Recap of our Learning and Reminders

Reminders for the Month:

Next Week:  Next week we will begin Book Cart books and FAST Testing. (See the First Grade News for more information)

Wednesday, September 13th: Parent Partnership Night is 6:15-7:00.  Please come and join Atkins Elementary beginning in the gym regarding important information about the changes in standards based reporting this year! IF you are not able to make it, the information will be reported out to you via newsletter and/or email.
Wednesday, September 21st: 1:00 Dismissal
Week of September 25th-29th: Homecoming Week
Friday, September 29th: Homecoming Day
Saturday, September 30th:  Bobcat Dash

Library Check-Out is every Day 6.  Students must return books in order to check out new ones.

What We Are Learning:

Reading/Phonics:

During our whole group time, we have been reviewing story elements, non-fiction text features, and the difference between fiction and non-fiction texts.  We are still in the midst of building our reading stamina and practicing and learning about our literacy centers.  As we keep establishing our routine, I will post photos of the kids in some of their centers and caption what they are and what students are working on.  Next week we will learn about strategies good readers use before we begin our first reading unit.

We have been reviewing short vowel sounds and CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words.  Next week we will begin Unit 1 in our Benchmark Phonics curriculum which focuses on L blend consonants.  I plan to send home a packet you can work on throughout the week with your child to practice weekly phonics.  If your child brings these packets completed to school with quality work, he/she will earn a reward!

Math:

We focused measuring the length of objects in non-standard objects the last two weeks within our Envisions Math curriculum.  The students have been measuring things all over the classroom such as desks, book boxes, pencils, erasers, trash cans, glue sticks - you name it!  We've used cubes, straws, and paperclips to estimate and measure the lengths of these objects.  We took our assessment today.  You will get to know your child's results soon!  Next week we begin our new unit of Data Analysis which will pertain learning to read graphs and charts.  The students have also been working with math manipulatives during our math station time.  We will soon begin math stations with an accountability sheet for students.  Stay tuned for further information!

Writing:

We are learning about our writer's workshop routine!  We have had short mini-lessons and practice sessions on capitalization, punctuation, and putting spaces between our words.  Next week we are going to learn about the writing process.

Science:

I am sure most of you have heard what we are learning in science (as the kids cannot stop talking about it at school)!  Our caterpillars are rapidly growing and showing different stages of the life cycle.  We have been learning all about the life cycle of a butterfly and are keeping track of our observations in our butterfly observation packet.  Next week we are going to learn about frogs and fish while our butterfly grows in its chrysalis.  

Enjoy the pictures!

Literacy Station Practice and Measurement Fun

Here are some pictures from practicing a few of our literacy stations during reading workshop. There are also some photos from some partner practice with our unit in measuring length with non-standard units! 

Stamina Reading and Other Happenings

Today was our first practice of read to self, and what I also call stamina reading! We've been learning a lot about our reading workshop routine and this is one of our literacy centers during "activity time." The kids have been doing a great job at coming to the carpet quietly when it's time for our whole-group lesson and and being attentive during our read aloud and mini lessons during reading workshop! We talked about rules with some model examples and what stamina reading during workshop looks like. Students were also  able to use a whisper phone if they wanted to that was already placed in their book boxes.  I am still trying to gauge levels, so once I have a better idea, I will start sending books to take home every night from our grade level book cart. It will be very soon, so stay tuned! Here are a few pictures from today. We read for five minutes straight without stopping! We talked about how important it is to be able to read for a period of time without sharpening a pencil, going to the bathroom, or doing anything else except reading. Our goal was to read 5 minutes straight. (There were only two students who needed to use the restroom, but I hoping tomorrow there are none! :))

Here are also a few other pictures from today!Our caterpillar is changing and the kids are so excited about it!

Recess fun

Students worked very hard during their beginning of the year math test! There very challenging concepts and I am proud at how well they tried their best. 

First Day of School

Wow! What a great first day of school for my amazing first graders! We all had so much fun. It was very busy, so I wasn't able to get a lot of pictures of everything we did or of everyone in the class, but here are a few things that we did!
We had a coloring page for our first day of school morning work.
We practiced our building wide PBIS expectations.



We listened to Mrs. Lange read First Grade Jitters and tried some jitter juice to get our jitters out!
These are the results of how many students liked the jitter juice, didn't like it, or just kind of liked it. :)
We read the book No David and made our classroom rules.

We wrote about first day in first grade!
Bring on Day 2!