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For the past few weeks, our spelling words have helped our class learn long vowels (long a, long i, long o). Students are also learning different "hunks and chunks" that make these vowel sounds.
Long A: eigh, ai, ay, ace
Long I: ice, igh
Long O: ow, oa
Students have also been working in groups to complete word sorts that help them practice long vowel patterns and other spelling skills we have learned (short vowels, blends). I will begin sending these sorting activities home in your child's backpack.
Our current Reading unit is all about characters. It's called Readers Meet the Characters in our Books. During this unit, we will study what characters do and how their actions can teach us about them. Our goal is to describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.
This week we learned that characters are the people, animals, and creatures in the story. Readers can ask themselves, "Who is the story about? What do they do in the story?" and talk about character actions, likes, and dislikes. Readers can tell people about characters by saying, "I learned that my character ____________."
Students have been introduced to nouns and adjectives. This week we focused on verbs and created a poster for our classroom with examples. Next week students will complete a noun, adjective, and verb sort. This will be sent home in your child's homework folder.
This week students read their descriptive writing paragraphs to their classmates. It was great to celebrate each child's work and put their writing on display in the classroom!
Our next writing unit focuses on narrative writing. Students learned that in personal narrative writing, you share a story about something that really happened. For the next two weeks, students will practice following the writing process to write about a special time.
We are continuing our unit that focuses on addition and subtraction facts to 20. Students have been introduced to new strategies that can be used to add and subtract large numbers.
Please use the examples below to help model these strategies when your child completes his/her Math homework. Using hands-on materials, such as counters and connecting cubes, are very helpful. We will continue to practice these strategies next week as well.
On Monday, students turned in their Moon Phases Collection Sheet/Calendar. After observing the moon for two weeks, we talked about our observations and were excited for the supermoon + blue moon + blood moon on Wednesday evening.
Students made their own moon phases sliders to bring home to help continue their observations of the night sky. On the moon phase slider, students labeled the phases we learned about: new moon, first quarter moon, full moon, third quarter moon, crescent.
After finishing our Objects in the Sky Science unit, our class was introduced to weather.
Big Idea: Weather changes from day to day and from season to season. You can use different tools to measure weather.
Essential Questions: What is weather? What can we observe about weather?
Next week we will collect weather data each day and record the temperature outside. By participating in this investigation, students will think about how the weather is similar or different day to day. They will use patterns in their data to predict weather on the sixth day.
Social Studies To learn more about our world, our class read about forms of land, bodies of water, continents, and oceans. Social Studies Vocabulary Mountain: highest kind of land Hill: not as high as a mountain Desert: land that is very dry Ocean: very large body of salt water Lake: body of water with lands on all sides River: body of water that flows toward a lake or an ocean Each student colored a map of the world and labeled each continent with the correct name. Our class also sang two songs to help us learn about these topics. |
On Wednesday G1 students went to campus and picked up trash for Eco Patrol! We are learning that it's important to take care of our world and where we live. They did a great job!
UST students celebrated Setsubun at school on Thursday!
Have a wonderful weekend! Stay warm!
- Ms. Allison