First Grade News

Dear Parents,

    It was so nice to see many of you at Curriculum Night. I am looking forward to a great year together!
    This week has been very exciting since we began our new unit on apples! Apples were the focus of our reading activities for the week. We read the story, Ten Apples Up on Top. The children then had fun creating a picture of themselves with ten apples on top of their heads. Very cute!! We also looked at different apple poems and practiced putting the sentences of these poems in correct order after they had been mixed up. The children also had fun making stain glass apples using construction and tissue paper.
    In phonics, we continued to work on sentence structure. We discussed and identified the first and last words in sentences. The children then had the opportunity to cut up words that were in random order and glue the words onto paper in the correct order to make complete sentences. By doing this, the children are learning to produce sentences. They are looking at placing capital letters at the beginning of sentences, putting periods at the end, and also identifying the first and last words in sentences. We also continued to work with words that rhyme. Hearing and identifying words that rhyme, or sound alike at the end, helps the children realize that a word is made up of a series of sounds. When listening to these units of sound, they become more sensitive to individual sound and clusters of sound. We also focused on writing words while listening closely to the sounds that are heard. As a class we discussed how in some words you can only hear some of the sounds. The children then looked at different picture cards and tried to write the names of these pictures while sounding out the words. They did such a great job! The children are going to be super readers and writers!!!!!
    This week we also continued to work on our reading comprehension program. We first read the story, When I Was Little. Then the children were introduced to "Turn To Your Partner." This is a strategy that is used to allow the children to share what they are learning from the story before sharing ideas with the class. We will continue to work on this strategy throughout the year.
    In math, we continued to work on tallying. The children were introduced to tallying in their kindergarten classrooms. We did many different activities in which the children we asked to read numbers represented by tally marks and make tally marks to represent numbers. We also began our math explorations this week. These explorations allow children to explore with manipulative materials while working in small groups. Since the children have already been working in centers, it was easy for them to follow the procedures when doing math explorations. They are doing such a great job!!
    This week we also began our new homework routine. Thank you for helping the children become more comfortable with the routine of putting their homework into their blue folders and returning homework to school the next day.

*Reminder*
Please sign and return the back page of the parent handbook to school if you have not done so already.

Have a great weekend!!!!!!

Ann Melissaratos