Miss Foster's Fabulous First Grade
February 2021 Month in Review
Life in 1st Grade
It's hard to believe the 2nd trimester is coming to a close already!
Power Words/Phonics: I know I mentioned this in the last newsletter, but I think it is work reiterating...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 really hard on learning about the different parts of nonfiction texts. Next, we will work on making connections between fiction and nonfiction texts.
We will also be working 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”.
Finally, as we move towards the end of first grade 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. Additionally, we'll become "reading detectives" as we learn how to infer using clues from the text and pictures.
Math: We are currently working on finishing up a unit on addition and subtraction. We have been working on adding and subtracting numbers within 20, as well as learning how to relate subtraction to addition and think of numbers in 10s. So, we are learning that to solve 15-8, we could start at 8 and count up until we get to 15 or we could think of 15 as 10 and 5 and we know that 10-8 is 2 and 2+5 is 7 so the answer is 7. We've learned LOTS of strategies to solve these types of problems and the students are honing their skills with each of the strategies and deciding which is the most efficient for them.
Once we finish up our addition and subtraction module, we'll be moving onto a module about measuring and collecting and interpreting data. The students will practicing measuring a variety of objects, compare the lengths and order the objects from longest to shortest based on their measurements. We'll also learn how to collect data or and organize our data on multiple different types of graphs in order to interpret it.
Finally, we will begin to look at place value next and learn how to add and subtract two-digit numbers as well as learn how to tell time to the hour and half hour on an analog clock.
Writing: During our writing time we are finishing up our opinion writing unit. This has been one of my favorite units for writing because the students really get to share their voice. The students will learn how to state their opinions, give reasons to support their opinions and learn how to write effective closing statements to their arguments. It is so much fun to see what the students come up with as supporting arguments to support their opinions!
Next, we'll be writing "How to..." pieces. The students get to pick something they know how to do and write step-by-step directions that instruct someone else. We will connect this learning to what we know about following recipes or putting together a new toy! The children will also learn more about using sequential terms in their writing such as first, next, then and last.
Finally, we'll explore several types of poetry. We will use our senses to help us write and will learn about alliteration, similes, and what an onomatopoeia is!
iPads
Wednesdays
Scholastic Book Clubs
Read Across America
Monday, March 1st - Book Madness: we'll listen to several stories and vote on our favorites in a bracket type book competition until one book is named the best!
Tuesday, March 2nd - Door Decoration: We'll be drawing our favorite book cover. Zoomers will be able to hang their on their bedroom door and Roomers will have theirs hanging on our classroom door. Mr. Rohn will be posting pictures on social media, so be on the lookout for them!
Wednesday, March 3rd - Read-A-Thon: The teachers have been working hard to compile a marathon read aloud day! More information to come on how to access the marathon read alouds all day on Wednesday.
Thursday, March 4th - Teacher Swap: Teachers will be swapping to read stories to different classes.
Friday, March 5th - Dress as your favorite book character! Your child is invited to dress up like his/her favorite book character for the day! Costumes must be school appropriate, cannot contain weapons and must not interfere with his/her ability to participate in learning.
Mark Your Calendars
March 8th - Spring Picture Day
March 10th - Report cards will be published on the Parent Portal
March 23rd - New Special - We will have Gym for the remainder of the year, please make sure your child is wearing comfortable shoes.
March 26th - Early Dismissal
March 29th - Early Dismissal
March 30th - April 5th - No School/Spring Break
Contact Miss Foster
Email: hfoster@boyertownasd.org
Website: https://www.boyertownasd.org/Domain/658
Location: 2547 Big Road, Frederick, PA, USA
Phone: 610-473-1726