Mrs. Nordman ~ 1st Grade: Fireman Andrew

Fireman Andrew visited us this afternoon to talk about fire safety. He was wonderful! He showed a great Disney video about fire safety and talked about what to do in a fire situation and the importance of having a family meeting place if there is a fire in your home. Great reminders for us all.

Snapshots of 1-3 Happenings:

Spelling started on Monday with a pretest. All week long our Daily 5 activities were centered around our spelling words and their pattern. Our weekly activities include a WORD SORT, a POEM, a GRAMMAR LESSON, a PACKET of activities and an ABC ORDER. We also do a lot of spelling practice on white boards. The words are written on our windows (the kids think that is fun!) for all to see all week long, until they are erased on Friday morning before the test. I hope you also had a chance to visit Spelling City. Your child's username and password are taped to the inside of their take-home folder. This will be our pattern for spelling practice each week.

Reading.... I am almost finished reading 1-1 with all of the children to determine reading levels, so I hope to start guided reading groups in two weeks. More info will follow.

Writing... We have been working on understanding what a complete sentence is, what to do if you don't know how to spell a word (start with QUICK WORDS - ask your child about that!), and narrowing down what we want to say about a topic. Next week we start our first writing unit on AUTOBIOGRAPHY. These will be ready for you to see at Open House in October!

Math.... Unit 1 test will come home on Monday. I will give a Unit 2 Pretest on Monday also. The pretest helps me assess where each child is with the upcoming concepts so I can do my best to individualize their learning. The pretests will NOT come home.

Science.... OUR BRINE SHRIMP HATCHED! The kids were very excited to learn what the mystery substance was. I hope you saw the fact sheet and diagram of this unique animal (also called a Sea Monkey). Crickets have arrived (ugh!) and we will study those next week.

BOOK ORDERS! Today your child brought home Scholastic Book Order information, which includes our classroom code. This is a great way to build your child's library at home AND we get free books for our classroom every time you order! ALL ORDERING IS DONE ONLINE. You can assess Scholastic's website by clicking on the Book Order link on the blog.

Star Student LILA! It was so fun learning all about Lila! Here she is building a great Lego creation!