News from Our Classroom

    Hello!  I'm sitting here on this beautiful, warm sunny afternoon thinking Spring cannot be far away!  I've actually seen sunlight on my drive home from school a few nights this week!  This is the weekend we set the clocks ahead, so the days will getting longer and the sunlight will last longer each day--a definite sign that Spring is on the way!
     As I told you last week, some of you are seeing a change in the homework your child is being asked to do, especially in Reading.  Once the kids are reading in chapter  books, it is not unusual for them to bring one book home for the entire week, and to need to read assignments in that book for homework.  The book will come home with a special bookmark inside which divides the book into chapters (or pages) to read each night.  When your child starts this adjustment in program, please DO NOT send the book back to school until he or she has read it in its entirety, as I forgetfully take the book out of your child's folder.  YOUR CHILD DOES NOT HAVE TO READ ALL OF THOSE CHAPTERS ALOUD TO YOU, unless you want him or her to do so.   Rather, you can ask him or her to "fill you in" on what he or she have read today, and then to read his or her "favorite part" of today's reading aloud to you, explaining why it is a favorite part.  Once your child is in chapter books, it is important that he or she learns to do much of the reading SILENTLY on his or her own, since that is what they will be required to do more and more as they get older.  It is still good to have them do SOME reading aloud to you, to check and make sure they are not just "skipping" difficult words, and it's always good to talk about what they are reading (or have read) just to make sure they are still comprehending.  (It was at this stage that I would take Emily's school book (after she had gone to bed for the evening) and read it myself so that I could talk to her about it, and know whether or not she was understanding what she was reading.)  Parents who are not seeing this change yet should be preparing themselves for it, since most first graders are in chapter books as or before they leave first grade.
    As I told you last week, though we are still working on place value and computations in Math during "practice time", our instructional time is centered on Geometry.  The children are learning to identify and draw 2d shapes: circle, oval (more egg-shaped), ellipse (more like a "stretched circle"), polygons (any 2D shape that has three or more closed sides), triangle, quadrilateral (any closed four-sided 2D shape), square, rectangle, rhombus (diamond), trapezoid, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, heart, star, and cross.  They did a pretty good job telling how many sides and how many vertices (angles, corners) a shape has, but are having a little difficulty drawing the harder shapes: rhombus, petagon, trapezoid, parallelogram, hexagon, and octagon.  We will continue to practice drawing these shapes.  Usually, the difficulty is centered around your child's tendency to "rush" when drawing, so corners become rounded, and shapes have gaping holes instead of being closed.  In order for them to pass their district test in Geometry, each child will have to avoid these pitfalls when making their representations of each shape. He or she will also have to be able to identify a shape by name, and tell whether or not it is a 2D shape or a 3D shape.
      We are still trying to acquire the names and values of coins and how to add them up to amounts under a dollar.  This is something you can easily practice at home with your child.  Grab a "handful" (6-10) of coins, and have your child sort them into types of coins.  Then, have him or her identify the type of coin (name and value) for each sorted pile, and, finally, STARTING WITH THE COIN(S) OF GREATEST VALUE AND ENDING WITH THE PENNIES, count out the change and total it.    Most kids experience the greatest difficulty changing their method of counting midway through (ie. counting quarters by 25, then switching to continuing the count by tens when she switches to dimes, then counting on by fives as he switches to nickels, to switching to counting by ones when counting on for pennies).  This takes lots and lots of practice, so doing one "handful" two or three times a week is fun, and helps provide extra practice.  (It is more successful and less stressful to do ONE practice several times a week than it is to practice THREE times once a week.)  We also continue to practice reading and drawing hands on analog clocks for hours, half hours, and "quarter of" and "quarter past".  This is another skill that will take continued practice throughout the remainder of the year.
      As you know by now, there will be no school for your child this coming Friday, as it is a scheduled Teacher Workshop Day.  As always, there are things to be done on my Sites and Links tab in this blog if your child is bored and looking for something to do.
      That's it for this right now.  I will be in touch again next weekend.  Have a fantastic week!