A love for learning!

Our class truly shows a love to learn! They are always asking for an extra challenge and work hard to persevere through difficult problems.

My apologies for being a bit behind on our academic updates!

These past few weeks we have been very busy in class...

In foundational skills, we have continued to build our recognition and spelling of first grade sight words. Sight words are words that students may not be able to sound out (said, there, etc.) We work on both reading these words and spelling these words. We have also worked on chunking words when we may not know what the word is. We use "reading animals' to help us decode words we may not know. "Chunky Monkey" is the animal who helps us look for word chunks in words. For example, in the word "spot" a child may read the chunk /ot/ and be able to decode the word more effectively. We have also worked on the "silent e" sound. We refer to this letter as "sneaky e."

Our comprehension focus has been recognizing text features and their purpose in non-fiction articles and books. Text features are found in non-fiction and help the reader find facts and information. Some of the text features that we have learned so far are : titles, photographs, illustrations, captions, labels, glossary and the table of contents. The children are very knowledgeable about text features and their purpose!

In writing we have been practicing becoming natural editors to our finished work. This includes going back to our writing and looking for punctuation marks, capital letters, good spacing, nice handwriting and any misspelled words that we should know. We completed our very first informational/explanatory writing piece! The children chose their own animal to research. After discussing how to research, the children used www.pebblego.com to research information about their animal, such as its appearance, its habitat, what it eats and any additional cool facts. They then put their research notes into a short paragraph. They illustrated their animal and some  children even added labels to their animal. I will be sending these home shortly. I am so proud of this first informational writing piece and they children are too!

In math, we have worked on place value within numbers and using tens and ones to compose various numbers. We compared two digit numbers by using the greater than, less than and equal symbols. We also discussed and analyzed what is "10 more" than any number within 100 and "10 less" than any number. We looked at different patterns within the 100's chart and how to figure out quickly what ten more or ten less is. The children are very good at articulating how they problem solve through their answers. I expect them daily to tell me how they came up with an answer and to share their problem solving strategy with their peers.

In science we have been describing evidence that living things have parts not seen by the eye. We experimented with using a magnify glass and the importance of using different tools in science. We have also discussed habitats and looked more closely at the parts of a seed and the basic functions of a plant.

In social studies we have discussed the different roles and responsibilities of community members and who makes up a community: our school community and our community where we live.

Important Dates to remember:
Sept. 27th- International Night 6-8pm
Sept. 27th- Early Dismissal day
Oct. 1 - PTA Meeting 5:30-6:30pm
Oct. 10th- Reading/Writing Night 6:30-8:00pm

Thank you for helping your child every night with their homework and their reading! I appreciate your time and dedication to your child's education.
Angelina_K_Ferri@mcpsmd.org