Friday, January 18, 2019

Dear Families,

Happy New Year! I hope you all have a fabulous vacation. Thank you again for all of the wonderful gifts. I loved everything! We are excited to be back and ready to learn!

Reminders: Please take the time, daily, to sit with your child to review the contents of his/her Take Home Folder. This is a wonderful way for your child to share his/her learning and a great way for you to know more about his/her school day and how to continue the learning at home.

Homework: Your child is expected to be reading to an adult nightly, bring his Book Bag to school each day to get a new book as well as always having his/her Reading Log up to date. Using a first grade computer math program, addition and subtraction flashcards, first grade math worksheets and math games are great ways to continuing to help your child's math skills grow at home too.

Reading: We started our new balanced literacy program, Reading Workshop, this week with the lessons focused on learning that good readers have good habits. Ask your child and you should hear that good readers take a "sneak peek" at a book before reading, they check their predictions about a book by looking at the first few pages, they have choices about what to do when they finish a book and lastly, this week, they learned that good readers make a plan to read more and more books!

Writing: In our balanced writing program, Writing Workshop, we started a new unit. We will be working in this Information Style of writing for about 6 weeks leaning how to write to share information. We will be having lots of discussion about how we are experts on many things and can use this style of writing to share what we know.  When writing in the genre, your child will learning how to write an introduction, give 3 or more facts, add details to tell more about the facts and offer a conclusion. Reading lots of non fictions books at home would help your child build his/her knowledge about people, places and things helping him/her have more on which to write.

Math: We have started a new unit with all lessons centered on place value working in ones and tens. During our Number Corner calendar board activity time, we will be counting dimes and pennies, writing story problems, finding the missing parts and whole in an equation and writing number bonds.

Needs: tissues, large size ziplock bags, sour patch kids