First Grade News
10.28.19
Community Building
The First Grade C.A.R.E.S.!
Over the past several weeks, your children have been engaged in conversations and activities related to developing an understanding of what it means to cooperate, be assertive, and be responsible. It has been wonderful to watch students internalize these behaviors and then act accordingly in the classroom, on the playground, and throughout the school. Keep up the great work first graders!
This week our focus will turn to the fourth letter in C.A.R.E.S....E for Empathy. To introduce the concept, we'll be getting a little help from our friend Elmo!
Literacy
Word Work
This week we will begin differentiating our spelling instruction and sharing students across our three classrooms. Depending on your child's needs, they will be working on developing their understanding of either...
- Short vowels within CVC words (i.e., rat, pet, fox), or
- Digraphs within CVC words (i.e., that, whim, chop, ship, sock). Students in these groups will learn that digraphs "stick together" to make one sound, even though there are two letters.
All three word work groups will be engaging in activities to promote generalization of their targeted skill (i.e., building words with magnetic letters and sentence and word dictation). Be sure to ask your child who their word work teacher is and what they are working on!
Writing
- Sound words,
- Exact action words, and
- Speech bubbles.
For each new type of author's craft, students will see it used in various mentor texts, consider 'why' authors choose to use it (its purpose), and have an opportunity to try it out on their own. Then, hopefully, students will begin to incorporate the various types of craft moves in their own authentic writing!
Reading
This week we will begin our formal guided reading group instruction. At this time, we have examined students' reading needs and placed them in small groups accordingly. Just like in word work, we share students for guided reading so your child may be receiving their small group reading instruction from any one of us. Please keep in mind our reading groups are flexible and will change in response to students' needs. If you have any questions regarding your child's guided reading instruction, please don't hesitate to reach out to your child's classroom teacher.
In our mini lessons this week, we will fill up our Readers' Toolboxes, which are getting pretty full! We will look specifically at how readers monitor their reading by asking themselves,
- "Does it look right?"
- "Does it sound right?"
- "Does it make sense?"
To end the week, we'll review all the strategies in our toolboxes and reiterate how important it is as readers to utilize all the strategies in our toolboxes. We don't want to rely on only one or two!
Math
Science
SMC Students
Halloween
Upcoming Events
- Whole School Meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 29 from 7:55-8:20. The purpose of this meeting is to introduce students to the different Zones of Regulation.
- Ms. Lizotte's Solo Week, Monday, Nov. 11 - Friday, Nov. 15
- Green Mountain Sing, Friday, Nov. 15 from 7:55-8:20 (With a very special guest)
- Montshire Museum Field Trip - Wednesday, Nov. 20 from 8:00 - 3:30
- Thanksgiving Break - No School for Students, Nov. 25 - 29
Permission slips due by November 1, 2019.
Hiawatha First Grade
Marcy Morgan ~ Karen Harvey ~ Jessica Pepin
mmorgan@ewsd.org ~ kharvey@ewsd.org ~ jpepin@ewsd.org
Location: Hiawatha Elementary School, Hiawatha Avenue, Essex Junction, VT, USA