Crew News January 12, 2012

Reading
We are learning about how readers think as they read during our Reader's Workshop. We have been looking at how making predictions about what will happen next in a story keeps us interested in continuing to read to find out if we were right. We have been talking about making connections with what we are reading to help us more deeply understand what we are reading. We are noticing what questions pop into our minds as we are reading and then we read to see if we can find the answers. Overall, we are really starting to think about our reading and that is helping us better comprehend everything we read.

Another Donated Book
Thanks, Kayden.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.9 Comparing Sums

Crew News January 11, 2012

Writing
Currently in writing, we are working on writing personal narratives. A personal narrative is a short story about something that has happened in a writer's life. We are trying to remember to add three main parts to our story - a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning should introduce the characters and the setting of the story. The middle explains a problem or challenge that the main character is facing. The end explains how the main character solves the problem. We all have many stories in our lives that we can choose to write about. As I have been working with the crew during writing I have read many great stories about trying to convince parents to get a new dog, what happens at a birthday party,  funny things that happens on a vacation and so much more. Ask your child about what they are writing about and see if they could use some suggestions of things that have happened to them that they can write about.

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember to return his or her library books.


Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.8 Number Stories

Crew News January 10, 2012

Henry and Mudge
You may not know this already but the Henry and Mudge series by Cynthia Rylant is one of my very favorite series of books. She tells such nice, cozy stories. They appeal to almost all tastes. She tells stories about building a castle out of refrigerator boxes, she tells stories about trips to the beach, she tells stories about going camping, she tells stories about the everyday life of a boy and his dog. If you haven't checked out this series, I highly recommend it. I currently have a big bin of these books (checked out of the public library) in our room and the crew is devouring them. Henry has a cousin named Annie who appears in many of the books in the series and now has a series of her own (Annie and Snowball). These books are "just right' for many of the readers in our crew but they also make great read alouds, too.  If you are at the library and looking for a few good books, check out Henry and Mudge or Annie and Snowball. You will enjoy them as much as your child. Ask your child about their favorite Henry and Mudge story.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.7 Comparing Amounts of Money

Crew News January 9, 2012

Oh, Those Tricky Vowels
Vowels, vowels, vowels. Vowels can be so tricky to learn. As a first grade teacher I would love to be able to change the spelling of many words to make them fit more standard rules and patterns. Alas, I do not have that kind of power in this world. So, we are working on learning all we can about those tricky vowels. Earlier in the year we studied short vowel sounds. We recently started looking at various ways to spell long vowel sounds. Last week we looked at a few ways to spell the long "a" sound and today we looked at ways to spell the long "e" sound (see our charts below for examples). We will continue to work our way through all of the vowels and notice just how many different ways you can spell one sound. Tricky, tricky, but we can do hard things.

Library Book Donation
Peyton donated some books to our classroom library today. It is always fun for all of the crew to see "new to us" books. Thanks, Peyton.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.6 Relation Symbols

Crew News January 6, 2012

Sight Words
I mentioned in a previous post (click here to reread it) that we are working on learning to spell some of the common sight words that we can read. We generally work on a set of words for almost 2 weeks because of how our schedule works out. This week and next week our words are: look, her, back, had and come.

Previous words include: as, if, my, be, all, like, she, has, how, put, don't, I'm, one, out, him

These are great words to point out to your child when they are reading or to have them practice at home, too.


Homework
No homework for the weekend. Read a few good books with your child.

IA (Integrated Arts)
Our IA next week is Music.

Crew News January 5, 2012

Social Studies Standards
When we write our Expeditions, there are often a couple of standards that just don't "fit in" with the topic of the Expedition. When this happens we learn about those standards separately from our Expedition. Over the next few weeks we will be learning about a couple of Social Studies standards that didn't fit in our Families Expedition. They are:


Civics: Notable people, places, holidays and patriotic symbols
Economics: Identify short-term financial goals (Personal Financial Literacy). This goal includes things like: How does a person earn money? (income, allowances, borrowing, gifts), Why is personal goal setting important? and How does an individual know a good short-term goal?

After we finish learning about these standards, we will be ready to start our Science Expedition which is called Down to Earth. This is another very exciting (especially to first graders) Expedition. I can't wait to get started.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.5 Domino Addition

Crew News January 4, 2012

Explorations
Today in Math, we explored several new concepts. We tried to determine the area of our whiteboards using dominoes, we tried to find objects that weigh the same and we worked on counting large numbers of objects in a systematic way.

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember to return their books so that they can check out new ones.

More Books for our Classroom Library
Myles brought in a big bag of books to donate to our classroom library today - including one about hippos. Hippos are my favorite animals. Thanks, Myles!

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.4 Counting Coins