February 28, 2010

Spelling Words: me, see, feet, seat, mean, team, slow, road, our, over

Challenge Words: easel, thirteen, creature, league, underneath

Sight Words: dear, door, hurry, mother, sky, told, should

Reading: Long /e/ Sound

We are working on all the different ways that spell long /e/. The five ways we are working with are: ea, ee, e, _ie_, and _y

Math: Solid Figures

We are learning all about solid figures. We look at what capabilities each figure has and it's make-up. The solid figures we are working with are: cube, pyramid, rectangular prism, cone, cylinder and sphere.

Doctor Seuss is celebrating his birthday on Wednesday. We will be celebrating on Tuesday with a very special guest. Mrs. Skoro's mom will be sharing a few wonderful Dr. Seuss books with us! We can't wait!

Conferences are Tuesday 4-8, Thursday 4-8 and Friday 8-4. See you all there!

Wednesday, February 23rd

** There is no spelling this week. We will be reviewing and testing sight words from the past book. The sight words that will be tested are as follows:

about, again, air, always, books, buy, by, carry, Cow's, family, feel, fly, friends, grew, house, join, know, loud, money, mouse, Mrs., name, need, nice, other, our, over, paint, paper, people, play, please, pretty, put, rain, read, room, say, surprise, three, watch, work, would, writing

To get ready for testing, we will be playing "Around The World", Sight Word Bingo and "I've Got, Who Has?". These are all wonderful games that fully immerse the children in the sight words.

We will also be testing fluency. Students will read three different passages to me. Each passage is one that they have never seen before. We call this a "cold read." I will stop each student after one minute. I tally their mistakes and figure out how many correct words per minute they are reading. Your child will have a grade on the report card reflecting their fluency. The fluency rates for first grade are:

February - Winter: May - Spring:

47+ Words = P 75+ Words = P

23 - 46 Words = D 53 - 74 Words = D

22 Words or Less = B 52 Words or Less = B

Remember that conferences are on March 1st, 3rd and 4th. I look forward to seeing you at your scheduled time. If for some reason, you are unable to make your 20 minute conferences, please let me know. We will work together to find a better time to meet. See you soon!

We are back to cross country skiing in gym. Please send all appropriate clothing with your child.

Monday, February 14th

Spelling Words: low, slow, grow, road, soap, boat, little, handle, carry, would

Challenge Words: swallow, scarecrow, stagecoach, oatmeal, approach

Sight Words: our, pretty, surprise, over, three, mouse

Reading: This week we are working on the long /o/ sound. We are learning all of the different ways that long /o/ can show up in words that we read and write. The four ways we recognize long /o/ are:

o _ e (o with a magic e) -- words like bone, nose, chose...

ow -- words like snow, shadow, know...

oa -- words like boat, goat, road...

o (standing alone) -- words like go, no, so...

Math: This week we are working again on counting back using a number line and related facts. We call our related facts, "fact families." Help your child relate addition and subtraction facts using fact families. If we look at 3 numbers, we know that we can make 2 addition and 2 subtraction facts using only the numbers in the fact family.

4, 8, 12

4 + 8 = 12 8 + 4 = 12

12 - 4 = 8 12 - 8 = 4

Thank you to all the volunteers for a wonderful Valentine Party! We made some fantastic candy necklaces, played bingo, decorated yummy cookies and made fabulous bookmarks. Congratulations to Gabrielle for having the closest estimate of candy kisses in the jar. Gabrielle guessed there were 113 kisses and actually there were 112. Wow! Way to go! That is GREAT estimating!

The 100th day of school is on Thursday. Please send in your 100 pieces of food for our classroom snack. We realized today that if everyone brings in 100 pieces, we will have 2400 goodies in our trail mix. Pretty impressive! We will also be writing about being 100 years old and what we would do if someone gave us a $100 bill. I can't wait to see the ideas we have. There are some pretty creative first graders in 1-4.

Please check your email for conference times and dates. I look forward to meeting with everyone to share the wonderful progress we have made this year. If your time or date does not work, please let me know as soon as possible. We will work together to find a time that works best for everyone. Thanks!

Gym: We will be skating again in gym. Please send in helmets and skates on Thursday (as long as the ice is still there)!