white and blue! I will be out tomorrow at an all day conference. The students should be given their sight word packets for homework by the substitute. If they are missing something when they get home it is ok. I will make sure they get it on Wednesday.
Here are some pictures from our Halloween craft/workshop day. Thank you again to the volunteers for all of your help!

These are the little witches we did before Halloween to go along with an adjective activity. I read aloud "The Brave Little Witch" and then we brainstormed adjectives for witches. Students chose the 6 adjectives they wanted to use to describe their witches. :)