This Week in Room 108
Weekly Happenings in Miss Quaresima's First Grade Class
December 1 - 5, 2014
Dates that Rate
December 8th: Toys for Tabor Collection Ends
December 9th: Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night!
December 10th: Room 108 visits the Secret Shop!
December 16th: Hanukkah begins at sundown
December 19th: Holiday Party @ 2pm
December 23rd: Holiday Sing Along for students
December 24th - January 5th: WINTER RECESS - No School!
December 25th: Merry Christmas!
December 31st: Happy New Year!
Holiday Secret Shop
Our class will be visiting the Titus Holiday Secret Shop on Wednesday, December 10th. The Secret Shop provides an opportunity for the children to purchase inexpensive “secret gifts” for the entire family. A large selection will be available on the Mom’s, Dad’s, Kid’s, Hanukkah and Pet’s tables. There will also be grandparent’s items available. Items vary in price from 25 cents to $4.00. Many items are priced under $1.00.
Next Wednesday, each child should bring his/her money in a sealed envelope marked with his/her name. Please try to limit the number of people for whom your child will shop (unless of course you have a larger family). We will have roughly fifteen minutes to shop and fifteen minutes to get the gifts wrapped. Please send in a recyclable shopping bag, if possible, to help with transporting the items home.
Today in your child's Wednesday folder, you will find five labels to be used as “To:” stickers. Please fill out these labels at home (To: Grandma, To: Daddy, To: Mom, etc.). These will act as your child’s shopping list, and speed up the labeling process when shopping is complete.
Thank you for your help as we make this a fun shopping experience for the first graders!
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.
For the remainder of the year, our weekly word wall words will be included on our Friday spelling tests. The words will always be available on the wall; the children will need to locate them and spell them correctly.
This week's word wall words are:
after, got, kick, run, were
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:
plan, plum, slip, sled, black, flag, bland, flower
We will be practicing these words in class, reviewing that the sound at the beginning of these words is made with two letters called blends. Once the children identify the beginning blends, they should listen for the short vowel sound and the ending sound in the words. The trickiest word this week is the word flower. In class, we broke this word into three parts and practiced identifying the two letters that make each of the three sounds.
Shared Reading
In reading this week, we read the story, Jamberry. This fictional story is about a bear and a boy who go on adventures. Through their adventures they find blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Our phonics focus this week was a review of short vowels. We also generated rhyming words and created compound words. Our shared reading focus this week was using story clues to help us figure out unknown words.
When reading at home, be sure to talk to your child about what they are reading. Discuss the setting of the story including where and when the story took place. Have your child name the characters in the story. After reading, ask your child to retell the story details to you. At school, I ask the children to "close the book, start at the beginning, and tell me what happened in this story." Practicing this skill at home will help build your child's reading comprehension!
Everyday Math
In math this week, we will be measuring to the nearest inch. We will discuss the importance of starting at the 0 on a ruler, and how to estimate the number of inches. For example, if something is just a little bit bigger than 2 inches, we say it is about 2 inches long. We will use rulers to measure and draw line segments.
Science
At the beginning of this week, we will analyze November's weather data in order to create a bar graph displaying the types of weather we had throughout the month. We will also predict our weather forecasts for the month of December.
Social Studies
Over the next three weeks, we will be learning about holidays around the world. This week we will be learning about how light is used in many holiday celebrations and will complete a project to share how we use light to celebrate our holidays with our family. Look for our holiday lights in the hall at the end of the week!
In the Computer Lab...
Spelling City
On our classroom website, you can find links to the website Spelling City. This is a terrific site with some great games to help your child practice spelling while also having fun!! The most popular games are Hang Mouse and Word Unscramble. Check it out, here, and have fun spelling!!
If you have an iPhone, iPod or iPad, there is a Spelling City app, too! Check out www.spellingcity.com/app for more information!
BrainPop Jr.
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:
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