First Grade

The first grade students in my class have been doing a wonderful job! It is exciting to see them learning and growing.

We just received our first quarter assessments so we started working on those today. The math section includes counting and writing to 120. Please feel free to work on that with your child at home. The extra practice is always nice and helps them in class. For the reading assessment students will be expected to say what sounds different letters make, identify letters, and read the first quarter vocabulary words. I will go over the assessments with parents at parent-teacher conferences.

We have been working on identifying the main idea and details in reading. We read a book on habitats, identified the main idea of each chapter and then found the supporting details. In addition, we wrote and directed a commercial to convince people to visit the tropical rain forest. Be looking for that on the website shortly!

In writing we have been working on visualizing before writing and adding details to our stories. I have enjoyed hearing students' memories and stories. They are very eager to share what they have written.

This week in math we are finishing up learning about addition and number bonds. We will be moving on to subtraction a little later this week. Please make sure to check the papers your child is bringing home every Friday and see if there are any concepts they could use extra assistance on. I have been having the students who have mastered addition to 10 move on to harder concepts (addition to 15 and 20) and have been pulling small groups of students to review number bonds and addition. We are also working on addition during our Success time.

Success time happens three days out of the week for 30-40 minutes. Students are split grade-wide into three leveled groups according to their proficiency in the subject area we are focusing on. We usually go to the computer labs where students work on DreamBox (a program that teaches math skills). The first grade teachers pull small groups of students to work with on the area we are focusing on during this time.

In science, we have been learning about what plants need to grow. We have been growing radishes to see what things plants must have to grow. We look at the radishes every couple of days to record the changes we see.

The PTO is sponsoring a walk-a-thon. Each class is learning about a different state. Our state is Arkansas. Yesterday we listened to a 50 states song, found Arkansas on the map, and learned about the Little Rock Nine.

Parent-teacher conferences are coming up! The conference dates are October 22 and 23. Please turn your form in by Friday, September 27th.