Here is an update on our first grade learning. Use this information to start a discussion with your first grader about school. Instead of asking, “What did you do at school today?” use the specifics listed below to learn more. Hopefully, you won’t hear that dreaded answer from your first grader… “Oh, nothing.”  🙂

Writing:

This week, we started our Persuasive Writing Unit. We discussed the characteristics of a persuasive letter and how to ask for something that is meaningful and could help us or others. After brainstorming a list of ideas, we wrote persuasive letters to different people including; friends, Santa, parents, and Mrs. Bast. Look for some of these interesting letters coming home after Thanksgiving.

Reading:

During our short, snowy week, we studied the characters in our books. We had noticed before that our friend DAVID was a character that follows a pattern in his stories… he always acts naughty! This week, we paid close attention to other characters, noticing what they did or said. We noticed that some characters gave us clues through their actions and words as to how they were feeling. We started using Readers’ Notebooks to write down our observations. These characters show a range of emotions and it was fun unlocking the clues to learn more about them.

Math:

We continued to practice our subtraction strategies during our math switch time this week. Our first graders are becoming experts at proving their work with math mountains and subtraction equations. We are beginning to rely less and less on circle drawings… although we do encourage the use of this strategy for proving our answers and solving equations if we are stuck. We also learned how to use orange quilt cards to practice solving subtraction equations using the “counting up” strategy. Since we aren’t able to write on our quilt cards, “counting up” took the place of using a circle drawing. Check out the explanation below: