November Reading Workshop

The purpose of this unit is for students  to read nonfiction texts across many topics and to learn how to accumulate information. 

 Goals:

• Students will use comprehension skills in order to accumulate information and retell a non fiction text. 
•  Students will use non-fiction features in order to accumulate information from a text. 
•  When applicable, students will use the strategies that they have learned from fiction reading to read and comprehend non fiction texts.   

In order to meet these goals, here are some of lessons we will be focusing on:

•  Defining the Genre - What is Non-Fiction?  What are the features of a Non-Fiction book? 
• Choosing "Just Right" Non-Fiction Books. 
• Previewing Non-Fiction Books to get an idea of what specifically they might be learning about the subject.
• Reading in small chunks or one paragraph at a time, to monitor for meaning.  Then stopping to name the important thing that the author taught in that chunk or paragraph.
• Using Clues on the Page to Figure Out Tricky Words.
• Synthesizing - putting together everything they are learning on a page by using all of the non-fiction features (headings, photographs, and captions. diagram and labels)

November Word Study

In the month of November we will be learning two new word study concepts and are reviewing one that was previously taught.

 First, we will learn about BLENDS:

Blends are words that have two or more consonants together, each consonant making its own sound (i.e. s k ip).  Blends are different from digraphs(th,sh,ch,ck,and wh) because the two consonants together in a digraph make only one sound (Examples of digraphs are... ship, whip, thumb).  
We mark up blends by underlining each consonant in the blend with a separate line because they have separate sounds. For example: 
s k ip,    s l ip,      s t op,       etc.

 Second, we will learn about DIGRAPH BLENDS.

Digraph blends are words that have a digraph (th, sh,ch,ck, and wh) blended with another consonant. For example:lunch. 
We mark up the digraph blend by underlining the letter n and underlining the digraph with one line. For example: l u n ch,    
b u n ch

 Lastly, we will be reviewing  basewords with the suffix s.

We add the suffix s to a word to show there is more than one of something. For example: king--- kings. 
We mark up the word by underlining the baseword and circling the suffix s.

Trick words: some, could, want, say, do, first, any, my, now

Words of the day: ask, end, kept, ranch, bunch, shrug, nests, flags, quilts

October Math Workshop

Grade One has been working really hard in Math Workshop for the past month! We wanted to keep you updated on what is to come for the month of October. 

We started Lesson 14 on the 1st of October and we will carry it up to Lesson 24. Lesson 24 is our mid-way point for Module 1, so students will be given a Mid-Module Assessment on 

Thursday, October 15th. 

Module 1will carry us through the month of October and will be finished by the first week in November. 

UPCOMING: End of Module 1 Assessment

            November 5th & 6th 

Some Ideas to Support Your Child at Home

-Spend some time building your child's fluency with their basic addition/subtraction facts up to 10

-Working with doubles within 10 (1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4....etc)

-Naming place value (Tens and Ones - 11 means 1 ten and 1 one)

***This is in our next Module but always good to get them ready for what's to come

Tell your children to keep up the good work! We see how hard they're working and we foresee great things from them!

October Read-Aloud

October Read-Aloud

October is National Bullying Prevention Month and the first grade has been focused on understanding and preventing bullying through our read aloud unit.

In this unit we

•  will study and research what bullying is 

•   figure out what kids can do if they are being bullied, and

•   how they can help if they see others being bullied

•   learn to avoid becoming a bully. 

Through online research and various read alouds such as Enemy Pie, Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon, and The Recess Queen, the kids will see a variety of examples of kids being bullied and kids standing up for themselves in safe and appropriate ways.

Students will have the opportunity to create and perform skits in response to different possible bullying scenarios and create anti-bullying posters to hang around the school. We are focused on being kind and helpful friends and creating a bully-free environment!

October Readers Workshop

In October, first graders will be 

Getting to know their characters…

Goals of the unit:

·      Students will follow the main character as they read

·      Students will make inferences about their characters from clues in the book – name the feelings and provide evidence for how they know (pictures, bold words, dialogue, etc.)

·      Students will learn some common places where it helps to slow down and read carefully to learn about their character’s feelings.

·      Students will be able to retell the important parts of their book tracking how feelings change across the book, and naming why.

   

 Notes to Parents

   As you read with your child, ask them,

      How is your main character feeling?   

    Why does he/she feel that way?

    How do you know he/she feels that way?

     ***They should be able to give clues from tell the pictures (character’s facial expressions, body movements), the words, and the punctuation marks to prove how their main character is feeling.

  2.  Ask them how their main character's feelings changed from the beginning to the end of the book.

       How did your main character feel in the beginning?  Why?

     How was your main character feeling at the end?  Why?

October Writing Workshop

September/October Writer's Workshop

          

                       

What is Writer's Workshop?

 -Students complete different types of writing pieces. 

 -Students practice writing techniques in each piece.

 -Students practice conventions such as; capitals and punctuation.

In October, we will be finishing up our first Unit of study in Writing:

Small Moments 

Students will write about a memory of a small moment in time. 

•   Student goals for this unit include: Students will generate story ideas by keeping lists and webbing multiple ideas of each item. 

•   Students will write a focused story about a meaningful topic.

•   Students will move through the writing process- choosing a topic, planning the parts, drafting using what they learned in Kindergarten AND now elaborating with dialogue and action on each page.   

•    Student's writing will become more readable with a focus on spacing, using word wall words and approximations of unknown words - beginning and ending consonants and medial vowels.

•   Students will draft 3-5 stories during this unit, and publish one.

October Word Study

In the month of October, we are going to learn another set of glued sounds - words that end with-ng/nk.  For example, r-ang, s-ing, l-ong, and h-ung / b-ank, p-ink, h-onk, and j-unk.

The students should understand that these glued (or welded) sounds are composed of three letters.  Each of these letters has an individual sound.  However, these sounds are closely glued together making it difficult to separate them.  To tap them, we use three fingers tapping together at the same time. When we write a word with a glued sound, we draw a box around it.

The new trick words for the month of October are:

Out

To

Two

Are

About

Into

Only

Other

New

*Don't forget about September trick words!!!

The new words of the week are:

Rang

Hung

Long

Thank

Junk

Remember that with respect to the weekly words, the students need to read and spell them, understand the different meaning of these words, be able to use them in a sentence, and mark the parts of the words that we studied.

We are going to have quizzes every Friday on weekly words and tappable words.

September / October Math Workshop

Module 1

We have begun Module 1 from EngageNY, students will work towards fluency with addition and subtraction of numbers to 10.   

They will do so by:

·       Moving from “counting all” to “counting on.”

·       Working with number bonds in order to break numbers into addend pairs.  

·       Seeing and describing 1 more as + 1.  

·       Solving “put together” problems, finding all the ways they can make numbers up to 10.  (For example, “Look at all the ways I can make 8:  7+1, 6+2, …)

·       Solving word problems that involve adding two quantities to find the sum  (4 + 3 = ☐) or finding a missing quantity when the sum is known (4 + ☐= 7).

·       Learning about equality and the commutativity of addition (e.g. 4+3 = 3+4) which will lead to the understanding that they can count on from the larger number when adding.

·       Recognizing doubles and doubles plus 1.

·       Connecting missing addend problems to subtraction.

·       Using drawings to solve word problems and describing these situations using equations.

Math Models:

Number Bond

Number Path:

Important Vocabulary: 

     Addend: a number that is added 

     Count on: to count up from one addend to the total

Module 1 will carry us through the months of September, October and mid-November. We will update you next month on our progress and new skills that we will be teaching and dates for future assessments.