9-29-17

Dear Unicorn Families!

Conference time is upon us.  I am looking forward to meeting with all of you over the next couple of weeks.  Each conference will be between 15 to 18 minutes.  If we still have things to talk about after those 18 minutes, I will be happy to set up another time with you to continue the discussion.  If you have specific questions about your student, we will start with those questions so we do not run out of time at the end.  While I have many things I can tell you about your child, your concerns and questions are most important to me.  I will send reminder emails this week for next week’s conferences, and next week for conferences the week of October 9^th.

We had our first garden visits this week.  Three groups went to visit the garden with two parent volunteers and the other two groups will go next week.  They looked around the garden at all of the sights and smells.  They even looked for seeds.  Speaking of seeds.  Thank you for all of the seeds and seed pods we have received in the classroom.  I have placed them all in plastic bags, stapled them to the bulletin board and I can’t wait to start talking about them next week. 

This week we worked on some dictation sentences with short a words.  We use a systematic introduction to spelling and reading starting with CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant).  We then introduce blends (cl, br, sk….) and then digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh, ph).  The stronger understanding a child has on how to break down a word, the easier it is for them to read a word they do not know accurately.  In reading we continue to talk about connections and comparison of characters within books and between books.

Next week is a regular week with early release on Thursday.  The week after (October 9^th though 13^th) the children get out of school at 11:30 am Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  There is no school on Thursday and Friday.  Please make sure I know any schedule changes your child will have that week.  Library will be on Wednesday, so please make sure their library books are back.  If you are collecting Box Tops, please send them in next week, they will be collecting at the end of the month.

During the week of conferences, I have some pumpkin activities planned.  I have created a Signup-Genius for donations of pumpkins and for volunteers to help on Tuesday morning.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. 

       Mrs. Berk

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/409094aaea82ea4fa7-pumpkin

9-22-17

Dear Unicorn Families!

We have officially arrived to my favorite time of the year.  Today is the first day of fall!  The crisp clean air, pumpkins, hanging out in the garden and the feeling that school is finally in a groove, all make fall the best time of the year!  We had another busy week in first grade.  In writing we added more details to our stories.  I modeled a couple of stories and showed how to make them more interesting and make the characters come to life.  We will continue to work on this for next week as well.  In reading, we continue with our author study.  This week we learned about our author and made connections to some of the books we read.  Next week we will use our schema to make connections between characters in books and between two characters from different books.  We are winding down our health unit.  We are finishing up some assessments and the last topics for health.  Once we have finished that up, we will start our unit on plants and the plant life cycle.

We visited the book fair for a preview today.  The book fair is open all week before school, at lunch and after school.  We do not go back to the book fair as a group, nor am I able to take your child if you send them with money.  They will go to the library on their own after they eat.  The book fair will be open on the evening of the Parent Picnic and Play, Thursday, September 28^th. 

There are two garden plots available in the community garden area that shares our school garden.  If you are interested, I can put you in touch with those in charge of the garden (there is a monthly cost).  We will have our own garden plot this year and starting after the garden clean-up day (October 7^th), we will plant and harvest as part of our unit on plants.  We will start our afternoons in the garden next week.  Every child will visit the garden with volunteers, but not every week.  The first two weeks in the garden will be about exploration and seeing what is there.  Please let me know if you would like to help with this.

In math we have been working on solving word problems and making sure we draw and label our picture and write our number sentence.  We have been successful in our math workstations. We have been working on counting accurately, playing some great adding games where we need to find how many are missing, and finding multiple ways to make 7, 8, 9 and 10.  We will continue to build on these skills in the next week. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. 

       Mrs. Berk