Sunday, February 28, 2016

February 29th!

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend and were able to spend some time outdoors on Sunday!  Below is a sneak peak at our learning for the upcoming week!

Word Wall/ Spelling:  Our 5 new words are: bed, though, away, over, & until.  This week we will work on words with the controlled 'r' sound or 'bossy r'.  We will learn that the 'r' does all of the talking in words such as:  her, girl, hurt...  The vowel is there, but you cannot really hear it!  We will practice reading and writing many different words with 'bossy r' this week!

Reading:  We will be reading lots of books by Dr. Seuss this week in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday! Wednesday, March 2nd is Crazy Hat Day at Eagle!  Your child can wear a silly hat or he/she can make one at school.  Also, please send in any books that you have at home by Dr. Seuss.  Be sure your child's name is written on the inside.  We are looking forward to having fun while reading these silly rhyming stories all week!  We will be sure to make some fun crafts to go along with our Dr. Seuss theme.

Writing:  We are continuing our work on review writing.  This week we are learning that review writers do a lot of different things in their writing to convince readers to pay attention.  Review writers often have catchy beginnings, they use comparisons, and they sometimes add small moment stories too.  Try reading some reviews at home. You can read reviews about movies, restaurants, books, toys... See what you notice!

Math:  We will be wrapping up our unit about skip counting by 2s, 5s, & 10s up to 120!  We are noticing many different patterns in the rows and columns within our number charts.  We are also working on filling in missing numbers in the different rows and columns.

Reminders:  We are reading The World According to Humphrey each afternoon.  The children are loving this book!  Our classroom hamster, Humphrelina (named by the children!) will go home with families each weekend.  I will contact you to let you know when your weekend is getting close.  If there is a conflict we can switch with another family.  Thank you for your support!

Upcoming Dates:  Thursday, March 17th:  Eating of the Greens Classroom Celebration!  A note will be sent home soon :)

Have a great week!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Eileen Browne

Sunday, February 21, 2016

February 22nd

I hope you all had a terrific week off with family and friends!  Below is a sneak peek at some of our activities for the week.

Word Wall/Spelling:  Our new words for this week are:  both, only, who, done, & after.  We currently have over 100 words on our Word Wall!  Our spelling words for this week will be words that go along with our Weather Unit.   The children will pick eight words that they want to work on from our weather words chart in the classroom.  We will go back to working on a specific skill next week.

Reading:  We will continue to discuss 'character traits' this week as readers.  While reading stories we will pay attention to what characters say and how they act.  This tells us a lot about who the character is.  We are learning that 'adjectives' are words that can describe some of the characters we are reading about.  We are also learning that characters sometimes change throughout the story.

Writing:  We are beginning to write persuasive reviews as first grade writers.  This week we will practice reading reviews about toys, restaurants, books...  We will notice what the review writers do to convince the reader of his/her opinion.  Try reading some reviews at home this week!  Notice how many 'stars' were given during the review and if you agree or disagree.   You can check out some reviews of toys and games online.  Amazon often has many reviews!

Math:  We will work on reading, writing, counting, and skip counting to 120 this week!  As first graders, we will skip count by 2s, 5s, & 10s.  We will also practice some additional tricky skip counting as well for fun! :)  During our math activities, we will work with charts to 120 and notice patterns in the rows and columns.

Reminders:  We will be celebrating the 100th Day of School this week!  Please wear a decorated
t-shirt and send in collections of 100 items.  We will work with our collections throughout the week and send them home on Friday.

Thank you for your ongoing support!  I'm looking forward to a fun week in first grade :)

Sincerely,
Eileen Browne

Sunday, February 7, 2016

February 8th!

I hope you all had a terrific weekend and enjoyed some Super Bowl fun!  This will be a quick and busy week before we head into February break.  Below are some highlights of our learning ~

Word Wall & Spelling:  This week we are adding 5 new words to our growing World Wall:  great, there, right, sure, & our.  During spelling, we are working on a review of long vowels a, i, o, & u with silent 'e' on the end.  Ex:  same, trade, time, ride, rope, poke, mule, tune...  We will review that rules of sneaky Mrs. E!  You can see her on the end of many words, but you can't hear her! ;)

Reading: We will continue working in our small guided reading groups and rotating through Daily Five Stations each day.  This week we will talk about character traits while reading stories.  We will learn more about characters by what they say and how they act in various stories.  Are the characters helpful, mean, brave, strong, shy...?  How do we know that from reading stories?  We will also focus on friendship and love as we prepare for Valentine's Day! :)

Writing: The children are doing a terrific job writing about one another's collections.  We are trying hard to select our favorite pieces from each collection that we judge. The next step that we are working on is writing lots of great reasons why our selections are the best!  We will continue working with comparing our collections this week as writers.  The children are loving this unit so far.

Math:  We just wrapped up unit 6 and are moving into unit 7 ~ counting, skip counting, and finding number patterns on charts up to 120!  This is a great unit as we get ready to celebrate our 100th Day of School just after February break.  We will also continue practicing our addition and subtraction facts each day.

Reminders:  Thursday, February 11th is a half day with 11:45 dismissal.  Please send in a note with any changes in dismissal routines.  Friday, February 12th is our Valentine's Day celebration.  Please have your child bring in a decorated mailbox and his/her Valentines for each member of our class.  Please do not attach treats to the cards.  We will be having some treats during the day! Also, this is a great day to dress FANCY! :)  We are looking forward to a fun day while celebrating all of the wonderful friendships in our first grade classroom.

I am looking forward to a great week of learning and fun!  Also, have a wonderful week off with family and friends.

Sincerely,
Eileen Browne