Weekly News!

Our first graders really enjoying our art appreciation lesson today!

Reading:
This week our theme in Treasures was “Helping Out”. We practiced spelling words with the short /e/ sound. As we read the selections for the week, we really focused on summarizing and retelling the story. During grammar instruction, we learned about plural nouns, and when we need to add an –s, and when an –es is necessary. During Guided Reading time, I met with our new Guided Reading groups. The students enjoyed the challenge of some more difficult books, and have made a relatively seamless transition to their new reading levels. I am looking forward to discussing your child’s progress in reading during our upcoming conferences! They have much to be proud of! Next week, our Treasures theme will be “Where Animals Live”. Our word work and spelling words for the week will have the short /o/ sound. As we read the selections for the week, we will again focus on summarizing, and identifying the main idea and details. Our grammar lessons will focus on irregular plural nouns.

Writing:
This week, we took some time to reflect on what we are thankful for, and wrote about those people or things and told why we are thankful for them. In preparation for Veteran’s Day, each student made a card and wrote a little message for a veteran. These cards were collected by the school and were mailed to a VA hospital to share with the veterans there in honor of their service. We also reflected on the versions of “The Little Red Hen” that we read throughout the week, and decided whether or not we thought the Little Red Hen should have shared her bread with the other animals. Some of us thought she should not share, because the other animals did not help her. Others thought that she should have forgiven the animals and shared her bread after all.

Math:
In math this week, we learned how to program calculators to make them skip count. Then, we began working with counting dimes, and practiced counting those in combination with pennies and nickels. We also worked on making exchanges with dimes, nickels, and pennies to show the fewest number of coins for an amount of money. Throughout the week, we also talked about writing a coin total with the cents sign, or in dollars and cents notation, but never using both at once! Today, the children took a trimester check-in assessment to help me gauge how well they are picking up on the concepts we have introduced thus far. Because we did not have a regular math lesson today due to the assessment, there will be no math homework over the long weekend! Next week, we will explore various ways of collecting and examining data, use dominoes to form addition problems, use the Mimio Vote system to review the concepts we’ve been working on in Unit 3, and finally, take our Unit 3 test on Thursday. Because conferences are so close, the Unit 3 test will not be sent home, but instead, shared with you at your conference.

Social Studies:
This week, we began discussing the history of Thanksgiving. We are learning about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indian tribe. After we learn about their food, homes, clothing, and games, we are going to compare their lives to our lives, and discover how they were the same as us in some ways, and how they were different. So far, the students are very excited to be learning about how life was long ago, and they are making some great connections to their lives today!

Art Appreciation:
Today, Luca’s mom joined us to talk about masks. She showed us various masks from different parts of the word and discussed how masks have meaning behind them. Next, the students each made their own mask, representing things that they are thankful for! They had such fun making their masks!!

Have a stupendous weekend!

☺ Mrs. Glaser

Upcoming Events:
11/11: Veterans’ Day (No school for students)
11/17: Dads & Donuts 8:30 am in the gym
11/17: MICK’S BIRTHDAY!
11/18: High Touch High Tech in school field trip
11/18: Progress Reports sent home
11/21-11/22: Parent Teacher conferences (No school for students)
11/22: LILY’S BIRTHDAY!
11/23-11/25: Thanksgiving break (No school for students)