A special Thank You to Brennan's Mom, Dad and Grandma for coming in on Thursday last week to teach us some cool things about chemistry. The students loved comparing Play-Dough and Oobleck and learning about density. They had a blast!! My favorite quote of the morning was- "it feels like chemistry" said Quinn. So much fun- Thank you!

Daniel was in the Spotlight the before last. We loved his show-n -tell items! Thank you Daniel!

Academic Update:

Writing:
We have finished our fiction writing unit. We will spend time on fun writing activities until the end of April. The students will write about Spring, write friendly letters, write postcards and writing pieces connected to weather. After these activities, they will write some poetry and choice pieces from the different genres taught this year in first grade. During all of these writing activities, they will be prompted to be a responsible writer by using correct handwriting formation, correct capitals, ending marks and spelling snap words correctly. They may be erasing more than usual as they try to become more independent with making these corrections before turning in the assignment.


Word Study:
We are still working on blends and noticing them in the beginning of a word. They are expected to use these skills of counting the sounds in the word and writing the sounds that the hear anytime they are writing a tricky word. I am excited to say that I am starting to see more and more of them doing this during writer's workshop and not just at word study time- yahoo!!! We are focusing on nouns, verbs and adjectives the next week as well. They are starting to notice these words in their guided reading books too.

Math Workshop:
Place Value is still going strong! The class really enjoys learning about place value. Many of them really like drawing the sticks and cubes ( tens and ones). They are understanding how to look at a number and deter,mine which digit is in the ones and tens place. They can represent and number with sticks and cubes, count ten less and ten more. This week they will be working on adding two digit numbers.We plan to wrap place value up early next week.

Science:
We will finish Plants and Animals this week and start our next unit- Weather! ( more pictures of plants and animals coming soon) The students will learn about types of precipitation, track the weather, create graphs and analyze the weather patterns. 

Mark your calendar:
4/19 No School
4/22 Baseball Game- Concord Night
4/29 Block in the morning
5/1, 5/2 Block in the morning
5/6,5/8 Block in the morning
5/10 Junior Achievement Day
5/17 Fun Day
5/23 End of Year Party Day
5/24 Last Day of School ( half day)