Science and Social Studies Time

Starting this week, I will be doing a math intervention with a group of first graders during our science and social studies time.  Your child will either be going with one of the other first grade teachers during the science and social studies time or they will be joining me in the intervention.  This will be for the next few weeks.  As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  Thank you!

Kapco Kids 2 Kids Toy Drive

Thorson Student Council News

The Kapco's Kids 2 Kids toy drive will start on Monday, December 4th and last through Friday, December 15th.  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 Friday, Decmber 8th - 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 is on Friday, December 15th - donate a dollar and wear a hat to show your support.

Thank you in advance for your generosity!

November 27th Newsletter

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break, it sure is great to be back!  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.  

We will wrap up our work with the narratives we are working on this week.  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 we'll focus on editing and publishing by giving our narratives a title and a cover, like a real book!

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.  

The last two weeks have been busy, we were only able to add the words went and want to our word wall.  Please look for an updated word wall sheet to come home in your child's red folder today.

This week in Math we will solve more than and less than story problems, find the difference between numbers using subtraction, review the <, >, and = symbols, work with Part-Part-Whole, work with Turn Around Facts (3+4=7 and 4+3=7), and communicate mathematical thinking through our Number Talks.

We will be finishing our communities social studies unit this week.  Today a meteorologist from CBS58 came in to talk to the first graders.  Make sure to ask them about this!  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

• Scholastic Book Orders are due Monday, December 15th.  You can view the flyers online and order books by going to www.scholastic.com/bookclubs and using the online code:  JBVLK

Stuffed Animal Day Tomorrow!

Our class earned five apples and our reward is a stuffed animal day!  Your child may bring a stuffed animal to school tomorrow!  Please make sure that the stuffed animal is no bigger than your child's backpack.  Thank you!

November 20th 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 continue to work on place value, balanced equations, and frames and arrows problems.  There will not be any math homework this week.

We will continue working on our Communities unit in social studies.  Thank you to all of the parents that have volunteered to talk to the students about your job!

DUE DATE EXTENSION:  Scholastic Book Orders are due this Wednesday, November 23rd.  Shop Online: scholastic.com/readingclub Class Activation Code: JBVLX

Special Points of Interest

• No school on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

November 13th 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!  

Last week, we added the words first, last, said, saw, make and good to our word wall.  Please look for an updated word wall sheet to come home in your child's red folder today.

This week in math we are working on place value and continuing to explore frames and arrows problems.  We will also begin number talks, which is a mental math warm up activity where students use and share their strategies for soling math problems.  Look for an addition sheet and a "What's My Rule?" sheet to come home for homework this week.

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.  Thank you in advance to all of the parents that are coming in to talk about your jobs!

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!
• Scholastic Book Orders are due Friday, November 17th. Flyers will be coming home sometime this week.  Shop Online: scholastic.com/readingclub Class Activation Code: JBVLX
• Parent-Teacher Conferences are this Thursday, November 16th and the following Monday, November 20th.  I am looking forward to meeting with you to talk about your wonderful children!
• No School next Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday

IMC Change

The first graders will be going to the IMC tomorrow.  If your child would like to check out new books, please make sure they return their books!

November 6th 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!

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 though.  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 we will be adding a new center, Reader's Notebook!  The students will each get their own special notebook for this center.  This week, the students will be writing about themselves, but in the coming weeks, they will be writing about books they read.

Last week, we added the words or, had, by, not, let, and us to our word wall.  Please look for an updated word wall sheet to come home in your child's red folder today.

This week in math we will be introducing dimes and adding combinations of pennies, nickels, and dimes.   We will review graphing by creating our own class graphs.  The children will be exploring dot patterns on dominoes to find the sum of the two parts.  Additionally, the students will be learning more about place value and two digit numbers.  Look for Home Links 3.9 and 3.10 to come home this week.

This week we will be starting a new social studies unit on communities.  Please return the parent letter that came home last week if you would like to come into our classroom to tell the students about your job.

Special Points of Interest

• No school this Friday, November 10th - end of the quarter and records day/professional development for teachers
• No school November 22nd, 23rd, or 24th
• Scholastic Book Orders are due November 17th. Flyers will be coming home today.  Shop Online: scholastic.com/readingclub Class Activation Code: JBVLX