April 18, 2011

Happy Earth Day!  This week we will be talking about Earth Day and what we can do to help make a difference.

PDSA: Our new PDSA (Continuous Improvement Plan) will focus on Math.  Our PLAN:  All first grade students will have fact power! Please help your child study their fact triangles at home.  They should practice them for 4-5 minutes each night.  Also, feel free to play around with some fact power games on everydaymathonline.com

Writing Workshop:  Today we wrapped up our revision unit.  We all shared our finished pieces and celebrated with a little apple juice.  Tomorrow we will start our poetry unit.  We will also attend POETRY ALIVE presentation. 

In Reading Workshop we will learn:

Phonics Skill: Segment and count syllables:  example: wonder (2), friend (1), helpfully (3)

Syffixes –ly, and –ful Ex. Slowly, hopeful

Vowels oo in moon:  Another way to spell the long sound u.  Ex. Food, moon, zoo, bloom

White Board work words: bloom, mood, hoop, scoop, slowly, quickly, sadly, careful, useful

High Frequency Words: told, only, across, because, dance, opened, shoes

Amazing Words: discover, dwell, resident, welcome, admire, sadness, substantial, tremendous

Fluency:  Attend to punctuation: A comma tells us to pause for a moment.  It is important to notice punctuation at the end of sentences and punctuation within sentences.  

Comprehension:   Cause and Effect:  Most things happen for a reason.  Good readers ask themselves what happens and why it happens.  Words like because and so can help you figure out what happens and why.

Preview:  Previewing the features in a selection, such as chapter titles, can help you to set a purpose for predicting.     


In Math we will learn how to:

8.6

      -Count equal parts of wholes.

      -Divide shapes into halves, thirds, and fourths.

      -Find objects divided into equal parts.

8.7

      -Count equal parts of wholes.

      -Identify shapes divided into halves, thirds and       fourths.

      -Record the number of equal parts in a whole and       label each part with a fraction.

8.8

      -Count by halves, thirds, fourths, and sixths to 1.

      -Find fractional parts of sets.

8.9

      -Use fractions to relate smaller shapes to larger shapes.

      -Divide shapes into equal parts and label the parts.

      -Recognize and sort doubles facts and near doubles facts.

Our Unit 8 Math test will be on Friday.  We will review on Thursday.