Weekly Wrap Up

Hello everyone!

Before I get started wrapping up the week, I have an extra special announcement!  We have a new student in our classroom!  Her name is Sophia and we are SO happy to have her with us!  This brings us up to 23 students in our class- 10 girls and 13 boys!  You should have received an updated class list.  If you did not, please let me know and I would be happy to send home another copy.

We had a great week!  We had some pretty challenging spelling words and the students all tried their very best on their test.  We read our first biography, Tomas Rivera, about a famous author who learned to write stories by reading lots of books.  We focused on characters this week, with an emphasis on main characters.  The students enjoyed this story very much and were even making connections to Tomas Rivera from their own lives.  We had some great discussions this week!

In math, we are wrapping up Topic 9 and will have the test on Tuesday.  We will then start Topic 8 which focuses on place value.  While taking the quiz, the students informed me I no longer have to read their quizzes out loud to them any more (apparently they're too old for that now- haha!).  I was pretty impressed with their scores since I did not read the quiz aloud.  I did emphasize that if they did not know what the question said, they needed to raise their hand and ask for help.  Some took me up on that offer and others did not.  We reviewed their quizzes today and I emphasized that point again.  I have a feeling I'll be seeing a lot more hands on Tuesday!  We figured out that a lot of the mistakes made on the quiz could have been prevented if the question was read again and read properly.  This is one of the things that makes first grade so great!  It is such a year of growth and learning.  We have these "trial and error" periods so that they will learn test taking skills to be independent in second grade.  So if your child got a less than stellar score on this quiz, talk to them about it and stress the importance of asking for help!  There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  I will help them to the best of my ability without giving the answer away.  The rest is up to them!

We briefly started our Science unit on Solids and Liquids.  We learned about a festival in China where they make a whole winter wonderland out of ice!  It was very interesting.  We also covered the water cycle and what makes up a solid, liquid or gas.  We will continue this unit next week.

We also learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. this week.  We watched a short video on his life yesterday and then I read them the book, "Martin's Big Words".  I love this book because it hits on all the important parts of MLK's life, without getting too graphic.  It also includes real quotes from his speeches.  The best part of this lesson was the discussions we had while reading this book.  The children had such wonderful things to say and were absolutely shocked at the injustices African American's faced in the 1960's.  They expressed how happy they are that they live now and not in that time period because they get to be friends with so many different types of people.  They got a lot out of the story of MLK and then they applied it to a small writing project.  They wrote about the dreams they have for our future world.  Here are some of my favorites: "I have a dream that there will be no more fighting and everything will be fair.", "I have a dream that animals will not be treated badly.", "I have a dream that people will stop littering.", "I have a dream that the wars go away.", "I have a dream that bad guys would be good guys." and "I have a dream that there will be no more violence."  They did a very nice job!

Enjoy your long weekend courtesy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and I will see your little ones on Tuesday!