Friday Wrap

Whew! What a week. We have had a lot of excitement in our first grade this week as we welcomed our 20th classmate! Brandon joined us on Wednesday and we are so excited to have him in our class family. Have your child tell you where our new friend,Brandon, moved from. Welcome Brandon!

We were busy learning some tricky things this week. In math, we began continued addition with 3 addends, began learning about graphs and kept working on story problems.

Our stories this week were Sid Scores and Land of Ice. One was a fiction story, the other was non-fiction. Ask your child to tell you about each story. They may also relay facts they learned from Land of Ice. If you haven't used ThinkCentral yet, you may want to pull the stories up online and read them with your child over the weekend. The stories are getting more challenging and we are working hard on our fluency. Extra practice that goes hand in hand with what we are doing in the classroom always pays off for your first grader!

We learned about compound words this week. WOW! That was a little tricky. Ask your child to teach you about compound words. Over the weekend when you are out and about, encourage your child to hunt for compound words. They should be able to break the word into its two real-word parts. Use a bedtime story to hunt for all of the compound words. Encourage your child to come up with some of their own.

Our spelling test went okay for some of our first graders this morning. They are coming home in your child's backpack. If you child is consistently missing more than 2 or 3 words, please find time to help them practice during the week. These spelling words are centered around a specific spelling pattern for the week. Often, the only way to practice these patterns and words is through drill. Make flashcards, highlight them in newspapers, or just have your child write their words each night. Please help your first grader find greater success with their spelling words by helping them at home.

Don't forget to also help your first grader return their weekly homework. Homework comes home every Monday and is due back by Friday at the latest.

Finally, please remember that MONDAY is the first grade parade in honor of American Education Week. Your child is responsible for coming up with a costume or creating a poster/sandwich board that depicts their favorite storybook character. We have read many books from my "favorite" basket. Help your child complete this assignment this weekend and bring or wear their character representation to school on Monday November 14!

Also, has your child started their diorama? The letter of explanation went home on Monday. The dioramas are due Thursday November 17th. Please take time to talk with your child about things that they can use to create their scene. Thank you so much for your support with this fun fall project at home!

Have a wonderful weekend together! Only one week and 3 days until Thanksgiving. WOW!