Week Four, Ready for More!

Mrs. Wilaby
Sep 16, 2016
3 min read

We are really packing in the learning now that we have our routines down in our classroom! We are packing so much in that I'm sorry to report I didn't take any pictures this week, not even during science! I promise I'll do better next week! As a class, we are working REALLY hard at being ready to listen when it is time to learn. Luckily, our guidance lessons have given us some ways to help ourselves focus by reminding us to have eyes watching, ears listening, voices off, and bodies still. When we use these "skills for learning" we are ready to listen and make our brains grow! Read below for what else we have been up to this week!

Reading: We were excited to start our reading groups this week! If you would like to know what phase your child is in, please email me. Below you will find a continuum of the reading Phases at Crest, as well as a description of what students work on in each phase. At this point in the year, we would like our first graders to be starting Phase 5 or higher. If they aren't there yet, don't worry, but it will be extra important to practice sight words at home and read nightly. This extra practice can really make a difference in your child's growth as a reader.

We also started a unit during our whole group reading time about schemas and making connections. We learned that your schema is a combination of what you have previously learned and experienced and can be added to as you learn more about something. We have been adding to our schemas about bats these past few days. In shared reading, we started our first full story, Mac the Cat. Our focus was reading all of the words on the page instead of making up words to go with the picture. We began a phonics focus this week on short a. We spent some time segmenting short a words such as cat, can, and map. Check out the video below to hear our great reading!

Writing: We began learning about 5 star sentences. This means the sentence includes a capitol letter at the beginning, finger spaces, punctuation at the end, a who, and a what. We used our 5 star sentence checklists as we responded to a variety of books like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and Rainbow Fish.

Math: We started using a tool called rekenreks during a portion of our day called "Number Talks" this is a time separate from math where we use mental math and subitizing (knowing how many are in group just by looking) to practice number relations. We also worked in math on several open ended problems in which students had to solve problems to compose and decompose numbers. Something you can do at home to help your first grader is practice their math facts so they can add numbers within 10 quickly. If you need a copy of flashcards, let me know!

Science: We have had lots of fun starting our air and weather unit. This week's experiments included compressing air through syringe systems, balloon rockets, and an introduction to our weather calendar and clouds.

Social Emotional: This week, we learned about more ways to help us focus. We can use our eyes, ears, and brain to look at the person talking, listen to what they are saying, and think about the words they are saying. Mrs. Cox also came in this week and read the story Personal Space Camp and we talked about making sure we are staying in our own personal space and keeping our bodies to ourselves.