Midterms September 27, 2012

Mid-terms go home today! I am looking forward to meeting with parents in the next couple weeks to discuss your child's academic progress.

Comprehension Strategy: Compare & Contrast

This week we are learning how to compare and contrast characters in stories to improve our understanding. We are using a venn diagram to organize our thinking.

Today we read the story entitled, First Day Jitters. We then worked independently to create a venn diagram in our reading journals. We compared and contrasted the main character, Ms. Sarah Jane Hartwell, with ourselves. Some students did a fantastic job and shared their work with the class.

September 24- Awesome Author: Alyssa

Alyssa is our Amazing Author of the week for the week of September 24th.

Addition

In math we have been working a lot with numbers.  This week, we are practicing combining (or adding) numbers.  We watched this animation today for some extra practice with story problems. You can practice again at home.

Bananas for Hippo's Birthday Party by mplount on GoAnimate

Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate.

So, does Gimbo have enough bananas for Harry the Hippo's birthday party?

Awesome Author

Maddi is our Awesome Author of the week.

Story Elements

 (picture courtesy of amazon.com)

On Monday, we read Duck at the Door by Jackie Urbanovic.  We concentrated on identifying story elements (characters, setting, problem and solution) to help up better understand the story.  Upon completion of the story we broke into teams illustrating the different story elements.  

Today, we completed our illustrations and retold the story using our pictures.  We learned that a story can have multiple characters, settings, problems and solutions!  We proudly displayed our learning in the hallway to share with other first grade wildcats.  

Do you see your illustration?  

We're Readers!

We've had a great start to the school year.  I am looking forward to the remainder of the year as I watch your children grow and learn many new things.

Our Reading 3d assessment is nearly complete.  Soon all students will be able to 'shop' for books that are just right for them.  Meaning, they will be able to read books with little to no frustration because they will know how to read, or have the skills to sound out all of the words in the text.  This is truly an exciting time for first graders. 

To improve reading at home encourage your child to create flash cards of our kindergarten popcorn words. (click the link to assess a list at home)  You'll notice that these popcorn words are our Word Wall words for the first several weeks of school.  Practice makes perfect!

PE Tomorrow

Don't forget to wear your tennis shoes! 

Teamwork

We used teamwork to build our foam rug. We had to obey rules when building our rug; colors couldn't touch and the edge had to match the tiles. It took us a while to build this rug because we had to take apart the rug to fix it so it followed the rules.

We use this rug everyday so we can easily see things on the SMARTboard. We like to learn on this rug.

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I can use the reading rug appropriately.