Week of September 16

Dear Owl Families,

What another great week of learning we had in the owl room!  Here's what took place:

Language Arts:  We reached our goal of 20 minutes of stamina!!  Woo!  Thursday we even practices two rounds on 20 minutes!  WOW!  On Monday, we will learn and practice our second Daily 5 choice, which is work on writing.  We can't wait!

Our story of the week was called "Sam and the Bag".  We worked on the chunks "-ag" like bag and "-and" like hand.  We built some words, and read some sentences as a class that had these chunks in them!  We also talked a little bit about what happens when you add "-s" to the end of words.  When you have the word bag and add "-s" to it, it becomes bags and becomes more than one. 

In writer's workshop we have been working hard at telling and writing small moment stories.  We are doing a great job with this so far!  This week we have talked about how a watermelon is like a big, long story, like your life.  If you cut the watermelon into a slice, it is now a shorter story, but still too long to be a small moment.  You have to take the seed out of the slice of watermelon and focus on one thing during your story, and that's how we find a small moment story.  We enjoyed some watermelon after talking about this concept!  See the pictures below! :)  We talked about how we can use our hand to tell a story across our fingers, using our thumb as the beginning and pinky as the end, with our other three fingers as the middle!  Take a look at the chart we created and the reminder sheet they have in their writing binder below!  We also have been keeping track with our writing minutes, we almost got to 18 minutes today!  Good job writers!!

Math:  We took our last quick quiz of the unit yesterday, and everyone did great!  Today, we took our test and the first graders did wonderful on that too!  Monday we will be starting a new unit.  This unit will teach us more about adding, subtracting and equations.  These concepts are introduced with stories that capture children's interest and help them to see adding and subtracting as real-life situations. 

At the beginning of the unit we will show a story problem by drawing a picture of the objects but soon will move to circle drawings because you can show these quicker than drawing 4 castles plus 2 castles!  This is a major conceptual advance because it requires the use of symbols!  First graders are asked to show the partners as well as give the total.  From here, they are just a step away from writing the equation.  To keep them focused, children are asked to give a complete answer, which means they should name the objects that are in the story problem.  In the beginning of the unit, it is not required, but will be helpful on homework if you ask your owl friend to say the complete answer.

Thank you for your continued support!  Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Vos