This Week in Room 108
Weekly Happenings in Miss Quaresima's First Grade Class
October 28 - November 1, 2013
Dates that Rate
October 29 - November 12th:
- Operation Santa (see below for more info)
October 31st:
- Happy Halloween!
November 1st:
- Home and School Mother & Son Event - Magic Show - 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
November 5th:
- Picture Retake Day - Don't forget to bring your original picture package back to school
November 6th:
- Early Dismissal - 11:55am
- End of the First Marking Period
November 7th:
Don't Forget!
Mondays - Wear your sneakers for P.E.
Fridays - Bring your library books back to school
Box Tops - Keep sending in your box tops! The October winner will be announced soon!
Operation Santa
Since 2004 the Marine Corps Family Foundation, along with the dedicated help of Marine Corps families and friends, sent Christmas-in-a-Box to more than 125,000 Marines deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. For many of these Marines, this Thanksgiving and Christmas will be their first holiday away from home, family and friends. Unfortunately, some of these young men and women will not receive any mail or packages. This year the goal is to send a bit of the holidays to ALL deployed Marines. Please help us by donating the following items between October 29th - November 12th.
- K- 3rd grade: Hot Chocolate, Snack Bars & Fruit Snacks
- 4th - 6th grades: Playing Cards, Travel-size Amenities, Frisbees, Footballs, Sporting goods, etc..
In School this Week...
Word Wall
The Word Wall is a great writing tool in our classroom. I do not expect the students to memorize each word wall word, but they do need to be aware that the words are on the wall, so they can use them as a reference when writing in the classroom.
You will see a sheet of word wall cards come home in your child's homework folder every Monday. Please practice these words with your child at home. Check the Word Wall section of our classroom website for a list of our word wall words.
This week's word wall words are:
because, jump, what, where, very
Spelling
This week is our first week of spelling. A list of spelling words came home today in your child’s homework folder. There will be 6 new spelling words each week and 2 challenge words. The spelling words are chosen based on our Word Sort focus for the week.
Check the Spelling section of our classroom website for a list of our spelling words.
This week's spelling words are:
zip, rip, pig, wig, sill, mill, **still, **twig
Shared Reading
In reading this week, we are reading the story, Once Upon a Time. Our phonics focus this week will be identifying ending consonant sounds, and blending sounds to make words. Our shared reading focus this week is sequencing story events in order and telling the beginning, middle, and ending of a story. In our guided reading groups, the students will practice completing story maps that list the characters, setting (where and when the story takes place), and the beginning, middle, and ending of stories.
This is a great skill to practice at home. After reading with your child, encourage him/her to retell the characters, setting, and story events in order. Have your child try to retell the details without peeking in their books, then go back and check to see if their answers were correct.
Everyday Math
This week in math we will begin solving frames and arrows diagrams. Be sure to read about how to solve frames and arrows problems in your child's homework folder on Tuesday.
We will begin to count dimes at the end of the week. We will identify Franklin Roosevelt on the heads side of the dime, and the torch, olive branch, and oak branch on the tails side. The students will identify coin combinations that are equivalent to a dime (10 pennies, 2 nickels, or 1 nickel and 5 pennies) and will practice counting dimes.
On Halloween, we will be doing some fun pumpkin math activities. We will measure and weigh a pumpkin, predict the number of seeds inside and count the seeds to check our predictions, and will use pattern blocks to draw our own jack o'lantern faces. Finally we will vote on a face to carve on our pumpkin.
At the end of the week, we will begin to develop our problem solving skills as we look closer at word problems and problem solving strategies.
Writing
We will learn more about writing sentences this week. We will discuss punctuation and identify the appropriate times to use the word "and" in our writing. For example, "Billy and Aiden are playing outside. They are playing football with Chase." As opposed to, "I went to the pumpkin patch and I got the biggest pumpkin and I went on a hayride."
We will also talk about writing juicy sentences, those that provide more descriptive detail. We will write about a witch by describing what she looks like and what she is doing. Look for our witch writing to be displayed outside our classroom.
Science
This week we will learn about owls and bats. We will read non-fiction books then create a list of facts about each animal. The students will then choose facts to share about owls and bats and create their own animal to accompany their writing.
In the Computer Lab...
The Titus Home and School association has purchased a one year license for BrainPOP, which is a very interactive online source for virtually every subject and topic associated with our elementary curriculum. We are now able to access BrainPOP, BrainPOPjr, and BrainPOP Español for both home and school.
In First Grade, we use the BrainPOPjr site at http://www.brainpopjr.com/ several times a week. Please visit the site with your children at home and encourage them to tell you about the activities we've completed in school.
Login: titus
Password: tigers
Here are some videos pertaining to what we have been learning recently in first grade:
Time to the Quarter and Half-Hour
Check the Computer Lab Links page on our classroom website to find more fun learning games your child can practice at home.
Miss Jennifer Quaresima
First Grade
Titus Elementary School
Email: jquaresima@cbsd.org
Website: www.cbsd.org/domain/1469
Location: 2333 Lower Barness Road, Warrington, PA
Phone: 267-893-7635