Responsible first graders:)

First graders have been talking a lot about responsibility this week at school.  As first graders we stress that they are responsible each day for bringing their Washington "take home" folder to school.  This is an important communcation tool between school and home.  Please remember to empty those folders each night and look through the work your child is doing. 

Also, many of our students are participating in the RAH (Reading At Home) program.  It is also important to bring those book baggies back and forth to school each day to get new books to read each night.  Keep reading each night at home!  It sure does make a difference in the progress these kids are making!

This week at a glance:

READING/LANGUAGE

We have talked about main idea and details this week.  We've worked on the phonics sound "ar" and have discovered "ar" in MANY words we read!  Ask your child what it means to VISUALIZE.  We worked on this skill this week to help us put a "picture" in our head of what we are reading.  This is a good comprehension strategy.
We've continued talking about nouns this week, focusing on people and things.

WRITING:

We completed our first big writing project this week which included brainstorming ideas, webbing our ideas, writing our story including a topic sentence and details, and illustrating our story.  We can't wait to show you this work at conference time!  What great authors and illustrators we have in our class!!

MATH:

We began Unit 5 this week in math.  The skill we focused in on this week has been place value.  We've worked with base 10 blocks, did some fun activities on the smartboard to practice place value and even learned how to write numbers in expanded form.  ex:  the number 156 can also be written as 100 + 50 + 6.
Have your child write numbers and ask them ..Which digit is in the ones place?  The tens place?  The hundred's place?

We've had a super busy week but these kids are focused and soaking it up like sponges!  I LOVE IT!  I'm looking forward to seeing you all next week at conferences.

Mrs. Halon