Monday, November 13 - Friday, November 24
At the end of the first Read-a-thon week, G1A students reached a total of 1,350 minutes! Our goal is 2,400 minutes by Friday, November 24th. Great job G1A!
Every month, we will invite parents to UST to read a book to the G1 students. G1A and G1B classes will come together in the shared space to listen to the Mystery Reader read a story.
When you have a moment, please see the G1 Monthly Mystery Reader calendar at the link below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DRAwOoJMW0zNjZzNxdfYiEwSyxzpMvmd-Ht8KxNps3I/edit?usp=sharing
If you are interested in being a Monthly Mystery Reader, you can choose a week that's highlighted on the calendar. After you pick a week that is open (no one has signed up) please complete the section on the left side of the calendar with your name and child's name. You can also write the days and times you will be available.
Ms. Larissa and I will contact you to pick a day/time that you are available in the week you selected. We can also suggest book/story topics that will connect to what we are learning at school.
Remember, it is a mystery! Please do not tell your child if you are the mystery reader. We would like to keep it a surprise for the students. We hope to have many parents volunteer and participate in this new, fun part of our school week!
Ms. Larissa and I would like to invite parents to attend G1's Career Day at UST! Our hope is that this event will help students connect what they are learning during Social Studies (work and community) to the real world!
Date: Friday, January 19th
Time: 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
We are asking that parents that sign up prepare a 5 minute presentation of their job. To help the students get involved, you can show pictures or bring in objects students can see and touch. If you want to prepare a presentation, Google Slides is a great option! You can share it with your child's teacher using our UST school email addresses and we can display it on the TV.
If you are interested in participating, please complete the Google Sheet by using the link below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sna7JJKQdAWE-lXlGb8-MxXtJWBA7K5geeCctC8_KNs/edit?usp=sharing
If there are no time slots left, please write your name on the shared Google Sheet under I'm interested, but there are no times available. Larissa and I will discuss scheduling another Career Day so all parents who are interested have an opportunity to participate. Thank you!
Topic: Fall Break
This week our class worked on blends (fl-, cl-, sl-) at the beginning of words. Students participated in a "Write the Room" activity, finding pictures and saying the name of the picture. They had to listen to the sounds they heard and fill in the missing blend at the beginning of each word.
Example:
Picture of a cloud _ _oud
Picture of a slide _ _ ide
This activity was sent home in your child's folder.
This week students learned that reading partners make meaning together by retelling familiar books and when you retell, you need to tell what happened in order and include all the important details. Students practiced retelling by drawing pictures of the beginning, middle, and end, then verbally retelling the story to their reading partner.
Reading Vocabulary: events, beginning, middle, end
Sequence Words: first, next, then, after, last
Our class also brainstormed a list of strategies we use to read new words. We talked about how we can help our reading partners use new strategies when they get stuck on new words. I modeled getting stuck on new words and the students said, "Don't get stuck! Try another strategy!" Our next Reading unit is called Tackling Trouble and will focus teaching how to use multiple skills and strategies to read tricky words and text.
We continued to practice different kinds of sentences this week. Students practiced sorting sentences into two groups: telling sentence, asking sentence. They read different sentences and added the correct end mark (. ! ?) to each sentence as well.
Our class was also introduced to writing a paragraph. We learned that a paragraph is a group of sentences about the same topic.
Writing a Paragraph
- A paragraph has a beginning sentence that tells the main idea.
- A paragraph has middle sentences that tell more about the main idea. These sentences share details.
- A paragraph has an ending sentence that adds one last thought.
Next week we will read about a student who writes a paragraph and how the student follows the writing process to publish his paragraph. Students will use the writing process to write their own paragraphs to publish and display in the classroom.
Our new Math chapter focuses on shapes and patterns. This week our class was introduced to solid shapes (3 dimensional - 3D) and explored each shape to find out how it moves (stacks, rolls, and/or slides.) We discussed how the shapes are similar and different.
Solid Shapes: cube, rectangular prism, pyramid, cone, sphere, cylinder
Math Vocabulary: faces, vertices, edges
Students also cut out plane shapes (2D) and practiced combining them to create other shapes and pictures.
Example:
Can you use two shapes to make a square? - 2 rectangles, 2 triangles
Cane you use two shapes to make a circle? - 2 half circles
Can you use two shapes to make a rectangle? - 2 squares, 2 triangles
They also used plane shapes to fill in different outlines, rotating the shapes to make them fit together in different ways.
Our Social Studies unit focuses on work and the community. This week we talked about why people make choices, learning that sometimes people have to make a choice between two things and when you make a choice, you make a trade-off.
Social Studies Vocabulary
Choices: when you pick between things
Scarce: when there is not enough of something
Trade-off: when you give up one thing to get something else
Students wrote about a time they had to choose between two things and had to explain why they made their choice.
The essential question for this week was What Materials Make Up Objects? We learned that objects may be made of different parts and those parts go together to make a whole. We looked at a photograph of a house and noticed that each part was a different material (wood, metal, brick, glass). Students were introduced to the science words natural and human-made. We identified natural and human-made materials and used these words to label objects in the classroom, observing what kind of materials each object was made of.
Science Vocabulary
Materials: what objects are made of
Human-made: materials made in a lab
Natural: materials found in nature
Examples:
Natural Materials: cotton, metal, wood
Human-made Materials: plastic, nylon