The London Times
A Weekly Newsletter from Mrs. London's Class January 6-10
What Did We Learn This Week?
Language Arts
This week in language arts our phonics and spelling rule was -igh and -y at the end of the word. We practiced this with poetry, decodable readers, word sorts and our spelling words. In grammar we learned about plural nouns and homonyms. We also reviewed the comprehension strategy of compare and contrast by listening to two stories by Caralyn Buehner: Snowmen At Night and Snowmen at Work. We identified the story elements that were the same and different in each book and filled out our own Venn Diagram. On Wednesday, we celebrated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by watching a video on www.brainpopjr.com and also reading the book Martin's Big Words: The life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr by Doreen Rappaport. We talked about the impact that MLK had on the world, and we brainstormed ways that we could help make the world a better place. Each student then wrote about the way they would help make the world better and we took the writing and made it into a class book. In writer's workshop we started our new writing unit on Informational Writing. We discovered the elements that make fiction and non-fiction books different, and we brainstormed a topic we know a lot of information about to practice writing our first "all about" book.
Math
In math we finished chapter ten on calendar and time. We started chapter eleven which is all about data and graphs. Our math vocabulary is data, picture graph, bar graph, survey, tally mark, chart, pictograph, key, and line plot. We made picture graphs about our favorite animals, bar graphs to show how many boys and girls are in the class and what items we have in our desk, and took a class survey of our favorite colors. We learned the difference between a picture graph and a pictograph, and we also asked and answered questions using the data we collected from all of our different types of graphs.
Science
We began our unit on Matter this week by first learning about what matter is and what the different properties are of solids, liquids, and gas. We observed items in the classroom that were solid, watched what happened when liquid was poured from different shaped containers, and what happens to a balloon when it is filled with gas. We watched a video on www.brainpopjr. to review what we learned. We also wrote out the definitions of solid, liquid and gas and sorted pictures of each into the right category. We look forward to doing many hands on experiments in the weeks to come!
Hebrew
Dear 1st grade parents,
Tu Bishvat טו בשבט was celebrated in our class this past week with songs, stories, blessings over the fruit of the tree and with tasting dried fruits- a tradition of this holiday.
ARIOT introduced to us the letter ל (lamed) and to the following vocabulary:
ילד- boy (yeled)
ילדה- girl (yalda)
חולה- sick (choleh)
אוכל- eat (ochel)
חלה- challah bread (challah)
גלידה- ice cream (glida)
Shabbat Shalom,
Galia Sabbag
Jewish Studies
This week in Jewish Studies the students began piecing together a Torah family tree. They have already learned about so many important people that we wanted to be sure we could keep track of everyone! The students also had a chance to illustrate their own families to put in their Torahs.
Shabbat Shalom!
Ms. Solmson
Weekly Note from Mrs. London
Thank you to Erica Moss and Jeff Arron for being our class chaperones to the Jewish Home! Also thank you to all the parents who came to be apart of the field trip as well. I am sad to have missed the field trip but I heard that it went great!
We also loved having Noah Diamond's grandmother come to our class on Monday for Mystery Reader! I hope all of you enjoyed the long weekend, and I look forward to seeing your children on Tuesday! Shabbat Shalom!
Important Dates
Monday, January 20: No School
Wednesday, January 29: 100th Day of School!
Friday, February 21: Kabbalat Shabbat led by our class!