Thank you for coming to parent/teacher conferences. I enjoyed meeting with you and discussing your child!

Writing: We are continuing to write small moment stories in Writer’s Workshop. We began the week by learning how to use punctuation correctly. This can be a hard concept to grasp and we will continue working on it all year. We also learned that in order to write stories that are easy to read, writers use 5 star sentences. These sentences have capital letters, finger spaces, end marks, correctly spelled word wall words, and neat handwriting.

Math: We started Unit 3 this past week and introduced our first graders to using math mountains to solve missing partner problems. A math mountain is a method for organizing the partners on the bottom and the total on top. We also learned how to find the missing partner by clapping and counting up from the known partner to the total. Keep encouraging your first grader to show his/her thinking on the homework. Proving math work is a great way for thinking to become more secure.

Reading: We learned how good readers stop and check when their reading doesn’t look right, sound right, or make sense. This awareness is crucial for beginning readers who sometimes make the mistake of skipping or changing words. Your first grader can read more carefully by using a reading finger and reading at a moderate pace. If your child does make a mistake, encourage him/her to fix it, by saying, “Something didn’t sound right (or look right) in the sentence/on that page. Can you find it?” After fixing the mistake, make sure your first grader rereads the corrected sentence to ensure comprehension.

We also studied the H Brothers (th, sh, wh, and ch) and the R Sisters (er, ir, ur, ar, and or). These interesting chunks use two letters, but make one sound. We practiced our knowledge by sorting words using these features. We are now seeing these special chunks in our books and using them in our writing.