Weekly Update, January 18 - 21

Hello Amazing First Graders and Awesome First Grade Parents!


Welcome back!  I hope everyone enjoyed the 3 day weekend!

Homework Information:
* Your child brought two books home today.  They do not need to read both books tonight.
* The kids will bring ABC order practice papers home tomorrow.  They are due on Thursday.
100th Day Information:
Wednesday, January 26 is the 100th day of school!  To celebrate, the kids will bring in a collection of 100 small items.  Your child brought home a paper today for the project and an information letter.  This project is due on Monday, January 24.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

This week we will study community helpers.  Thank you so much to the parents who are able to come in and talk with the kids!  The kids absolutely love having visitors in the classroom.  Today we learned about community helpers and what they do.  We learned how to interview someone to get ready for our first visitor.  This morning we had a visit from Isabella's dad who talked about nursing.  The kids loved having a visitor and they learned a lot!  We were lucky to have two community helpers today!  This afternoon Sean's grandma talked with the kids about different roles in teaching.  On Wednesday Ella's mom, who owns a gym, will come in to talk about health and exercise.  On Thursday Tristan's dad, a high school teacher and basketball coach, will come talk with the kids.  On Friday, Ella's dad, a fireman, will come talk with the kids.  Each day the community helper will talk with the kids about his/her job and the kids will interview the community helper.  The kids had a great time today and they are looking forward to the rest of the week!

In writing the kids will get more practice using good ideas to write thank you notes!  Each community helper will receive thank you notes from the class.  Last week we learned how to write "How To" poems during our Martin Luther King, Jr. study and the kids wrote a poem on how to be kind.  They did an excellent job with this and many of them mentioned they liked writing poetry!  This week they will get more practice writing "How To" poems about community helpers.

The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow.  In making words we will continue our ABC order practice.  The kids did an amazing job of alphabetizing to the first letter.  We are now working on alphabetizing to the second letter.  We will also work on words with the "le" chunk, like our spelling word people.

The kids enjoyed our community helper centers!  The centers for the week include:
1.  Listening - The kids listened to "School," a pattern book about things that are seen at school.  The kids followed the "I see" pattern to create their own list of things that are seen at school.
2.  Social Studies - The kids got firsthand experience writing a police report!  We discussed how police officers need to be watching carefully and pay attention to little details.  Today during center time, another teacher came in the class and said things and did things.  When she left, the kids tested their observation and memory!  They recorded a variety of things about the teacher's visit to see if they would make a good eye witness!  They had so much fun with this!
3.  Writing - The kids practiced what it would like to be a news reporter.  They interviewed teachers and kids in our class and the surrounding classes and wrote a newspaper report.
4.  Math - The kids practiced finding addition patterns by completing adding with 0 and 1 problems.

We are still working on chapter 12 in math.  The kids learned strategies for adding 3 numbers.  They did such a good job with this challenging concept!  We will aim to finish chapter 12 tomorrow or Thursday.  We will begin chapter 13 (a subtraction chapter) at the end of the week.

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston