Tag Archives: Learning Update

Learning Update

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Math Update: We are off to a great start with our wonderful math program. During the first two weeks of school, we’ve been visualizing, representing, and breaking apart numbers using a variety of math tools: counters, stair steppers, and number cards. When we break apart a number, we take a larger number and split it into two smaller numbers. We call the two smaller numbers partners because when we add them together they equal the larger number. So far we’ve discovered the partners for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Thank you for helping your child complete the math homework. This important practice reinforces what is taught in the classroom each day.

Reading Update: This week, we began readers’ workshop. We have enjoyed reading some great stories together and have started building the foundation of our independent reading time. Readers get better by reading just right books, so we’ve focused this week on choosing books that we can read and that we enjoy.

Writing Update: During Writer’s Workshop, our class has been writing small moment stories. A small moment story is a true story from our own experiences. We learned how writers plan their stories by thinking of an idea, sketching a quick picture for the beginning, middle, and end, and then writing the words. We also learned that good writers always keep working. We use the phrase “When you’re done – you’ve just begun!” because good writers go back to add details to their pictures and words or they start a new story.

 

 

 

Learning Update

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Math:

This week, we continued practicing the important addition strategy: counting on. We learned how to use our red quilt cards to increase our fact fluency.

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We also spent time studying subtraction stories that involve objects being taken away. Our first graders learned to represent this thinking with a circle drawing, break-apart stick, and minus sign right through the circles that were taken away:

We emphasized that a subtraction equation always begins with the total and then we figure out the missing partner. An addition equation solves for a missing total.

Reading:

We added to our accuracy strategies this week. Flippy the Dolphin is a great strategy to use when readers are stretching out a word. Readers can first try the short vowel sound and if that doesn’t sound right, they can FLIP IT and try the long vowel sound. Most importantly, when they have a good guess of what they think their tricky word is…they need to be careful. Careful Caterpillar reminds readers to make sure that all of the word parts match with their guess.

Writing:

We learned how to finish our stories with a special ending. Our endings help “tie a bow” to our stories and help the reader know that our story is finished. Sharing special thoughts or feelings at the end of our story is a good way to finish.

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Learning Update

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Here is the update on our first grade learning.

Reading:

We continued our study of characters, looking for clues that would indicate their feelings. We studied our characters’ words and the pictures and we found characters that were embarrassed, angry, happy, worried, and scared. We tracked our thinking in our readers’ notebooks, turning our observations into sentences about our characters.

Writing:

We have been focused on writing a great persuasive letter. We learned that persuasive letters can be effective in making our home, neighborhood, or school a better place. These letters state an opinion, are addressed to a specific audience, and give good reasons for why a change is important.

Next week, we will begin sending letters home that your children have written to you! Our letters are becoming more persuasive every day, so be on the lookout for some interesting ideas!

Math:

We spent our math switch time solving missing total, missing partner and subtraction stories using the great strategies that we’ve learned during this unit. We used math mountains and equations to help us visualize the relationship between the math totals and the math partners in these stories. 

The challenge was deciding if we were looking for a missing total or a missing partner and then choosing the appropriate strategy. If we are looking for a partner, we encourage our first graders to count-up from the given partner to the total. If we are looking for the total, we encourage our first graders to count-on from the greater partner. We will review these concepts next week and then take our Unit 3 Test.