Mrs. Faccio's 1st Grade Newsletter
February 5, 2016
What's Up in the Classroom?
Writing - Informational writing was on the docket again this week. We focused A LOT on punctuation. We are at the point in the year where the students know that they need end marks to let the reader know how to read their work. Early on, we didn't focus on them because it tends to suffocate the writer. They get too caught up in where to put them causing their ideas to not flow. They are much better at understanding the purpose for them now so we will really continue to hit this concept hard over the next 4 months.
Reading - Asking and answering questions was the topic this week. Students learned that to be an active reader, they need to always be asking questions (in their head) as they read. We practiced this concept in two ways. One was me asking the questions I was thinking in my head out loud and them answering what they thought the answers were. The next was them asking the questions they were thinking in their head and their classmates answering them. This is such an important concept to learn early on because it automatically engages the reader to the text and forces them to think about what they are reading.
Math - We are still plugging away at story problems. We added in a 3rd number this week and focused on making 10's (if any exist within the problem). For example, "The farmer had 3 chickens, 8 goats and 7 cows. How many animals did he have all together?" The students would pick out the 3 and the 7 and recognize that as a 10. From there, they would just have to add on their 8 for a total of 18.
Science - We started matter this week. Students learned about solids, liquids and gases. They made a Root Beer float to show all 3 properties afterwards. We will continue with matter for the next couple of weeks and really start to dig in.