Friday, November 3, 2017

Highlights November 3rd, 2017

Hello families,
We've had a very fun week together. It's hard to believe it's already November! Here are some of the highlights from our week!

This week we read many books together: Big Pumpkin, T-Rex Trick or Treats, How Do You Grow a Giant Pumpkin?, Pete the Cat: 5 Little Pumpkins, Ish, and If You're Happy and You Know It.

We practice reading skills in so many ways. Along with doing class read alouds we also have our Readers Workshop. This week we began the structure that will continue for the remainder of the year: whole class mini-lesson; 3 choices (independent, partner work, or small groups); whole class share out. First we meet together for a mini-lesson. This is something new to practice to make us stronger readers. Right now we're learning strategies and ways to build good reading habits. Then there are 3 choice blocks (2 reading choices + 1 more choice). We already know how to do read to myself, read to someone, word work, and meet with a teacher. This week we added two more choices to our readers workshop: listen to reading and work on writing. During listen to reading 2 kids at a time listen to an audiobook. Audiobooks help readers at all stages get access to fun books that develop their reading comprehension and vocabulary. These are books that would often be too challenging to read to themselves but they can access this book in audio format. This week our book of the week was Just Say Boo. We also got free writing journals. These are journals where we can write about anything we want. This is different from our work in writers workshop because we are practicing writing certain skills and writing genres then. It's fun to go back and read our own writing or read it to someone! At the end of readers workshop we check in all together to talk about how we did at practicing the new skill from our mini-lesson.







In math we continue to work on building fact fluency, organize our thinking by representing it on paper, and solve different kinds of problems. We are nearing the end of our first unit on story problems, number lines, and combinations. Students are working independently, in partnerships, in small groups, or in whole class lessons.

On Tuesday we gathered as a first grade team to sing some of the October songs that we've been learning this month. It was fun to sing them all together! Here's a short clip of one of our songs.


Our class decided to try something new with our HEARTS. We got a small container to put in the hearts we earn during the day. At closing circle we count them to see how many we got that day and then add them to our class jar. 

On Friday we earned even more than 100 hearts--123 hearts in just 1 day!

On Thursday we filled our HEART jar! We'll add them to the school heart monitor on Tuesday!

We had our class celebration on Friday morning (playing games or building with blocks and legos together) and our buddies came in the afternoon. 









We had an All School Morning Meeting this week and a visit from Officer Dave to talk about safety (stranger danger, 911, crossing streets)!



Family conferences are coming up. If you haven't yet sent in your orange sheet about what times work or don't work for you please send them in on Monday. We're meeting as a team to schedule conferences on Wednesday!

Also don't forget this upcoming Wednesday is an Early Release day. Pick up is at 12:15.
Dates to Remember:

Wednesday November 8 - Early Release at 12:15 (Teacher In-Service)
Monday November 13 - Library Day 
Monday November 20 - Family Conferences - No School for Kids
Tuesday November 21 - Friday November 24 - Thanksgiving Break - No School


Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

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