It has been an interesting week in first grade. With the storm that caused so many to lose power, Halloween and the Holiday Feast all rolled into one week our schedule has been a bit unpredictable. The energy level in our room has certainly been high. We have continued to work on being persistent and setting goals for improvement.
Writing
During writing we are coming to the end of our first narrative writing unit. Everyone has made progress towards meeting the first grade standards. We have been focusing on some important writing conventions such as spaces between words and the correct use of capital letters. Students are enjoying "correcting" the morning message and are becoming experts at finding my capitalization errors. They know that capital letters are found at the beginning of sentences and the first letter of specific names (a.k.a. proper nouns).Next week the students will have an opportunity to demonstrate their growth through a writing prompt. A prompt is an opportunity for students to independently write a piece. The class knows we will be working on a prompt and might benefit from brainstorming some "small moment" true stories that they could write about. I will be sharing these writing pieces during conferences.
Technology
Have you heard about Bee-bot or Kibo? Those are two of the robots that we are learning to program during technology time. Bee-bot is programmed by entering the code directly into the robot. Kibo is programmed by scanning a series of programming blocks. Students are learning to write programs that are composed of multi-step, sequential directions. On Wednesday, we added a conditional block, "wait for clap" to our programs. 
Snack
I have found that the majority of our class needs an afternoon snack. Please check with your child to ensure that he/she has enough snack for the day. The majority of the class is asking for extra snack in the afternoon. If you do not want your child receiving extra snack, please let me know.
Outdoor Clothing
If you are cleaning out your closet and have outdoor gear that your child no longer uses, please consider donating it to the primary unit (kindergarten - second grade). We can use extra snow gear as well as rain gear. Items that are donated will be used for those days when items are forgotten or get wet.
Reminders
- PE Lab is Wednesday, November 8th. We will be spending the morning outside. Your child will need both rain boots for wet grass in the morning and sneakers for rock climbing. If you have not returned your child's permission slip, I sent another one home today.
- Our 2 week circus residency starts next week. The performance is Thursday the 16th at U-32. More details will be provided in the school newsletter.
- Parent Conferences are Friday, November 10th. There is no school for students that day.
