First Grade

 

Dear First Grade Families,

Students have started the third quarter. They will be working very hard in all subject areas. I have been so impressed with their academic growth. Report cards will be available on MSP on Tuesday, 2/6.

Reading: Informational Texts
Students will begin to learn about non-fiction text features during Reader's Workshop. In this unit students will examine informational texts and learn important differences between fiction and non-fiction stories. This unit is closely aligned with our Writer's Workshop and students will be using mentor texts read to create their own teaching books. Students will learn about key words and details and learn to share information read in non-fiction books with their friends.
During phonics we will continue to review letter sounds. Our focus during phonics mini-lessons will be on ending blends. We will begin to examine digraphs (ch, sh, th and wh) as well.
Thank you for practicing sight words at home with your children!

Writing:
Students will write teaching books in this unit. Students will select topics that they are experts in to write about. I love this unit because students love teaching about their interests. This class has so many intersts and background experiences, I am sure that we will all learn a lot from each other. I am imagining that there will be books on lacrosse, tennis, gymnastics, dance, baking, PJ Masks, LOL dolls, Harry Potter, and even Big Foot! Throughout this unit students will learn to elaborate their ideas and to use fancy words while writing so that they sound authentic and knowledgable. Students will be writing title pages and table of contents. They will be including key words and featuring craft moves such as bold words, pictures with captions and labeled diagrams.
*Students will need to print an image at home that will be used in their informational chapter books. This image is due Thursday, 2/14.

Math: Count and Model Numbers
Students will explore numbers to 120 in this chapter. They will build on their knowledge of numbers and learn to skip count by ones and tens. Students will begin to identify numbers as groupings of tens and ones. This will support higher order addition and subtraction skills later in the year and throughout second grade.
*Math assessment will be on Thursday and Friday.
Remember, students should be spending about 10 minutes on their homework each night. Please let me know if your children are struggling so I can provide additional support to them during the school day.

Religion:
In our next unit of study we will the ways that God shares His love for us. Jesus taught his disciples and teaches us today all the ways that God shows us His love. We will learn about the Church and how we continue to learn about God's love as a Church community. Students will be going over to Church this month to explore features that are found in all Catholic Churches.

Science
We will begin to explore Waves in our new science unit. This will be a fun, hands-on exploration of light and sound. Students will learn how sound and light waves travel. They will discover ways that light and sound can be used for communication and at the end of the unit they will collaborate with a team to create a communication devise that uses light or sound to answer yes and no questions.

Communication is very important. I will be updating this website once a week.  This will be an important site for you to look at, as it will be the place where I post important reminders, content information that we are learning about, homework, and pictures of our class. I will also send home a weekly newsletter that outlines what we will be doing and homework assignments for the week. 

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns as we start this adventure together.  I can be reached at Jennifer.Cellura@dor.org.

Important Dates:
2/11: Valentine Party 1-2 pm
2/14: Valentine Card Exchange
2/15: 100th Day of School Celebration
2/18-2/22: Winter Break
3/1: Read Across America Day
3/6: Ash Wednesday


Thank you for sharing your children with me this year!
Jen Cellura