First Grade

 

Dear First Grade Families,

The talent show was so much fun. I was so impressed with our talented first graders. Great job Adrienne, Anderson, Cameron and George! This week we have Mass and May Crowning on Thursday, 5/24.

If you haven't had a chance to log on to SeeSaw please do so. Students have enjoyed using SeeSaw to journal their learning.

Here is a sneak peak at the weel of 5/21:

Reading:
Students have made so much progress in reading this year. I have been impressed by our first grade readers. In this unit students will be exploring characters and the adventures that they go on. 
Students will discover life lessons inside of stories. Students will compare and contrast life lessons within books.
This week in phonics we will be studying the ending of words. Specifically we will be looking at adding -s, -ed, and -ing. Students will learn rules for adding endings to words that end in a silent e. This will be a two week phonics study as many students struggle both reading and writing words with these endings. 
Students have been told that if they do not complete their independent center work to the best of their ability it will be assigned to them for homework. 

Writing:
The fourth unit of Writer's Workshop is very exciting. Students will be creating their own adventure book series.
WOW! Students have had a lot of fun creating characters and getting them into and out of trouble. I love listening to their ideas, and they are so excited and busy working during Writer's Workshop. Students have started writing a series of books. This week we will continue to work on elaboration skills. They will learn to write details and use patterns of three to elaborate.
As a class we have created writing goals. One important writing goal is that students need to edit their writing for proper use of uppercase letters and punctuation. This week we will practice these skills. Many students are using uppercase letters in the middle of their words. Our goal is to remove these from our writing.

Math:
The next two chapters will focus on geometry. Chapter 11 assessment will be on Monday, 5/21. Next we will study 2D shapes. We will indentify shapes by their attributes. Students will sort shapes into catagories. They will also combine shapes to create new shapes.
I will not always assign homework during the next two chapters. I will also use different resources other than our text to assign work. Please refer to the student's agenda and website for updates.

Social Studies: 
Students are really going to love the next unit of social studies. We will be studying maps. We will pretend that we are pirates and create maps to find treasure. 

Science:
Students are learning about Living Organisms and Non-living Things. Students will begin an inquiry into animal adaptations. This week they will learn about camouflague.

Religion:
Students have began to study the Sacraments. This is an overview as more detail will be learned in second grade. Students are learning that Jesus wants us to be peacemakers. We do this by making decisions that help ourselves and others. We ask for forgiveness we do something that is wrong and we forgive others.
We will also be learning about the parts of Mass, and prayers and responses that are said during Mass.

Important Dates:
5/25: Mass and May Crowning
5/26: 11 am dismissal
5/28: Memorial Day vacation
6/6: Quiet Mass
6/8: Field Day
6/21: Last Day of School/Early Dismissal


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.  

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.

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