April Newsletter
Mrs. Oberacker's Class
Moosehill Field Trip
Moosehill Field Trip
Moosehill Field Trip
April
I am really hoping for the warm weather to get here soon. The kids really need to get out more and run around. Luckily it was not too cold for our field trip to Moosehill, which was another huge success. We do this field trip each year and you would be surprised how much knowledge the kids gain from it.
In literacy we are on our fifth story in the unit, which is I'm a Caterpillar. We are going to stretch out this story until next week. The extra music rehearsal took up a lot of time this week so we could use the extra time to work on the phonic skills. You may have also noticed that the skills have become more challenging. Adding inflected endings to short vowel words takes lots of practice and reminding. This week's phonics skills are bossy r words with er, ir and ur and contractions. Our theme for this unit has been change, how things change all around us. This story focuses on how things change in nature. April is also poetry month so we will be reading different poetry.
The last couple of weeks we have been working on our spring writing assignments. They wrote and typed up a short writing project using their five senses. They did an amazing job using describing words to write this paper. They also wrote a paragraph about how spring is a wonderful season. We worked on paragraph writing with their three favorite things. Next week, we will begin our writing about how to take care of the earth. I am sure you noticed how wonderful they are doing in their journal writing. They have progressed tremendously from the word of the day journal in September.
In math we just finished up chapter nine, which was ordering and comparing numbers. This week I introduced adding with tens ex. 34+10. Next week we will begin Topic 10, which is adding tens and ones. Please keep practicing on Sumdog and if you haven't give it a try. Another great website is Xtra math.
In science we have many things going on. We are learning all about weather and the water cycle. We are continuing to talk about the change of seasons caused by the earth and sun. In addition we have Earth Day this month. After vacation we have a wonderful woman coming to present to whole first grade, who I call the Ocean lady.
March Madness was a huge hit!!! Congrats to Carolyn Powers our big winner! I'm sure parents were thrilled being Villanova alumni. It was really was so much fun and the learning is surprisingly endless from this activity. Take a look at the picture below.
I would like to talk a little about behavior. As you all know this class is a wonderful class filled with amazing personalities, however it has been a challenging year. We have been in school for 135 days of school and behavior continues to be an issue. Listening, following directions and simply respectful behavior is something we have to work on everyday. Simple routines are still not followed. Reminders are needed everyday to do things such as coming to the rug for calendar, sitting down and being quiet and respectful. Yes most of them need reminders to sit. I have given specific directions about no toys at their desk probably about 100 times and yet I will find them hiding in
their desks or honestly just playing with them with no thought. I am mentioning this to you because I continue to waist precious teaching time on discipline. There is so much more I would like to accomplish with your children and there are so many fun activities coming up. Please remind your child to try their best to listen, follow directions and the classroom rules. Your support goes along way. You know how much I care about all your children, I just want to end the year with as much positivity as possible.
Thank you as usual for your continued support. Don't forget the half day on Friday, April 15th before vacation. I hope everyone has a wonderful April vacation.
Jo-Anne Oberacker First Grade Teacher Elm Street School
Email: joberacker@walpole.k12.ma.us
Location: 415 Elm Street, Walpole, MA, United States
Phone: (508) 734-0922