Field Trip this Friday!!!!

Just a friendly reminder that we will be going to The Nutcracker this Friday.  Please remember to send your child to school with a cold lunch as we will be eating lunch in our classroom.  Also, if you have not paid for this field trip in Skyward, please do so ASAP.  Thank you!

November 26th Newsletter

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break and you were able to spend time with your family and friends!  This week we will be working with more blends, or as we call them "letters that go together."  Our students have been learning to hear those consonants that blend together at the beginning of many words, like: star, flame, climb, and snap.  

This week we will begin to wrap up our work with the narratives we are working on.  We started the piece with oral storytelling to a partner, moved to illustrating a story board to guide our writing and then began our writing.  This week and into next week we'll focus on editing and publishing by giving our narratives a title and a cover, like a real book!

We will also be writing letters to Santa!  We will be mailing them off to the North Pole and hope to get a response by winter break.

This week we will also be circling back to the topic of friendship.  We'll be reading some stories and discussing how to be a good friend.  If you can find a few minutes to have a conversation with your son or daughter about kindness and respect for others it would be much appreciated.  Your support really helps strengthen these concepts.  

This week in math we will make two and three digit numbers using base ten blocks.  We will also compare quantities of numbers by using the terms greater than, less than, and equal to, learn about <, >, and = symbols when comparing quantities, and work with more than and less than number stories.

We will be finishing our communities social studies unit this week.  The children will be learning about maps and creating a make-believe community with a partner.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to come to parent-teacher conferences.  It was great to meet with you and talk about your wonderful children!  As always, if you have any additional questions or concerns please feel free to email me.

Special Points of Interest

• Friday, November 30th - Field Trip to the Nutcracker - Please remember to send a cold lunch!
• Monday, December 3rd - Friday, December 14th - Kapco Kids2Kids Toy Drive
• Scholastic Book Orders are due Monday, December 7th. Guaranteed delivery by winter break!  You can view the flyers online and order books by going to www.scholastic.com/bookclubs and using the online code:  JBVLK

Kapco Kids 2 Kids Toy Drive

The Kapco's Kids 2 Kids toy drive will start on Monday, December 3rd and last through Friday, December 14th.  If you are able to, please bring in an unwrapped toy for the Toy Drive.

Kids2Kids Toy Drive Events: Buy an ornament day is on Thursday, Decmber 6th - Students can donate a dollar to the toy drive and buy an ornament to put on the bulletin board outside of Mrs. Kikkert's office.  
Hat day or Pajama day is on Friday, December 13th - donate a dollar and wear a hat/pajamas to show your support.

Thank you in advance for your generosity!

November 19th Newsletter

Dear Parents and Guardians,

As you might be writing letters to Santa or working on gift lists with your children, I wanted to let you know that during this short week we are working on "letters that go with r," otherwise known as blends.  While we do want children to listen for sounds and write what they hear, if your child isn't hearing those blends at the beginning or words (such as truck, pretty, crib, freeze)  it would be great if you could help them stretch the word by saying it really slowly.  We are really focusing on getting both those sounds into our words.  Remember, it isn't necessary to spell the word correctly but those beginning sounds are really important right now!  

In math, we will wrap up our unit about finding missing addends. We will continue solving word problems involving missing addends and use multiple strategies to solve for the unknown number.

We will continue working on our Communities unit in social studies.

Special Points of Interest

• No school on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday
• Field Trip to the Nutcracker on Friday, November 30th

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

November 12th Newsletter

We have been working very hard on fluency for the last few weeks, but this past week we marked one of our poems in phrases of two to four words.  We read the lines in different ways to see what sounded better.  When we were all done, we read the poem, paying attention to the phrases we had marked.  What a difference it made!  Our first graders are starting to really understand how reading should sound.  We are also working hard on this in guided reading.  When you read the take home books with your child, be sure prompt him or her to "read it like this," as you model it, in a few places.  Remember that reading picture books to your child is still very important.  They need to hear you model that phrased, fluent reading!  Keep up the great work! 

This week in math we will solve story problems involving missing addends (Example: I have a garden with 9 flowers. Mom planted some more flowers. Now there are 13 flowers in the garden. How many flowers did mom plant?).  We will also discuss different strategies for how to solve missing added problems and tools we can use to support our thinking (number lines, ten frames, drawing pictures, using fingers, making number bonds, etc.).  Remember to keep practicing addition and subtraction facts at home.  This quarter, we will be working on addition and subtraction facts to 10.

We will continue working on our Communities unit in Social Studies.  We will discuss how people work together to make their communities a good place to live.  We will also work with reading and making maps of our classroom, home and neighborhood.

Special Points of Interest

• Winter is quickly approaching.  Now is the time to start thinking about packing an extra pair of socks and mittens in your child's backpack.
• Please continue to remind your children to bring their take-home books back to school.  Nightly reading is so important!
• If you aren't able to make it to the book fair, I will still be placing a book order this month.  Scholastic Book Orders are due Tuesday, November 20th. Shop Online: scholastic.com/readingclub Class Activation Code: JBVLX
• Parent-Teacher Conferences are this Wednesday, November 14th and the following Monday, November 19th.  I am looking forward to meeting with you to talk about your wonderful children!
• Friday, November 16th - Stuff the Bus Food Drive
• No School next Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday

November 5th Newsletter

Welcome to second quarter!  It's so exciting to reflect on the growth of our class from the beginning of the year to now!  In just a little over two months our students are thinking about what would make sense when they are stuck on an unfamiliar word, and then they cross-check that with the letters on the page to make sure it looks right too.  Just to be sure, they know how to "slow check" the word by running their finger slowly under the letters of the word to see if the letters match the sounds they make as they slowly say the word.  This strategy also works great in writing too!

In writing, we are working on finishing up our small moment stories and this week we'll be doing a study of punctuation.  We've learned a lot about how writers write about what they know, and so we've worked on writing about small moments from our lives.  We take one small moment and write lots about it.  We write about what happened, how we felt and what we thought.  Many of us are remembering to punctuate some of our sentences already, and hopefully we'll get closer to punctuating every sentence soon! 

This week in math we will review writing equations for fact families.  We will also apply strategies we have learned for finding unknown addends in equations, continue working on "If, then statements" (If 7+_=12, then 12-_=7), and use mathematical language to communicate our thinking during Number Talks.

I will not be in school a few days over the next two weeks because I am attending a math training. I am looking forward to bringing all my new learning back to the classroom!

This week we will be starting a new social studies unit on neighborhoods and communities.

Make sure to check your child's Seesaw account.  We had some fun with the Green Screen last week and talked about what we're thankful for.  The video turned out very cute!

Special Points of Interest

• Please sign up for parent-teacher conferences if you haven't done so already.  Also, if you need an alternative date/time, please don't hesitate to ask!
• November 9th - Veteran's Day Assembly
• November 12-19 - Book Fair
• No school November 21-25 (Thanksgiving Break)
• If you aren't able to make it to the Book Fair at school, I plan on placing a Scholastic Book Order on November 20th. Shop Online: scholastic.com/readingclub Class Activation Code: JBVLX