I hope everyone had a nice long weekend and was able to enjoy the beautiful weather! It looks like we'll get a few more days of it :) Please take a few minutes to read some reminders and classroom updates!
Thank you to all the parents who signed up for spring conferences! If you have not yet, please follow this link to schedule a time. Conferences are a great time to collaborate and discuss your child's progress. Please remember each conference is 15 minutes long per student. If you think we will need a longer time slot, please contact me directly.
Our next school spirit day will be this Friday, February 24th. Student Council voted to have this day be "Dress Up Fancy Day." We look forward to a fun spirit day while dressing to impress!
Change Wars is going on this week! It is a wonderful opportunity for our school to raise funds to provide books for schools in need. Students can bring loose change to help our class win this challenge and Scholastic will match coin-for-coin collected. Change wars began today, Tuesday, February 21st and will continue until Monday, February 27th. The winning class will be announced at the end of the day on Monday.
First Place Prize: The entire class will be able to pick a book from the book fair.
Second & Third Place Prize: Each classroom will receive a book for their classroom library.
Reading
Students are working on asking questions before, during, and after they read. This is a great target to practice at home. Students who are asking questions will better understand the text they are reading. For example, if the front cover had a picture of a fish underwater, a good question might be, "What kind of fish is this?" or "Do these fish live in fresh or salt water?" Students are also working on identifying text features in informational texts. Students have been looking for bold words, headings, table of contents, glossaries, diagrams, etc. Students should be able to identify these special features and explain how they help us understand the text. While reading texts, students are looking for connections - between words, sections, and also between the text and themselves, or text to text. When comparing and contrasting texts students should be able to tell how the two texts are the same and how they are different.
Writing
Students have been working on writing information explanatory paragraphs. We just finished researching amazing plants and their parts in order to write an info piece related to a Scholastic News article. Students are currently working on an information piece about why we celebrate President's Day. Our first grade goals is to have a topic sentence, at least 2 facts about the topic and a conclusion. The core four is a tool we use to help students create strong topic and conclusion sentences. We will be revisiting narrative, opinion and informational/explanatory writing in trimester 3.
Math
First graders just wrapped up Unit 4 in math and took an assessment last week. This unit covered number sense with place value, time, and money. Students have made great progress! You should find your child's Unit 4 test in their take home folder this week. Please review these with your child and discuss any mistakes they've made. This week we are beginning Unit 5. In this unit, students are expected to compare two 2-digit numbers based on place value using the symbols <, >, and =. They also will be organizing, representing, and interpreting data with up to 3 categories and adding within 100. When adding within 100 students are expected to add a 2-digit number with a single digit number (85+6) where they can count on, or adding a 2 digit number with a multiple of 10 (72+30). Counting on by 10's is a skill we practiced in unit 4 so it should be an easy transition.
Science
We have been investigating light and sound this week! We realized that in order to make a sound, something must vibrate. We discussed sound waves and how they change as pitch changes. We also begun exploring how we can send messages with light and sound (like ambulance lights and sirens or a crosswalk sign). Our challenge last week was to play a game of Simon Says without speaking!! Students played a game of "Secret Simon" using just light and sound to send messages. We had so much fun!
Social Studies
We have continued to discuss important Americans. We recently honored George Washington and Abraham Lincoln with President's Day and learned how influential they were to our country!
February 21 - Cafe Zupas Fundraising Night
February 21-27 - Change Wars
February 24 - Read to Succeed Six Flags Reading Logs Due
February 24 - Dress Up Fancy Day
February 27 - March 1 - PTO Book Fair
February 28 - Early Release (Dismissal 2:00PM)
March 1 - Ivy Hall Celebrates, 7PM
March 3 - NO SCHOOL (Institute Day)
March 6 - NO SCHOOL
March 9 - Early Release (Dismissal 2:00PM)(PT Conferences)
March 10 - NO SCHOOL (PT Conferences)
March 14 - PTO Special Lunch (Pre-Order Required)
March 27-April 4 - NO SCHOOL (Spring Break)
