Parent News
Mrs. Fitzgerald's Class Newsletter
Upcoming Week: Reader's Workshop
This upcoming week we will be putting our heads together to tackle a very hard strategy: synthesizing. Students will be learning how to take information from two sources and combining them for a bigger and better understanding. We will start by modeling and working on synthesis with videos, then move on to text. Students will be practicing this through the next couple of weeks. Pulling from two texts is a great skill for many years to come and it's also a great testing strategy!
Speaking of testing, students will hear me mention iStep and iRead in daily conversation. This is a way for them to get use to hearing and talking about their questions, fears, or concerns. Talking about it will ease their fear come test time. We also talk about strategies for good test taking.
Please make sure that your child keeps reading every night at home. We will be starting book clubs next week, so they may have some reading overflow to homework. For book clubs, students are expected to take notes of their thinking and questions to talk about when their group meets.
Upcoming Week: Writer's Workshop
Our research is well underway. Students have now started taking notes from books and online sources. As a class we learned about digital citizenship and being responsible when online.
Next week students will continue to take notes and synthesize the information from multiple sources. They will also start to learn how to take their notecards and turn them into a main idea and detailed paragraph after organizing their thoughts. The writing of our paragraphs isn't far away. If your students is able to or wants to research online, printing those articles is helpful.
As a class we sent our first correspondence to our Italian pen pals, introducing ourselves. Next week I will ask students to decide on a school topic or place that they would like to share through video with our pen pals. They will start recording and blogging to our pen pals. I have started a blog through Seesaw as well as Edublog. I'm playing around with both, trying to see which is the best for our long distance communication. If you have any questions, please let me know.
1st Grade Buddies
Upcoming Week: Math Workshop
Diving into decimals! We will begin learning about decimals in the place value system this week. Decimals can be hard and complicated for many students. We will use manipulatives, talk about them through money terms, as well as add/subtract.
We will also continue to take multiplication timed tests, so keep practicing at home. We have been doing math warm ups at the the beginning of our math block everyday that cover multiple areas, including number sense, telling time, rounding, and so on. We are also continuing to blend in our problem solving time into our block. All of these concepts are so important for students to be well prepared and have a strong understanding of math concepts and why we do what we do as mathematicians.
Specials Next Week:
Library -Tuesday - Please remind student to bring books from home! We have several students forgetting every week!
T - Music
W - PE
Th - Tech
Fri - Art
Weather
Have an amazing week!!
Reaching Mrs. Fitz
Email: tammi_fitzgerald@nobl.k12.in.us
Phone: 317-776-0840
Twitter: @fitz3rdgr