Miss Foster's Fabulous Firsties
January 2021 Month in Review
Life in 1st Grade
Power Words/Phonics: The phonics skills we are learning are becoming increasingly more challenging as the year progresses. Please continue to practice daily at home (the skills we are working on are always listed on the calendar on my classroom website and can be found on the phonics activities we complete on Seesaw) and we will continue to practice daily at school. Remember to review the phonics skills since words that follow these phonics patterns pop up in books often.
Additionally, your child is assigned his/her individualized power words on Wednesdays. We practice them daily at school, but it is always a good idea to practice them at home too. If you're looking for fun ways to practice at home there are tons of ideas on my classroom website or feel free to reach out to me for ideas.
Reading: We have been working hard on summarizing a story, not telling details from every page, but using a few statements to describe the beginning, middle and end of a text. Good readers are able to determine the crucial information and what parts are just "fluff". We have worked hard on making meaningful connections between fiction and nonfiction books. Furthermore, we have learned how to identify the problem in a story, recall the important details that lead to the solution and determine the solution for the problem at the end of a book.
Next, we will go back to review visualizing with some fun poetry. We look for descriptive words in the poems to help us make accurate visualizations. Finally, as we move towards the end of the 2nd trimester we will move towards digging deeper into the text to determine important ideas. We will dig for information that tells the author’s message as well as important facts within the text.
Writing: The students have been doing such a wonderful job with opinion writing! It has been a joy to read their pieces. Some opinion pieces have already come home, but look for more to come home soon as we are working on finishing up a bunch of them. The students have done a really nice job stating their opinion and making sure they have solid reasons or examples to back up their opinion.
After this, we will begin learning how to write poetry and descriptive pieces. We will use what we have learned from reading poetry to help guide our writing.
Math: We are still working on adding and subtracting within 20. We are working on using our addition and subtraction skills with story problems and honing in on what the story is saying to pick out words that tell us if we should add or subtract. One of our goals is to have students learn how to make a 10 to add or subtract in order to add and subtract using mental math and to see the patterns that arise around the number 10. If your child is still struggling to remember all of the different ways to make 10, I encourage you to practice this at home (the song at the bottom of this newsletter is a fun way to practice). Once we finish this unit, we will move into a unit on measurement.
Science and Social Studies: We are finishing up learning about different states of matter. We have learned how to identify solids, liquids, and gasses. We've learned about their properties, how we use them in our daily lives and where we find them each in the world around us. Once we finish up this unit, we will start a new social studies unit on the country of Germany!
Day 100
Valentine's Day
Cold Weather
Scholastic Book Clubs
Happy Reading :)
Library Books
Snack Time/Water Bottles
For sanitary reasons, the water fountains in our school have been disconnected. There are touchless water bottle filling stations throughout the school with filters to allow students to refill their water bottles. Please be sure your child is staying hydrated by sending a water bottle to school each day.
Lunch is not served on early dismissal days. Please be sure to send a substantial snack on early dismissal days.
Mark Your Calendar
January 22nd - Spirit Day: wear your favorite sports jersey
January 27th - Early Dismissal
February 5th - Valentines are due at school
February 12th - Valentine's Day Celebration
February 12th - Early Dismissal
February 15th - No School
February 26th - End of 2nd Trimester
Videos of the Month
Contact Miss Foster
Email: hfoster@boyertownasd.org
Website: https://www.boyertownasd.org/Domain/658
Location: 2547 Big Rd, Frederick, PA, USA
Phone: 610-473-1726