Mrs. Asher's First Grade News
Week of January 11, 2016
Sight Words of the Week
These are the sight words your child learned to read and spell this week. These sight words are common words that your child should be able to read in a snap (without sounding them out). Knowing sight words helps your child's fluency and comprehension (because they won't be dedicating so much time and attention to decoding words).
find, if, know, first, its, many
Reading
- We learned to read and spell words with the silent 'e' at the end, words with 'ee', and words with the short 'e' sound with two consonant blends at the end such as in the words: these, keep, and next.
- We reviewed and practiced using the "chunk it" strategy when we get stuck on a word. Usually the chunk it strategy works best on longer multisyllabic words where you might sound it out in chunks instead of letter by letter.
- We also reviewed and practiced the "flip the sound" strategy when we get stuck on a word. With this strategy if a student sounds out a word and it doesn't sound right or make sense, he or she looks for letters that have more than one sound and try sounding it out again using a different sound for that letter. For instance, the letter 'y' has 3 sounds /y/, /e/, and /i/.
- We also discussed how important it is to go back and restart a sentence when we have taken a while figuring out a word so our reading sounds smooth and it helps our comprehension by keeping the sentence or the thought together.
Writing
As we continued to learn how to write informational "all-about" books we reviewed text features that are often found in nonfiction texts (headings, diagrams, photographs, table of contents, captions, glossaries, bold words). Students have been researching an animal of their choice using a great website called Pebble Go and taking notes. They took notes on what their animal eats, where it lives, and what it looks like.We worked on including a table of contents and an introduction in our books this week.
Math
This week in math students continued to explore 2-dimensional plane shapes by telling about their defining attributes (number of sides, number of corners or vertices, flat, closed or open, straight or round, and if it has parallel sides). They played "Guess My Shape" with a partner where they hid a shape and described its attributes to their partner to see if their partner could guess what it was. They also practiced making composite shapes where they put shapes together to make other shapes. They used shape blocks and figured out they could make hexagons using many different shapes put together.
Science
This week with Mrs. Landmark students got explore with volcanic rocks (basalt, tuff, and scoria rocks). They observed the hardness of the rocks by rubbing them together and on paper to see if they little bits of dust particles came off. They also observed how the rocks changed when they were placed in water. They noticed that some seemed to change color or became darker when wet. They also noticed that the scoria rocks make bubbles where the air was trapped in the holes of the scoria rocks. They enjoyed watching video clips about rocks on www.lightupeducation.com.
Extra! Extra!
- Please don't forget to use the sign up genius link that was sent out to sign up for your student led conference. I know your child is looking forward to telling you all about what they do at school and what they have learned this year. You will also have time to meet with me at this conference. Here is the link to sign up: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0545afad29a6fa7-parentstudenttea
- We have a classroom wish list on Amazon.com. Just search for the wish list using my email address: jasher@wcpss.net
- This is our class website full of valuable information and educational websites your child can access at home. http://mrsashersclass.weebly.com
If you have any questions please feel free to write a note or send me an email at jasher@wcpss.net
Important Dates
- January 18 - No School (Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
- Week of February 1st - Student led conferences
- February 12 - Early Release