Math: This week, we finished up our Comparisons and Data unit with some review and an assessment. Our first graders did some great thinking as they sorted and organized data and solved comparison stories. Thank you for continuing to help your first grader with math homework. Your role as Math Buddy is very important as your child practices math skills at home. We forward to stretching our brains in new ways as we learn about Time and Measurement in our next math unit!

Writing: In Writer’s Workshop, we celebrated some amazing Small Moment stories. On Monday, we picked our favorite small moment stories and checked for leads, show not tell details, interesting dialogue, ellipses, and good wrap up endings. We edited our stories for finger spaces, neat handwriting, capital letters, and punctuation. We also added a Dedication page, an About the Author page, and a cover with a title. We fancied our stories with color and practiced reading our stories with expressive voices. On Friday, we shared our stories with partners from Mrs. Baker’s class and celebrated our learning with speeches and a juice toast. It was such a fun celebration of all that we’ve learned about writing!!! 

Reading: We finished up our reading unit focused on decoding complex words. Throughout this unit, we reviewed our animal strategies and introduced new strategies for decoding words with more complex vowel sounds/combinations. Keep on the lookout for tricky vowel sounds as your child reads with you. Point out these vowels to your child and help him/her figure out the sounds. The more they take notice of vowels, the more they will remember the sounds for these tricky vowel combinations. On Monday, we will begin our next writing unit as we use both fiction and nonfiction books to study special topics.

Math: For the last two weeks, we have created graphs and made comparisons during math. As our expertise grew, so did our graphs! Instead of comparing just two groups of objects, most of our graphs now compare three categories of data.

We make comparisons between the data by finding the Magic Number. This is the more or fewer amount. With three groups it’s a little harder to find the difference, so it’s helpful to use a pencil to cover up the extra information. Please help your first grader read the statements and questions carefully on the math homework. It can be tricky to use math and reading skills together!

Writing: In Writer’s Workshop, we worked on adding more details to our Small Moment stories. We can use our five senses to show not tell what we were feeling. Instead of saying “I was so happy”, we could say “I was grinning from ear to ear”. Instead of “I was embarrassed”, we could write “My face turned red”. These details really help our readers jump into our stories.

We revisited what we learned about dialogue. Anything we heard or said can be added to a story to bring it to life. We noticed that we used the word “said“ a lot which can be boring! There are many much more interesting words to use than just “said”! We created a list of words to use instead (replied, asked, whispered, shouted, begged, laughed, cried, etc.). These first grade writers are writing some terrific stories!

Reading: This week we practiced using a new tool which helped us check for understanding. We can use this tool after each page or two in our books to make sure that we remembered what is happening in our books. If we forgot, we practiced going back and rereading. We have also been working so hard to read ALL of the words in our books. After being able to read the words, we can focus our attention on fluency. Rereading a book helps our reading sound smooth and we can discover new learning.

Math: We began our Unit 6 in math this past week. Our first grade mathematicians our now sorting, organizing, and comparing data. We’ve learned how to take random data and record it on a chart or graph.  Crossing out each object as we add it to our graph helps us to be accurate.

After graphing the information, we were also able to make comparisons – how many more or how many fewer. To compare our data, we drew matching pairs and then circled the magic number.

The magic number represents the difference between the two groups being compared. No matter if we are comparing how many more or how many fewer – the number is always the same (that’s why it’s magic!).

When you are looking over your first grader’s homework be sure to check if he or she is circling the word that correctly matches the data. Understanding when to circle more or fewer can be a little tricky, especially if your first grader is reading the homework page independently. Underline the group that is listed first, so he/she knows which part of the graph to go back and study.

Reading: We worked on being accurate readers this week. We learned that good readers try several different strategies when sounding out doesn’t work. We practiced saying, “When you’re stuck and out of luck, just try three… so easy!” and used the Super Three (look for chunks, skip the word, try the line again). We also practiced paying attention to the feeling we get when something we read isn’t right. When we get that “Huh?” feeling, it is important to go back and fix the part that didn’t make sense.

We discussed how readers check the endings of tricky words to make sure our reading looks right, sounds right, and makes sense. As our books get longer, so do the words! It is important that we read carefully so that we don’t change the words or the meaning.

Writing: Our writers are hard at work on small moment stories again. We’ve reviewed the important parts of stories and are now learning to make our writing even better. We already know that our writing needs to zoom in to the most important part (the seed instead of the watermelon). Now we are making sure that we choose story topics that have big feelings (excitement, fear, happiness, sadness). We can show (not tell!) our readers these feelings by using great descriptions. We’ve studied authors that use this technique and we are starting to write some wonderful, big feeling pieces!