Weekly Update, November 7 - 10

Hello Awesome First Graders and Amazing First Grade Parents!

The kids are still batty for bats! They are still talking all about bats and sharing what they learned. It is so great to see! Be sure to check out the links section of my blog for the echolocation video that we watched in class. We watched this again today and the kids LOVE it! Kids - watch the video and sing the song to your parents. You can show them how much you know about echolocation and bats!

Our patriotic week is off to a great start! Reminder: there is no school this Friday, November 11 in honor of Veterans' Day. Our spelling test will be on Thursday.

This week we are doing a social studies unit on Awesome America. Kids - we did Outstanding Owls, Perfect Pumpkins, Brilliant Bats and now we are doing Awesome America. What is this called??? Today the kids had a guest teacher. Mrs. Seiferth taught the kids what the word pledge means. They studied The Pledge of Allegiance and the kids learned the meaning of all of the words. They also wrote a pledge to themselves. The rest of the week we will learn all about the things that make America great. On Tuesday and Wednesday we will learn about the symbols of our country, we will learn about and make a flag and have a parade with patriotic music. We will learn about the reason we don't have school on Friday: Veteran's Day. A member of the military, Craig Russell (Ryan’s dad) will come to our class to talk with the kids on Thursday.

In reading we are working on reading for meaning. We will explore commonly read and used words and dig deeper into their meaning to read for understanding and comprehension. We are working on reading and making words with the “in” chunk, as well as the digraphs “sh” and “ch.”

The kids had a great time with our patriotic centers today. The kids went to two centers today! The centers for the week include:
1. Listening - The kids listened to a CD of patriotic American songs. While they listened, they drew pictures of what they heard in the song. They also wrote their favorite parts of the music.
2. Science - The kids looked at different symbols of The United States. They looked at pictures of astronauts and they discovered that American astronauts often take a symbol of our country, the flag, with them. The kids used various items to make their own space shuttles. The kids loved this center!
3. Writing - The kids wrote about promises. They wrote about a promise they made and a promise someone made. They wrote about what the promise was and how they felt about it.
4. Math - The kids looked at a flag and they estimated how many stars and stripes are on the flag. After they estimated, they discussed the best strategies to find the number of stars and stripes on the flag. After they talked about their strategies, they counted the stars and stripes on the flag.
5. Reading - The kids read 1:1 with me.

We have new spelling words this week. In addition to our spelling words, we have America - theme words. The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow. Since the kids did so well with their challenge last week, I gave them a new and more difficult challenge. There is a bonus word this week, allegiance.  If the whole class spells the bonus word allegiance correctly, the class will get a prize.

We began chapter 8 in math today. This chapter focuses on more difficult concepts of subtraction: counting down, vertical addition, related facts and story problems. Your child came home with a parent letter that provides information on this chapter. The kids did very well with the subtraction and they got some good practice learning about related facts. This is a tough concept and the kids are doing a nice job.

Have an A+ Week!
Mrs. Johnston