Nonfiction Readers Learn About the World - Nonfiction readers read to become smarter about our world and the things in it.
This week our class learned that readers learn more about a topic by using text features in nonfiction books. They read nonfiction books and paid attention to the text fictions so they didn't miss any of the information the author wanted to share with them. While reading, students practiced using a narrator voice to make important information pop out.
Another Reading focus this week was learning that readers understand nonfiction texts by pulling information together to explain what they are reading about. I introduced that some books have headings that tell us what certain pages are going to be about, but some nonfiction books do not have headings. If a nonfiction book does not have headings, we can find similar information on more than one page and group these pages together to sum up what we've read.
Report Writing
As writers, students will be practicing how to write a report. This week each student picked one animal and brainstormed facts and details to tell more about that animal (What does it eat? Where does it live? What does it look like?) Students are using their prewriting notes to begin drafting, revising, and editing their report. This writing piece will be published in the following weeks. Students will also create a clay model of their animal when they are finished writing.
Pronouns
Our class learned that pronouns are words that take the place of a noun.
Examples: he, she, we, they, it
Calendar and Time
This week our class practiced how to read a calendar, know the days of the week and months of the year, write a date, and reviewed the seasons of the year. We used ordinal numbers (first, second, third) to talk about certain days of the month. Students made their own April calendar and marked special days and events in the month with pictures and words. Students worked with a Math partner to put the days of the week and months in the correct order.
Other skills students practiced this week include telling time to the hour and half hour. Students used the term o'clock to tell the time to the hour, worked together to read and show time to the hour and half hour on a clock, read time to the half hour using the term "half past" and related time to daily activities (Ex. He feeds his cat at half past 8 in the morning).
Math Vocabulary
calendar days weeks months warmer seasons date colder | January February March April May June July August | September October November December o'clock minute hand hour hand |
Animals
Our current Science unit is Animals. We will finish this unit next week and begin UST's FOSS Kit Science Investigations. Grade 1 will focus on Light and Sound for the remainder of Term 3.
During Science, we answered the questions What Do Animals Need? and How Are Animals Different? Our class learned that animals need food, water, oxygen, shelter, and space. We discussed that land animals use their lungs to breathe in oxygen from the air and animals that live in the water use gills to take in oxygen from the water. We also read that animals have different shapes, sizes, body coverings, and ways to move. Based on these characteristics, scientists divide animals into six groups (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects).
Science has also been a great part of the day to connect what we're learning in Reading to another subject! While reading our Science informational books, students are excited to find captions, photographs, keywords, headings, and more!
Science Vocabulary
gills shelter mammal bird | reptile amphibian fish insect |
Have a good weekend!
- Ms. Allison