Miss Foster's Fabulous Firsties
October 2020 Month in Review
What's going on in 1st grade?
READING/ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
Each week your child is introduced to new power words on Wednesdays. Each child's words are individualized based on their needs. We keep power words on index cards on individual rings at school and practice daily, but you can find these words on your child's google classroom. It is important to practice these words at home also. While we don't asses the students' ability to spell the words, it is a good way to practice them. The students are expected to be able to read each word in 3 seconds or less when I assess them on Tuesdays, and words that are missed will appear on your child's list the following week. We also have two new phonics skills each week. Words that follow our phonics patterns for the week are always listed on my classroom website on the calendar. The specific words on the test are not always listed on the website because it is our goal in first grade to have your child be able to decode any word that follows the pattern to become more fluent when reading, not to memorize a list of words. We practice decoding a variety of words that follow the pattern throughout the week. However, feel free to find the skills on my classroom website and practice throughout the week at home as well. It is not a spelling test and the words simply have to be read aloud by your child, not memorized or written.
During Reading Workshop, we have been working on several comprehension strategies such as predicting (including using evidence from from the text to verify, negate or change our predictions), questioning, using prior knowledge to help us understand stories, and monitoring and clarifying when we read to help us better understand stories. These strategies can always be supported at home with any books you are reading aloud to your child or with the books your child reads to you!
Additionally, your child brings home his/her Read Every Day Folder each day if your child attends school in person. Your child has the opportunity to select a folder each week containing 5 books at their independent reading level. In the folder there is also a colored card listing skills your child should be working on while reading these books. The power goal your child and I are working on will be circled or written on the card. I will change the goal circled as your child masters the previous goal, so please make sure to keep the skills card in the folder. These books are at your child’s independent reading level, so it should be an easy read, but as always please support your child’s comprehension by asking him/her about the book. There are sample comprehension questions on the folder as well. Folders and books are sanitized and quarantined for two weeks upon return. If your child is attending virtually (in person kiddos have access to this as well), the reading room on the Kids A-Z app has books at your child's independent reading level and these are the books I will use to confer with your child. This library is updated automatically through the app as your child moves through levels and I am able to adjust the levels of the books in their reading room if I find they are struggling.
MATH
We have been working on counting, addition, solving story problems, finding missing addends, determining if a given number sentence is true or false and how we know, learning our doubles facts (1+1=2, 5+5=10, etc.) and composing numbers. We are working on finding different 2-addend combinations that have the same sum and writing a number sentence in a variety of ways such as starting with the whole or starting with a part. We are also learning how to solve story problems with a picture, a number sentence, and a number bond. Soon we will learn how to make a statement with words about our answer, such as "There are 8 apples".
WRITING
Writing has been very exciting in our classroom! During writing workshop we are practicing thinking of our own ideas for writing and are working on several personal narratives. We have learned to persevere when we have hard-to-write words and hard-to-draw pictures. We have also learned about adding more to our writing to make it more interesting to the reader. I am very impressed so far with everyone's progress, as writing is often one of the most challenging subject for youngsters!
SCIENCE and SOCIAL STUDIES
We recently finished up learning about the world around us for social studies and will start learning about Canada in the near future. We have also been working through our first science unit! In science during the 1st trimester, we are learning a lot about the weather. As we work through our weather unit, we learn how to use a thermometer, about the differences between high and low temperatures, about how wind and precipitation change the weather, and different types of clouds. We will continue learn how to observe using our senses, describe, and discuss the weather as well as organize different types of information about the weather using graphs.
Scholastic Reading Clubs
Parent Teacher Conference
Virtual Learning
Important Dates to Remember
November 2nd-6th - NHUF is closed for deep cleaning - all learning will be virtual.
November 6th - New special begins. We will have library daily instead of art.
November 9th - All students K-5 return to school four days a week (M, Tu, Th, F)
November 16th - End of 1st Trimester
November 19th - Parent Teacher Conferences 4:30-7:30pm via Zoom
November 23rd-25th - Early Dismissal at 12:30pm. Lunch will not be served, but students can buy a lunch to take home. We will have snack time, so feel free to send a snack with your child.
November 23rd - Parent Teacher Conferences 1:30-3:00pm and 4:30-7:30pm via Zoom.
November 24th - Parent Teacher Conferences 1:30-3:00pm via Zoom.
November 26th-30th - No School
Video of the Month
Contact Miss Foster
Email: hfoster@boyertownasd.org
Website: https://www.boyertownasd.org/Domain/658
Location: 2547 Big Road, Frederick, PA, USA
Phone: 610-473-1726