You've Got a Friend in Me!
We are rocking and rolling here in first grade! It is amazing how quickly time flies when you are learning and having fun!
As you saw at the end of last week, our class has been generously sponsored to be part of a book of the month club!! Generous friends and family members in the community have sponsored our entire class, for the entire year, to receive a new book each month; knowing that building a love of reading at a young age is essential to becoming life-long readers! Friday, we received our first book of the year, If You Give a Mouse A Brownie!
We were super excited to receive the new books along with a great lesson on perseverance. In the end, we talked about how in first grade we work hard at becoming readers...all year long. Sometimes, it might feel difficult and tricky, but in the we know that we should always keep trying and to make sure we continue to persevere!
Throughout the last couple of weeks, we have been working on building our Daily 5 (literacy station) stamina! Ask your child to tell you what it means to build their stamina! We have talked about how building stamina at school means we are always working hard and practicing over and over to be able to do something for a longer period of time, without our brains getting tired. In Daily 5, that means practicing how to read to self, read to someone, work on writing (aka the build-it write-it activity pages that have come home), word work, as well as reading and listening to reading on computers and iPads.
It has taken some practice and some reteaching, however I have been amazed with how quickly our friends have picked up on the rules and routines of each of the Daily 5 stations. We are only 3 weeks into school and already we are up and running for our Daily 5 literacy stations! During our Daily 5 time, students are not only able to work independently on literacy skills we are learning about, but we are able to work in small groups to help build proficiency in literacy!
Read to Self has by far taken the longest amount of time to master, however it is such an awesome sight to see all of these smart firsties persevering and trying to read to themselves for 20 minutes! We have discussed a few different strategies (we will learn about more and practice them all year long) that will help when coming upon difficult words in their stories during read to self and I saw many students using those strategies already!
A favorite this past week was getting to take out the iPads and computers and learn how to be STAR first graders when using technology. We are excited to be able to use both of these technologies to help build literacy development as well as in other capacities during our year in first grade (we will be introduced to more technology opportunities later). During Daily 5, we use epic! to listen to stories as well as read stories on our own.
I love how well everyone did with taking iPads out, using them appropriately, following ALL directions and even putting them away correctly! It took a little bit of practice learning how to sign in and sign out of epic during each use but they became pros so quickly!
Another favorite this week was learning all about Word Work. At this station, students will use a variety of materials to help them read, write and build words. They have learned how to use magnetic letters, stamps, beads, tiles, marker boards and magic writing to practice words found in the classroom. They will use their writing folders as well as our word wall throughout the year to help build proficiency on the reading skills we will be working on!
We will be wrapping up our unit on number sense and number review this week and will soon be moving into adding and subtracting within 10. I have been so impressed with the number sense that these kiddos have and their excitement to share their math knowledge every day. We have been working every day on counting to 100 (something they worked on in kindergarten) as we will continue that this year and work on mastering counting to 120! We have also continued our work on subitizing every day - ask your child what that means!!! Here are a couple of fun videos you can try at home to help!
In addition to our daily number sense/number review lessons, we have learned a couple of new math games as well.
This game is called Garbage. If you have a deck of cards at home you can sit down and play a fun game of garbage with your child! Ask them to teach you - it is a fun game of building number sense through ten frames!
In Reading Knowledge, we have begun learning about fables and have had fun discussing the lessons (morals) that are taught in each one. After our story each day, our friends have had fun getting the opportunity to show what they learned in their reading journals. We work in these journals often, all year long, and I always love sending their journals home after they have been packed full of information your child has learned throughout the year!
This week we began an awesome new initiative at Forest View called our Friendship Families. It is our goal at Forest View to help cultivate lasting and meaningful relationships between adults and students as well as among students themselves. Once a month we will be meeting with our special Friendship Family (a mix of students from various grade levels and either a teacher or an aide) where we will focus on lessons about friendship, kindness, respect, empathy, etc. We are so excited to have the opportunity to help students make meaningful connections with others! This week's meeting consisted of a fun get-to-know-you activity as well as an opportunity for every child to receive a super awesome t-shirt, sporting our 'You've Got a Friend In Me' logo!
Lastly, here are those awesome self portraits from last week that I gave you a sneak peak of. They are so unique and match the uniqueness of each child so well! I love doing these types of drawings throughout the year and being able to see a growth in each child's artistic skills as they grow!
Important things happening soon:
**Friday, September 20th is PICTURE DAY!!
**Candy Bar Sales begin this week! This is a great fundraiser for our school which we are able to use to help buy school prizes, pay for assemblies and help with the cost of Center Lake as well. If you would like to participate please let us know and we will send a box of chocolates home!
**Next week is Homecoming Week. Every year we like to celebrate with some fun spirit days
*Monday - Hat Day
*Tuesday - Crazy Sock Day
*Wednesday - Wacky Hair Day
*Thursday - Favorite Sports Day
*Friday - Wear your "You've Got a Friend In Me" t-shirt
**HOMECOMING is Friday, September 27th. School will dismiss 1 hour early (2:40pm). The homecoming parade will begin at 5:00. All Forest View students and families are invited to join us to watch the parade together in a designated spot across from the skate park, wearing your You've Got a Friend in Me shirt (3rd and 4th graders may walk in the parade).
Don't forget to check back on our class home page here for important dates!
Make sure to also check our Viking home page here to stay up to date on important things happening in our district!
