Learning Update

Writing: This week we continued to develop our How To’s. We’ve worked on adding text features, such as pictures that teach, captions, headings, warnings, and labels to help readers understand our steps. These first graders are coming up with some very imaginative How To’s. Some of their ideas have included: How To Paint Your Nails, How to Make a Dog Dance, How to Make a Root Beer Float, How to Read a Book, and How to Ride an Electric Scooter. Next week we will edit, revise, and celebrate our writing!

Reading: This week in reading workshop we introduced reading book clubs. The kids were separated into groups and each book club had a different nonfiction book. There were book clubs studying Pigs, Dinosaurs, Storms, Look Alike Animals, Trees, and Animal Tracks.

Each day, we spent a segment of our reading workshop time with our groups. We identified the main idea and details and also compared/contrasted our topics. We coached each other through tricky words using our decoding strategies and used glossaries, key words, headings and captions to understand our topics. It is exciting to see how much we are learning from these nonfiction books and from each other.

Math: During our math time this week, we continued to solve missing partner and missing total stories. We also stretched our thinking by using the Make a Ten strategy to solve equations and math stories with three addends or partners. First, we looked for two partners that could make a ten and then adding the third partner was a snap!

We are starting to work on counting and writing numbers up to 120. To help your first grader practice this skill, have him/her start at any 2 digit number and then count out loud to 120. This could be a great activity to do together in the car. As an extra challenge, you could even have your child write the numerals up to 120!

 

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