Mrs. Nagy's 1st Grade Class
First grade ROCKS... Come be a star!⭐️
Glad the sun will be shing this week! Here are a few reminders...
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. SEUSS - The children had fun learning and doing fun things with Dr.Seuss. We shared our books, read a few favorites and made a "Cat in the Hat" hat, too! A fun time was had, it made us feel glad:)
- IOWA Testing - We will finish up IOWA testing this week. We have 2 more sections to complete...Math and Computation. The kids are doing a great job! Only 2 more days!!!!
- Spelling List - This week's list is coming in your child's folder. The words are based on the upcoming St. Patrick's Day. Many of the words are seasonal words but follow many of the NEW phonics we have learned including "ai", suffix y, digraph "ck", combination "ar". The challenge words are leprechaun and potato for a little extra BRAIN work.
- St. Patrick's Day - Speaking of our Irish holiday...we will be constructing "Leprechaun Traps" to see if we can catch these real or make-believe characters. The children will be working alone or in groups (at school) to create a trap to catch these seemingly fast critters. The children will need to devise a plan and think, write and discuss their ideas before constructing. This is where I need your help! If you have any shoe boxes, paper towels rolls, toilet paper rolls, string, any green items or any other disposable items that we could use for these...it would be greatly appreciated. To be fair to all students, all items collected will be placed in a general collection for all children to use. I wonder if we can catch one???
- Potato Fun - Please send in one potato for your child to do a quick study on the food of the Irish by Monday 3/16. We will be reading Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato, and doing a few quick observations and activities in the name of the Irish.
- Dental health month - We are wrapping up our unit on Dental Health this week. Ask the children about our egg experiment! Please have your child return their tooth brushing chart back to school this week. No worries if you lost it...trying to instill healthy brushing habits and responsibility of keeping track.
- DIBELS - Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Coming home with your child starting next week will be a one minute reading assignment for each night of homework. This is a reading assessment that is used to help determine your child's fluency and proficiency of reading on grade level. This type of testing is completed each year in every grade level to provide both you and I data on your child's reading ability based on a predetermined standard. The assignment I send home will be an example of what the students will encounter when tested in May. A base line assessment was done in January. Please have your child complete the assignment each night and return on Fridays. A list of directions will come home with the first week's assignment. We will continue to practice with samples through April.
- Romeo and Lou - Romeo and Lou are out for a second round of visits. If your child chooses to participate, Romeo and Lou will be visiting for another time with your child. If you get a chance, take a look at the journal included...Romeo and Lou have had quite a few awesome adventures. A lot of fun for the children and the class.
- Book It - March is the last month for Book it! The March requirement came home in your child's folder. The Book It was 2 shamrocks. This children will have the entire month to complete, March 31st. If you need another copy, please let me know.
- Magnificent Marshmallow Manners-We will continue with marshmallow manners in March. We problem solved on a good way to organize and count our marshmallows today as a class. We have earned 75 marshmallows!!! When we reach 100, the students will earn a hot chocolate and movie time! Encourage your children to earn those marshmallows!!
- Read to the class - Starting this month, I will have a sign up sheet for students to read a book to the class during storytime. I will encourage the children to pick a book that they can read fluently and that they have practiced at least once or twice at home. I also encourage their book choice not take more than 10 minutes. Many of the children look forward to doing this, BUT forget to take the time to practice their book choice. It is such a treat to see children grow in their confidence reading when they get to be "the teacher". I encourage you to help your child practice the book and their teacher voice when it is their turn. This week's readers include: Soleil (Tuesday), Cory (Wednesday), Payton (Thursday), Mia (Friday), and Robert (Monday). See pictures below of some of our guest readers.
- Flashlight Fridays -What a fun time we had on Friday with our flashlights!!! The children had such a fun time with their books and flashlights. A little something to break up our long dark winter months. Please feel free to send them in if you haven't done so. I think we will continue this for a few more Fridays. See pictures below!
Here's looking forward to spring sometime soon!!!!!!
Mrs. Nagy
Jacob and Cory hiding and reading!
A crew of boys sharing a book and their lights.
Alex and Ella having fun with flashlights!
Jazzy reading Dr. Seuss.
Ryan reading Fly Guy!
First graders being reverent at Morning Gathering.
Special schedules
B Music and Technology
C Gym and Art
MATH
We are learning Mental Math...when it comes to +10/-10 to a given number. Since the children have demonstrated mastery in base ten, this is the next step. The students should be able to +10/-10 "mentally" with a little practice. We have talked about how the ones "stays the same" and the ten digit is the only number that changes. We have used hundreds chart to make a visual for my hands on learners, but the children should be getting comfortable with mental math, too! We will spend a short amount of time on number patterns and number tables. We will hopefully move on to 3 dimensional shapes/solid figures. This is a lot of fun, the children really like this unit of study.
We are working with fact families and missing addends. We will continue to compare numbers with greater than/less than and write our own word problems and clues to learn not only the number but how numbers present themselves in complex real world situations where reading and number sense go hand in hand.
We will also continue to work on graphing, addition and subtraction with number families and missing addends. The adding and subtracting will begin to be through 20. Please continue to work on flash cards at home! Subtraction is a BIG stumbling block for most children. We are working on learning tools to solve subtraction/addition problems (i.e. doubles, doubles +1, counting on, making tens) These tools do not help with fluency in math facts, they help the child understand the concept, but practice is the only way to becoming proficient in facts. The children will be assessed in fluency up to 20 on the next report card, in order to determine where we need to see improvement. Fluency is very important for success in 2nd grade.
Phonics
We will review many of the items we learned about before taking on the IOWA tests. We have not had time to work on Phonics since the testing began. We will review suffixes -ly, -ness, -less. We will also review digraph -ai and -ay. They both make the long a sound, but ai is found in the initial or medial position, and -ay is usually found in the final position. We learned combination er and ar, and the sounds they make. We will also learn digraph ch- which all the children are quite familiar with, as well as combination qu-.
Compound words and contractions will continue to be a focus, too!