First Grade News
First grade writers work hard to publish their series books. Each first grader wrote at least two books in a series about the same characters. We will celebrate their writing with a mini publishing party next week. As part of our science unit on organisms, each first grader planted their own seeds. We’ll observe these plants each week as they grow into our very own herb garden. After one week, we noticed that some seeds had sprouted! In phonics we’ve been studying all the different vowel teams and the various sounds they make. We’ve learned to be careful when reading... Read More
First Grade News
Happy Purim! We’ve enjoyed a week of celebration and kindness. On Purim, we read the book “Uncle Willie’s Soup Kitchen” and then decorated and filled bags to send to CHIPS, a soup kitchen and shelter in our neighborhood. First grade writers continue to work on their realistic fiction series books. We set goals for our writing, learned about introducing our character in the first book, and about adding dialogue to our stories. In Math, we continued to learn how to tell time to the hour and half hour, and then began our unit on numbers to 120. Second... Read More
First Grade News
We’ve started a new genre of writing: realistic fiction. We’re studying the story “Henry and Mudge” by Cynthia Rylant as an example of the genre. Each first grader is using their amazing pretending powers to think of a character and imagine adventures for that character. We also learned to add dialogue, feelings and action to our stories. In phonics we’ve been learning about contractions. Using our detective skills, first grader noticed that when two words are squished together to make a contraction, the apostrophe usually takes the place of vowel. We also started learning about vowel teams- two vowels... Read More
First Grade News
To celebrate Rosh Chodesh Adar Alef we are having Crazy Hat Day! Students are invited to wear a crazy hat to school on Wednesday February 6th. First grade Mathematicians continued to learn about graphing. They learned how to read pictures graphs and use tally marks to make bar graphs. We noticed that we use graphs in our classroom, such as our tooth chart, and our independent reading graph. We’ve started a new writing unit: information writing. In this unit, first graders are working on writing nonfiction teaching books on a topic they already know a lot about. They’ve written books about soccer, gymnastics,... Read More
First Grade News
In preparation for this week’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Tekes, first graders have been learning all about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. We had many discussions about segregation, boycotts, strikes, and what life was like during the Civil Rights movement. They learned that he was a citizen, just like us, who noticed something in his world wasn’t right and he worked his whole life to change it. We listened to the song “With My Own Two Hands” by Ben Harper, and thought of ways we could be good citizens and help change the world with our own two... Read More
First Grade News
We were so excited to welcome everyone back after the break. First graders transitioned seamlessly into new groups. This week we reviewed rules and routines, learned more about one another, and dove right back into our curriculum! We took the opportunity of a new calendar year to revisit the hopes and dreams we made at the start of the year. In the spirit of making New Year’s resolutions, we all made new goals for the rest of the year. We read the book “The Most Magnificent Thing” by Ashley Spires. It’s about a girl who has a vision... Read More
First Grade News
We loved seeing all of you at the Publishing Party! First graders were so proud to show off all of their hard work. As you saw, we’ve been working on revising and editing our work to make it the best it can be. Over the past two weeks, we’ve been interviewing many different community helpers. First graders have asked thoughtful questions, used their listening power to remember important information, and made beautiful posters. In Math, we’re working on addition with numbers 0 – 20. We’ve learned several different strategies such as “make ten,” “use a number line,” and... Read More
First Grade News
First graders have been working hard for the past few weeks! In Math we learned about solid and plane shapes. First graders learned to classify and categorize these shapes. We also learned about tangram puzzles and made Thanksgiving themed tangrams. This week, we began our unit on numbers 0 – 20. We’ve begun learning about place value by thinking about larger numbers in tens and ones. First Graders continued their opinion writing unit by judging a polished rock competition. They picked their favorite rock and wrote about why it was the best. First graders learned about what it means to... Read More
First Grade News
We went on our neighborhood scavenger hunt. First graders explored our school’s neighborhood by looking for community helpers, neighborhood needs, and neighborhood wants. See below for pictures from the scavenger hunt. In math, we continued to learn about subtraction. We practiced counting up from the smaller number. We also applied our knowledge about addition and subtraction to real world word problems. We also learned two new math games: “ninja math” and “roll and record”. We finished our small moment (personal narrative) stories. First graders celebrated their accomplishments with a mini publishing party! In small groups, we read our... Read More
First Grade News
Next week we will be going on our neighborhood scavenger hunt. This week we started learning about some of the people we may meet in our neighborhood: community helpers. Community helpers are people who work to help our communities. Examples include doctors, sanitation workers, firefighters, and letter carriers. First graders made community helper trading cards and played community helper bingo. As part of our social emotional work, we’ve started to discuss feelings. First graders made a feelings word wall in English and Hebrew. We read books in both languages about feelings and discussed how people may have different feelings... Read More