Miss Heaton's Class Newsletter
April 2014
What's happening in first grade
April showers bring May flowers! Hopefully this nice Spring weather is here to stay!
In Math, we are learning about 10 more, 10 less, 1 more, and 1 less. We are also learning to skip count by twos, fives, and tens. We first learned skip counting by twos using our hands and we now know how to count by twos. We figured out that if we count the number of feet, eyes, ears, etc. on a person we will be counting by twos. We will be focusing on counting by fives and tens in the near future!
In Reading, we are going to be learning about inferring. Students will have to use their background knowledge (schema) and clues from the text to make an inference. We will start out with some fun activities to get us to start making inferences. The first activity that the students will be doing is called "trashcan inferring." In this activity, I will bring in a trashcan of random things that I have collected. Then, the students will have to look at the items and infer why I had these items in my trashcan. In the next activity, students will have to make inferences about commercials. Finally, we will be working our way into making inferences with text. This can be a tricky concept for first grade, but I have confidence that this will help with the students' comprehension of a text.
In Writing, we will be learning about poetry! At first, we will look at different forms of poetry and what poetry is. Then, we will be looking at some famous poems and what they mean. Finally, we will be composing our own poems! We will be writing acrostic poems first using our names. When we do this, I will have the students bring in pictures of themselves or things that they like so we can glue them to cereal boxes and hang them from the ceiling! Later, we will write a diamond poem on something that we are interested in. We will also be having a poem of the week which will be fun!
Math
You can watch this video on counting by twos with your children, they love it!
Inferring
Poetry
Exploring China!
Changes to the Calendar
April 7 is the end of the 3rd Quarter
April 17 remains a school day that will operate on a K-12 early dismissal schedule
April 18- no school
April 21 is a regular school day
April 23 is when report cards are distributed
June 3 & June 4 are regular school days (no longer early dismissal days)
June 9 & June 10 have been added as school days for students and will operate on a K-12 early dismissal schedule