A Week at a Glance 12-7-15 to 12-11-15

MAP Testing

This week students will be participating in the winter benchmark for MAP. We will be doing the ELA portion of MAP on Monday and Tuesday and the Math portion on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hour of Code

This week is the worldwide focus on computer science. Students all over the world will learn about what coding is and the incredible impact coding has on our day to day lives. Our school is partnering with Deerfield High School. On Thursday this week, DHS students will be coming into our classroom to help our class learn how to code. 

ELA

Phonics

• long a - a and a_e
• sound /y/ /kw/ /qu/ /nk/ /ng/
• homophones
• double final consonants

Grammar

• adding ed to verbs

Reading

We will continue to work on identifying non-fiction text features. We will identify the main topic and key details in informational text. Also we will work to describe the connection between two individual, events, ideas or pieces of information in informational text.

Texts to be read:

• "Should We Get A Pet"
• "Pigs"

Math

Continue to:

• understand subtraction as an unknown addend problem
• add and subtract within 20
• practice doubles to 20 - 1+1, 2+2, etc.
• understand the meaning of the equal sign

Science

We will begin exploring what different parts animals have.

Students will identify the different animal parts. They will compare and contrast the same parts on different animals.

Weekly Specials Schedule

Monday  - Day 3 - PE and Spanish

Tuesday - Day 4 - LMC - Bring your library books

Wednesday - Day 5 - Art and Music

Thursday  - Day 1 - PE and Spanish

Friday  - Day 2 - Music and Art

What a fun second half of the week!

Our Star Leader of the Week

Students are having so much fun with  Star Leader Leader of the Week. Our Star Leaders are loving the "extra" focus on them and the rest of the students are loving seeing what the "Star Leaders" are going to do. It is great how students are connecting their lives to the seven habits. 

Here is a look at our last two Star Leaders.

Our First Grade Super Power - Brain Growers
This week we learned that we have super powers! We learned that we actually have the power to grow our brains! How cool is that!
Mrs. Meredith and Mrs. Primack came in to help teach us about how to do this. We will be using this concept as students begin learning how to give positive feedback to one another. Click on the link, Growing our Brains, below to see at what we learned so far.

Growing our Brains

Math Work Stations

Students had fun rotating through math stations this week to learn and practice different math concepts.

Mystery Readers

We had two unexpected Mystery Readers. My daughter Jordyn was in from college and came to read to the students right before Thanksgiving break. She read, " My Brave Year of First" by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Dr. Lubelfeld surprised our class yesterday by stopping by to be our Mystery Reader. He read and discussed with the class the wonderful story, "Voices in the Park", by Anthony Browne.

Have a Great Weekend!

Midweek Peek of Some Learning

I cannot believe it's already here!

Little Engineers
This week would observed how our plants have grown. We discussed what parts of the plant were important in the plant being able to stand on its own. We then worked with a partner to engineer a tower to stand on its own keeping in mind the parts of the plant that are important in the plant being able to stand upright. We had so much fun using all different materials to help construct our tower.

Math Stations
We are working this week on practicing our different operations and algebraic thinking. Students are rotating through stations that have them playing games in both adding and subtracting.

More to come at the end of the week!

Week at a Glance 11-30 to 12-5

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break.
I can't wait to see everyone back.

ELA

Phonics

• phoneme blending /l/ (le, el) /ur/ (er, ir, ur)
• /kn/ /ng/
• syllable pattern c + le

Grammar

• verbs for past and present

Reading

• finish reading Lulu and the Brontosaurus
• read "What is a Reptile?"
• identify text features of non-fiction text
• compare and contrast fiction and non-fiction text features
• work in book partners to do a story re-tell.

Math 
Continue to:

• understand subtraction as an unknown addend problem
• add and subtract within 20
• practice doubles to 20 - 1+1, 2+2, etc.
• understand the meaning of the equal sign

Science - Engineering a Tower

With a partner, students will identify what they learned about plants. They will then be given be given a certain set of materials in order to engineer a tower that will stand on its own.

Leader and Me

Students will continue to make connections to all 7 habits in their daily activities.

Weekly Specials Schedule

Monday  - Day 3 - PE and Spanish

Tuesday - Day 4 - LMC - Bring your library books

Wednesday - Day 5 - Art and Music

Thursday  - Day 1 - PE and Spanish

Friday  - Day 2 - Music and Art

A Fabulous Friday!

Friday was one of my favorite days of the year, Someone Special day. We started this last year and it was an instant success. I truly enjoyed meeting all of my students' special someones and they could not have been more excited to share our classroom with people dear to their hearts. It was a half hour of pure happiness! Look and see for yourself.

Mystery Reader

Mrs. Varnado came Friday afternoon to be Mystery Reader. Students enjoyed listening as she read a story to the class.

Kidblog

We had fun going into Mrs. Cacioppo's Class to work on our Blog about Someone Special Day. Mrs. Cacioppo's students helped us with a new feature on Kidblog, uploading a picture.

Tomorrow is Day 2 on the specials schedule. 

We have music and art.

Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy your time with family!