week of 1/12/15

Greetings and Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had a restful vacation and enjoyed some time with family.  Let me tell you what's been happening in first grade since our return.

In Reading Workshop last week, we began our unit on informational text.  I began teaching the students about the text features that make nonfiction texts so different from fiction such as commonly seeing photographs being used more so than illustrations, tables of contents, headings, bolded words, glossaries, and indexes as well as the uses for these features.  This week we began reading a shared text called Sunshine and Shadows which ties into our science unit about light and shadow.  We will be learning about the Earth's rotation around the sun and how it causes us to experience day and night.  We will also learn about how shadows are created and what allows them to move and change.

In Writing Workshop last week, we began our final opinion writing subject-book reviews.  The students learned that writing book reviews are really not much different than a restaurant, toy, or movie review.  This week we are continuing our book review writing with a focus on ensuring all of the elements of good review writing are present:  starting our piece with a question, including a small amount of information about the book without spilling the beans, the inclusion of our own opinion, and leaving the reader with something to do (read this book today!).  We will finish up this unit on Monday of next week and be moving on to informational writing.

In math this week and last we have been on addition facts to 20 learning strategies to help us add such as:  learning our doubles facts, doubles plus 1 facts, doubles plus 2 facts, making 10 to add, and adding 3 numbers.  We also worked on problem solving with 2 question problems and word problems with 3 number.  We will be moving on to topic 6 next week which focuses on subtraction facts to 20.

Have a wonderful weekend!!!
~Mrs. Mocarsky

Please remember:
-practice +/- facts to 20
-return book bags daily
-wear sneakers on Wednesday
-return library books on Wednesday