November 7th-11th Newsletter

First Grade Newsletter

November 7-11th

Literacy

Reading Street: Unit 1 Week 6

Main selection:  Animal Park

Weekly Question:  What can we learn about wild animals by watching them?
Amazing Words: 
High-Frequency Words: home, into, many, them
Phonics Target: Short u: u; Final Consonant Blends

Comprehension skills:  Cause and Effect
Comprehension strategy: Text Structure

Genres:  Literary Nonfiction
Reading Street Parent Connection:

• Unit 1 Family Talk letter for concept conversation starters and 6 week overview of the unit. 
• Family Times gives various activities that can be done at home that connect to the concept we're learning this week.
• Practice reading phonics and sight words for Unit 1, Week 6 (last column only).   

Fundations: Unit 4 (Week 2 of 2)

Students will learn about...

• The letter ‘a’ followed by the double ll sounds like /o/ (i.e., fall). 
• Observe the form of a narrative story (character, setting, and main events) 
• Story: The Big Mess
• Sight words: was, one, said

Math in Focus

Chapter 4

Subtraction Facts to 10 

Thinking Skills
- Analyzing parts and a whole

Problem Solving Strategies 
- Guess and check

Objectives

      - Take away to subtract
                                        - Count on OR back to subtract
                                        - Use number bonds to subtract
                                        - Write and solve subtraction sentences.
                                        - Tell subtraction

*

Science

We will not be starting a new science unit until after Thanksgiving. We will continue with some Science mini-lessons while our main focus is on Social Studies. 
Our science learning is embedded in our reading program. This week we will be focusing on observing wild animals to gather information about them.

Social Studies

Thanksgiving Unit
We will be working on developing an understanding of life as a colonist and a Wampanoag Native American. We’ll start by learning about each of their homes.
Second Steps—We began our Empathy Unit last week with identifying feelings. This week we are learning the similarities and differences of emotional expressions and body language in specific situations.

 Specialists

MONDAY: Music 

TUESDAY: NO SCHOOL!

WEDNESDAY: Music

THURSDAY: P.E.

FRIDAY: NO SCHOOL!

Writing Workshop

Six Traits of Writing~ Ideas

     This week we will continue the steps to writing our very first story. Each student has picked a topic and finished their Five Finger Planners. Students will be focusing on putting their five most important ideas into complete sentences. Once they have written their five sentences, they will focus on putting the sentences into a story format. Our focus when writing complete sentences is that our sentences make sense, have an uppercase at the beginning and punctuation at the end, and have spacing between words.

Framing Your Thoughts ~ Connector and Predicate Expander of Where

     This week students will be reviewing the role the connector ('and') plays in a sentence and the predicate expander of where. Students will practice using these parts in a sentence during literacy centers and convention writing time. 

This week’s mini-lessons will include…

• Use uppercase at the beginning & punctuation at the end
• Use spacing between words
• How to write an introduction and closing
• Writers reread their writing to see if it makes sense and stays on topic.

                   Parent Reminders

1. Library day was today. Please make sure you help your
child remember to bring in their
book for next Monday.
2. No school on Tuesday (11/8) and Friday

(11/11).
3. Unit 1 Reading Cards due NEXT

Tuesday (11/15).
3. Math—Please continue to work on number formation at home. The students are writing a lot of numbers backwards, which is confusing them when trying to solve their math problems. Thanks for your support!
4. Support our Troops! There are bins in the lobby for donations. A notice went home about it last week. Please consider donating!
5. Homework—Due to the nature of this crazy week, we will have less homework. I’ll send home Math homework on Monday, no homework on Thursday and the Reading log is due on Thursday this week.
6. Just a heads up…I will be attending a
Professional Development Conference
outside of school on Wednesday and Thursday.

Have a great week! 

Miss Biggar

Homework for the Week

 Daily

Reading Words (Phonics/Sight)

Reading Log (with discussion questions)
Number/Letter Formation

Monday:  Reading Log (due on Thursday)
     Math (due on Thursday)
Wednesday: Dialogue Journal (due on Thursday)