Happy New Year and Welcome Back! 

We are starting to get back into the routine this week. The kiddos are excited to start our new units in math and social studies.

Please Welcome Vinny to our classroom!

We are happy to have you join our class!

Daily 5-

The students are working on their reading stamina, reading snap words quickly, scooping up words to read like the talk and thinking about the story. 

They are building snap words, working on short and long vowel sounds and sentence building with capitals, spaces and ending marks. 

The kiddos have new activities for their See Saw journal and look forward to putting more of their writer's workshop and math learning on See Saw too. 

Writer's Workshop-

This is a review unit. Since we are learning about Geography during social studies, they get to write about a place. They will choose to write a personal narrative (small moment) piece or a non fiction book ( teaching book) about a place. Later in the unit they might write a "how to book" or an "opinion" piece as well. During Writer's Workshop they will work on the craft moves of a personal narrative and craft moves of a non fiction book. Conventions is always a focus during writing. They are encouraged to be a responsible writer- use spaces, tall short, hang bottom down letters, ending marks and spell snap words correctly by using the word wall. 

Math Workshop-

We have started Subtraction. They really enjoyed learning about Fact Families and noticing the pattern of writing Fact Families. We will focus on Subtraction and taking away throughout the unit. The biggest thing for them to remember is that the biggest number will always be first in a number sentence. We say that the biggest number wants to be the "line leader". They will also continue to work on basic math facts to 20 with their math center work by using dominoes, dice, cards, beans and counters. 

Social Studies: 

We started Geography today! They are very excited! We will have some project based learning near the end of this unit. I am excited to share more about this with them as we get through some of the first few lessons in our geography unit. Please review with your child any places (camping, state parks, site seeing places, vacation spots, other states, other countries) they may have visited (in Missouri, another state or country). Your reminder may help them during Writer's Workshop and Social Studies. Feel free to jot down a list on a post it for them to bring to school and keep in their crayon box. 

Now that we are in our second semester of first grade, your child may be ready for some more school work at home. Here are some options for your child:

• read more than 10 mins a night
• write in a journal about the book they read ( reading response journal)
• write snap words (found on the back of their planner)
• dry erase board and dry erase marker- write snap words ( they love dry erase boards )
• Dreambox
• coolmath.com
• abcya.com

I look forward to conferences and sharing all of your child's progress so far. Please be sure to sign up for a conference through the sign up genius from Dr. Moehlmann. It is expected that I conference with every family. Thank you to the families that already signed up!

Avery is in the spotlight this week. She would like everyone to wear teal on Wednesday.

Avery is in the spotlight this week! We loved her show -n- tell- especially meeting Squeakers, her guinea pig! 

Dates to remember:
1/16 early release
1/21 No school MLK Day
1/ 29 Conferences
1/31 Conferences
2/1 No School