100th Day Preparation!

This year, we are celebrating our 100th day on Tuesday, February 4th! We will have several activities, including, but not limited to:

*Dressing up as 100-year-olds
*Making a 100th Day stew(send a baggy of exactly 100 edible items)
*"If I had $100..."
*100th Day Poem
*100th Day Short Film
*100 Day Glasses
*100 Day Snakes

Please send the baggy of exactly 100 edible items on the day of. (so I don't have to store them ; ) If you would like to send more than 100, please count them out and place in separate baggies. Thanks!

Inquiry Project Preview

Look at our little "detectives!" We were looking up information to answer the question, "What can communities do, and what do communities have."

Math-Quarter 3

I still can't believe that we are in quarter 3! The kiddos have made great progress!

Here are the highlights of what we will be learning throughout quarter 3:

*Counting to 120, starting at any number less than 120. (And be able to read and write the numbers)
*Explore tens and ones. For example, 32 would be said as 3 tens, 2 ones.
*Compare two-digit numbers with symbols (greater than, equal to, less than)
*Two digit-addition with the understanding of the tens and ones, within 100.
*Given a two-digit number, mentally find 10 more or 10 less than the number without having to count. For example, try ten more than 32 and ten less than 32. They will learn this by exploring the 100's charts in our room.
*Subtract multiples of 10 (10-90) using models or drawings. They will need to explain their strategies and show a written method.

If you have any questions as to the pacing of the next quarter, please contact me or leave a comment. This is going to be a VERY intense quarter for many students. We will do our best to keep in touch and guide them to success!

As a little booster, we started this week off with counting beans 1-120! They kiddos loved it!! I think it was the quietist in our room it has ever been. We must have a room full of blooming accountants!!

Reading Report

We had such a fun week in first grade! I thought I would share all of our happenings before they left my mind and something else exciting comes up.

We've been studying communities in our reading series. Most recently, we talked about community helpers and ways jobs benefit our town. Our very special guest happened to be a police officer! The kiddos were so excited and polite towards him. It made this first grade teacher VERY proud!

Update 1/15/14

Happy Wednesday! We've had a busy assessment week with math and reading. Thanks for all of the support!

Reminders: Spelling Test on Friday. Study, study, study! Also, we are coming into some warmer weather, but still pack mittens and boots just in case. Homework was sent home (Math, snowman adding paper) and is due next Wednesday, January, 22nd. Book-a-night will be sent home again tomorrow, and needs to come back Friday. I will try try try to remember poetry binders this Friday. Initial the poem closest to the cover and send back on Monday. Library books will be due Tuesday! Remember, no school on Monday!!

We are running low on snacks! If anyone would like to donate more, that would be great! The kiddos are loving the animal crackers, goldfish, and pretzels. Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Keller for already sending a re-stock earlier this week!

I am looking for any parent volunteers that have passed the back ground check to help out with some math games/groups. Any takers? Comment below or send an email! Thanks!

Spelling Test

We took our first spelling test of 1st grade today! Woohoo! The kids have been working so hard this week on practicing spelling words. I even received a few "practice," sheets from home!! We did great for our first spelling test ; ) Please review the test with your child and look over the mistakes and see where improvements can be made for next Friday.

I did want to mention some of the scoring techniques we use in first grade. All words must have appropriate capitals and formation. I marked the work incorrect if they used a capital at the beginning or in the middle of the word. Words were also marked wrong if a letter was reversed or hard to read. We've had plenty of practice with letter formation in the last four months, so my expectations are high!

Also, the sentence is the hardest part for many first graders. Always starting with a capital and ending with a punctuation mark. We use finger spaces between words and work on making it "easy to read," for the reader (me ; ) In second grade, they will bump up to 20 words, so we need a lot of practice between now and the end of the school year! Please continue practicing daily, along with reviewing Friday's test with your child.

I will be gone Monday, but the guest teacher knows to send home the spelling list! Look for the spelling words and sentence next Monday on the blog. Have a great weekend!

Update 1/8/14

We've been trucking along this week, and boy, have we had our ups and downs! The first full week back from break is a hard transition for students and myself. As a reminder, 6-7 year olds need at least 10 hours of sleep a night. (And maybe Mrs. Dimock, too ; )

Remember, we will take our spelling test on Friday! A lot of students were gone Tuesday and Monday, so if you missed the memo, the spelling list and sentence are next to important dates on this blog. I also sent home their practice sheets on Monday with the stapled note.

I will be gone next Monday for a teacher training. I will try and prepare them on Friday, but if you can, send a gentle reminder so the transition isn't so hard that morning. Thanks for all that you do!

2014!!

Welcome back! Happy 2014 and I hope your Holidays were as great as mine.

This coming week, our class will be starting Unit 3 in our reading series. We will be working with digraphs /th/, and /sh/. Also, we will be spelling with suffix -es. Ask them about our silly "H," brothers we've been talking about!

In math, we are coming up on our quarterly benchmark test. These will be used for some report card scoring, but more importantly, to pinpoint what we need more practice with.

We will also be starting our weekly spelling test. I will give more information with the list being sent home on Monday. Thanks for your help!