This week in 1st Grade…

Reading:

This week we read “Jack and Rick." In this fantasy story Jack wants to play with Rick, and Rick wants to play with Jack, but there's a river between them. The author, David McPhail’s purpose was to reveal that friendship can bridge any river and that when it comes to having fun, two is always better than one! We reviewed some pre-reading strategies and practiced answering questions about the story after reading. We talked about what makes a story a fantasy. We continued reading our story in 4 different ways! First, we read it echoing Ms. Pagano. Second, we read under our desks as a whole class for Wacky Wednesday. Third, we each took turns reading a page aloud to the class from the story while sitting in a circle on the carpet. Last, we independently read the story at our desks before taking our reading test. 

We are getting the hang of proofreading using our D.O.L. (daily oral language) sentences from our story. The main focus of D.O.L. is to give the students an opportunity each day to learn what a complete sentence is. They’ve been learning how to correct mistakes like missing capital letters, missing periods and changing the word order so the sentence makes sense. For grammar this week we focused on telling sentences. The students enjoyed sharing a telling sentence of their own with the class. Ms. Petrucci has started her Going “Batty” for Books! reading incentive program and sent home a flyer this week on how that works. Every book read earns the students 1 bat and 10 bats equals a prize from Ms. Petrucci’s prize box! 

Spelling:

This week we continued to build our spelling words on our pocket chart with letter cards. The students all had a chance to demonstrate how to blend and spell the words aloud to the class. We have also been practicing our spelling words using spelling cheers, which they love! We took our third spelling test today and everyone did well. Thank you for practicing with them at home and making sure that they complete their weekly spelling homework!

Math:

This week we continued Topic 5. Some new strategies we learned are: Doubles Plus 2, Problem Solving/2 Question Problems, Making 10 to Add, Making 10 to Add 9, and Making 10 to Add 8. We also use a ten-frame and draw counters to help us solve these math problems.

Social Studies:

This week I introduced a unit I created on Christopher Columbus to the students and we had a lot of fun with it. We learned a new song about Columbus to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” and I sent home a copy on Thursday so you can sing along with them at your leisure! This unit was very literacy heavy so you will be seeing a lot of writing assignments coming home, as well as coloring pages which do not need to be turned back in. I read many books about Christopher Columbus to the students this week and they were very fascinated by him.  

• This week we earned 6 classroom brownie points for being respectful and working hard in class. I started quiet table points this week and the students have been working hard as a group to ensure their table gets up to 20 points so they can each get an extra punch on their behavior chart punch cards. Once their punch card is full they are able to earn a prize from Ms. Petrucci’s prize box! 

• We had our fire drill with the fire department on Tuesday while the kids were in gym class and I heard they did great!  

• This coming week will be my last week student teaching at Benson and I am very sad :( to be leaving. I hope to visit these little guys when I am done with my next placement. 

Have a great weekend! 

Ms. Pagano :)