Literacy
First graders have been hard at work in literacy. In addition to our daily routines of reading and writing, we have been reviewing correct letter formation and have begun "Word Study". Word study will be a combination of spelling and vocabulary instruction. Currently we are focused on establishing the routines and expectations of spelling instruction and work. This week all of the students focused on the same words, this will not always be the case. We focused on a few sight words and words containing "at". The sight words were: of, and, are, the. We will now work to be sure every time we write the words we have studied that they are spelled correctly.We have read all the classroom Houndsley and Catina books by James Howe and are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Houndsley and Catina, The Quiet Time. While we wait, we are enjoying The Chocolate Touch as our read aloud. It is a version of the King Midas story.
Math
In math we have continued to work with number patterns and precise counting. On Monday, we used legos to practice recreating patterns and accurately counting them. Ellen Dorsey, the WCSU math coach and former U-32 math teacher also joined our class twice this week. While she was here, we worked on the commutative property of addition (you can rearrange the digits without changing the value - a.k.a. turn around facts) and practiced visualizing numbers. Ask your child about the quick images we have been practicing seeing in multiple ways. Another important skill we are continuing to practice is automatic recognition of left and right.ECO
We had another beautiful day to be outside for ECO on Tuesday. Thank you to the parents that joined us in the woods. During ECO we are practicing many skills, including categorizing and observation. Students gathered items from the forest habitat and then sorted them in several different ways.
