News From Our Classroom

     Well, we did it!  We managed to have a whole week of school, with extended days, even!  Yeah, us!  We were lucky the mess on Tuesday/Wednesday was mild (compared to the one we had Friday/ Saturday night), and we were able to put in a full day!  I will say that by Friday afternoon, though, we were all dragging.  I felt lucky that it was a week when I had an extra pairs of hands and ears--Ms. McLean was in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as part of her career week.  She spent Tuesday and Thursday visiting the child center at Region 9.  The students in our class really seemed to like her a lot, and she liked them.  Here's a few pics to share with you:

 

Introducing a spelling game to a small group

Sharing the same game with a different group

Everyone is working hard AND having a lot of fun

 It was really nice to have Ms. McLean around, particularly because she seemed to enjoy it so much herself.  The kids got to play spelling games and math games, she took one group to read one day, and she participated in all of the things we do every day.

       So, we are back into routine this week (finally).  All groups met for Reading Group. We worked on phonics and spelling as a class.  We are starting to independently understand that OUR sentences need to have a complete thought, a capital letter, and a punctuation mark just like those sentences we have been practicing on that were not OUR words.  We reviewed (again) nouns and verbs, and will be doing practice work sheets on them, too.  In writing, we are beginning to focus now on adding descriptions to our writing--a challenging thing for first graders to do.  We will continue to work on nouns, pronouns, and verbs, as well.

      Although we will continue to practice adding money, we will be moving on to Geometry and Fractions, starting this week.  We will start with 2 dimensional (flat) shapes, and learn about sides and corners ("angles" is the correct term in Math) tomorrow, so that we can start talking about the various attributes different shapes have.  For this purpose, we will define "side" as a "line segment" and an angle  as "the point where two lines segments meet".  Using these definitions,  a "circle" and an "oval" have no sides and no angles ("inside" and "outside" don't count!).   Once we have learned about the various 2D shapes, I will introduce fractions through the "cutting" of the various shapes.  Something is a fraction of a whole or of a group ONLY if the whole or the group has been divided into EQUAL portions.  In first grade, we really only have to learn "halves" and "fourths",  but I tend to introduce the children to more than that.  We make many different shapes (circles, squares, rectangles, triangles) out of play dough, and them into thirds, fourths, fifths, tenths or more.  Your child will be exposed to (and will hopefully begin to understand) the terms numerator, denominator,  equivalent,  whole.  Then we will go back to Geometry to learn about 3 dimensional objects.  One way to make 2d and 3d really clear for your child is to have him/ her view 3D materials.  I have books for them to use with 3D glasses at school, but this would be a great time for you to take them to see a 3D movie, if they have not already seen one.  I will keep you informed about these units as we progress through them.

       We worked on the respiratory system in Science this past week, and will finish up that system tomorrow.  Then we have the digestive system and the nervous system left to finish.  I am trying to review all of the previous systems every time we add a new one, so the children don't forget the ones we studied back in October and November.  They will need to be able to look at a visual and identify which system it shows (cut and paste), what its major organs/structures are, and what that system contributes to our body's well-being.  (We do not talk about the reproductive or endocrine systems in first grade.)  I am hopeful that we will be able to take this systems test just before April vacation.

       We continue to learn more about how different life was during the pioneer days as we share the Little House on the Prairie book.  We walked through the process of building a home and a stable, and had a visit by a huge pack of wolves.  This week, we're going to learn about digging a well, and about what happened when people got very sick.

        That's all for this week.  If you have not scheduled your parent-teacher conference yet, please do so as soon as possible.  The conferences take place on April 11th and April 13th, NEXT Tuesday and Wednesday.  Have a good (snow free?) week.  I'll be in touch next weekend.