A first great week!

Happy Labor Day!

As we enjoy this long weekend of resting from a busy, yet positive week, I am using this time to reflect on our first week of first grade. We started off with a great start as the children got accustomed to their new learning environment, learned about one another, adjusted to high expectations and dove right into learning and working hard... at the same time as having fun with smiles and excitement of all this year will bring.

This past week...

In foundational skills (phonics) we have reviewed the sight words from Kindergarten and began to learn some of the new first grade sight words. We have reviewed the sounds of the letters and started working with short vowel sounds and blends. Based on what each child's needs are and where their reading level is, I base my lessons and activities around each child. I find that working in small groups during phonics time allows each child to learn on their level and learn more effectively in a small group.

Our comprehension focus for this week has been "asking and answering key questions from a text" and reviewing good reading strategies. We have discussed different ways to decode words and get our lips ready for the sounds. We have also practiced making predictions (we call this a fancy word for guessing) of what the story may be about. Have your child make a prediction to you before you read your reading book at night!

In writing,we have reviewed handwriting skills and the proper way to form letters and numbers. We have discussed what good sentences have (capital letters, spaces, punctuation marks and nice handwriting) Each child has a writing journal in class. We have been also working with thinking of ideas to write about. We glued in an "ideas" paper in the front of our writing journal to help us think of ideas to write about. Research shows, that reading and writing are tightly connected in building a good reader. Children learn to read both from reading and writing. I am excited, because this group loves to write!!!!

In math, we have been building a strong number sense. We are working on counting to 120, starting with any number. We are also working on recognizing and writing any number within 120. We have worked with the number line and the 100's chart, two very important tools in our classroom that will help the children all year long build a solid foundation of numbers. Math is filled with lots of small group instruction, fun activities and perseverance to work hard!

In social studies, we have discussed why we need rules and what are our school and classroom rules. The children were able to come up with our classroom rules. They performed some of the rules in a skit with their classmates this week and also created a poster of our rules.

In science, we have been learning about living things and their basic needs for growth and survival.


Important Dates:
Sept. 3rd- PTA 6:30-7:30
Sept. 5th- Schools Closed
Sept. 27th- Early release day for students
Sept. 27th- International Night 6:30-8:00


I thank each of you for your communication and time with your child. Thank you for having them come to school ready to learn! Our teamwork is so important and I look forward to working with your family very closely this year.
If you have any questions, email me at Angelina_K_Ferri@mcpsmd.org
Have a great rest of the weekend!