Letter Writing! ~ We are in full swing of our letter writing unit. We have fun singing the "Parts of a Letter Song" to the tune "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes". I hope you've heard this jingle at home!
We have learned that a friendly letter has 5 parts:
HEADING (the date and in some letters the return address)
GREETING (each word is capitalized and it's always followed by a comma: Dear Mandy,)
BODY (usually includes questions so the person has a purpose for reading and writing back!)
CLOSING (a friendly end. each word is capitalized and also followed by a comma: Your Friend,)
SIGNATURE (of course in our neatest handwriting)
The children wrote WONDERFUL letters to a classmate and also to me. They enjoyed writing back to their writing buddy, and I enjoyed writing back to each of them. We place our letters into each other's mailboxes, picture above, and each day we are anxious to see if we've gotten any mail. This week we will write a letter to a friend not in our class (the homework assignment that was returned last Thursday), and we will also learn about writing Thank You letters. Next week we will learn about email letters.
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| Mail Trucks lined up waiting for the mail delivery. |
Reading ~ This week our comprehension focus will be on Making Inferences. I will teach several lessons demonstrating what this means and of course we will practice-practice-practice. As I've been reading 1-1 with each of the children I have been focusing a lot on comprehension. Some students decode well but need coaxing from me to understand meaning from the text that isn't explicitly written in the words. Comprehension strategies we have learned and will continue to apply are: ask questions throughout the story, visualize what's happening in our minds, use context clues and pictures to understand what a character is thinking or feeling and make connections with how a character is feeling. Decoding never stops being a focus and one of the strategies the children have started using a lot is "Fly By"... if they don't know a word, skip it and read to the end of the sentence. Then go back and see if they can figure out what would makes sense. I hope this insight into our reading focus helps you at home when your child is reading in his/her blue book bag.
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| Wyatt & Ayako completing a 3-2-1 organizer with a Time for Kids. A 3-2-1 organizer has the children find 3 facts they learned, 2 interesting points and 1 question they still have. This is an excellent way to search for special features in Non-fiction texts. Some of these include headings, bold words, captions, labels, diagrams and maps. |
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| Bradley, Tucker & Henry completing their 3-2-1. |
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| And Elina & Kate hard at work also on their 3-2-1. |
Sight Words ~ We have learned 83 sight words so far this year! There are a total of 176 sight words we focus on in first grade... some are repeats from Kindergarten. I will email you the list of 176 words and a list of the 83 we have learned thus far. I encourage you to make flashcards and practice them every night. We practice them almost every day at school. Research has proven that flashcards is one of the top ways to learn a skill, so bring on all those flashcards!
Magnets ~ A HIGHLIGHT OF OUR SCHOOL DAY! We have had so much fun exploring with magnets! The children are feeling the pull and push of magnets, have felt the different strengths of different magnets, have planned and conducted experiments with magnets and have been excellent science note takers and artists when recording their observations. They really have demonstrated being excellent scientists. We will wrap up magnets this week. :( Then we will do a little of presidents and mapping before we head into our Japan unit, which is my favorite thing to teach!! I can't wait for that unit to begin!
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| Drew & Elliot playing an addition dice game. |
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