Weekly Update, November 5 - 9

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!

Last week began November, or as we call it in first grade, I Am Thankful Month.  Each day the kids will receive a strip of paper and they will write their name, date, and what they are thankful for that day.  These are always so much fun to read!

Our patriotic week is off to a great start! Reminder: there is no school next Monday, November 12 in honor of Veterans’ Day.

This week we are doing a guided reading, writing and 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??? The kids learned 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. 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 Monday: Veterans' Day.

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. Social Studies - 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 paper towel rolls 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 for reading testing for the report card.

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. If the whole class spells the bonus word allegiance correctly, the class will get a prize.

In math we are continuing our work on our Mad Minute timed tests and the kids continue to do a great job! It is so exciting to see kids excited about meeting their goals. Children are working on passing all of their addition timed tests so they can begin their subtraction timed tests. We are working on subtraction strategies in math. We are learning to count back to solve both vertical and horizontal subtraction problems. The kids are doing a great job!

Have an A+ Week!
Mrs. Johnston