Ready for Fall

Mrs. Wilaby
Sep 22, 2017
4 min read

Happy first day of fall! I celebrated by dressing up in a special outfit today, you can ask your first grader what they noticed about what I was wearing! I know we are all ready to get rid of this heat and start to cool things off just a bit this fall! As for our classroom, our brains continue to heat up and get smarter each and every day! This week was full of learning! We continued our work in reading groups, read our first full story for Shared reading (check out Seesaw to hear our great reading), and continued our experiments with air in science! We also took our first spelling test, and our first math test today to show what we have learned so far! Not to mention, we have FILLED our Wall of Kindness with tallies representing when we saw an act of kindness in our room! Read below for our upcoming reminders and events, as well as a new addition to our blog, "Wilaby's Words of Wisdom". As always, check out our Facebook for daily updates!

Also, thank you to whomever dropped off several containers of Lysol wipes for our classroom! There was no note of who dropped them off, but know that they are greatly appreciated and they will most certainly be used!

Have a great weekend!

First Grade Need to Knows

Upcoming Events/Reminders

September 25th and 26th - FAST reading assessments

September 29th - Reading Log Lunch (please turn in reading logs by this date)

America Reads Day

Friday, October 20th

On October 20th schools around America will be celebrating America Reads Day. We are looking for volunteers to read books in our classroom or do a short, book related activity. Below are times throughout the day that we are looking for readers. Times will be given on a first come, first serve basis. You can bring in a book of your own, or choose from one we have in our classroom. Please comment with what book or activity you are doing, so we don't have the same book read more than once. Let me know if you have any questions.

Sign up to read in our classroom at the this link.

Be sure to sign-up by October 5th

Scholastic Book Orders

Book orders were sent home today. Please have orders complete by September 29th. Follow this link to order online, or send the order form and payment back to school in a sealed envelop in your child's orange home folder.

Sight Words

Students will be reviewing the following kindergarten sight words next week. Please practice reading and writing these sight words each night with your child. Our goal is for students to be able to read the words quickly without having to sound them out. Students can also practice these sight words through fun games and activities at the following website:

https://www.spellingcity.com/1stgrade1516/ Be sure to click on the “Sight Words - Week 2” list.

Week #2 - Test: Friday, Sept.

Wilaby's Words of Wisdom-Sight Word Lists

Each week my goal is to post something helpful to you here so that you can have tools to use at home with your first grader to help them be successful in first grade and beyond. If you have questions you would like me to cover, please let me know!

This week's topic is spelling lists. You should find a yellow spelling list in your child's orange home folder. In the next few weeks, I hope to have differentiated lists going to best fit your first grader's needs, but for now, we're all getting the same list as we continue to build routines in our classroom and assess students strengths and growth areas. You will notice a few odd things about our spelling lists. They have words listed with groups of boxes beside them, and some letters are bold. Continue reading to find out why, and what that means for you and your first grader.

What are those boxes on the lists?

These are Elkonin boxes, or sound boxes. We use these as a part of our phonics instruction at school to help students with letter/sound correspondence. When using the sound boxes, one sound goes in each box for the word. For example, in the word and, a goes in one box, n goes in another, and d is in the next one. Any additional boxes are there simply for formatting purposes and can be left blank. I plan to have videos posted on Seesaw for students to check their work as they stretch the words and write them within the boxes. Feel free to use this as a tool at home as well. The research behind this is that students will pay closer attention to the chunks of sounds when putting them in the boxes. This helps them identify regular patterns and irregular patterns within their sight words.

Why are some letters bold?

These bold letters are another strategy to help your first grader recognize and remember the irregular patterns that are often found in sight words. By making these parts of the word visually stick out, students will have a better chance at remembering how to read and write the word.

How can we practice at home?

There are many ways to practice sight words for both reading and writing. Sights, by Educasic is a great free app for practicing reading sight words. We use it in our classroom to keep track of student sight word reading data. I highly encourage you to download the app and use it any time you have a few extra minutes (ie: waiting in line at the grocery store, in the car, while making dinner). Below are a few other ideas of ways to practice sight words.