We have been busy learning about winter traditions and wrapping up our Community Unit. Both units have focused on understanding that people, cultures, traditions and communities have many things in common but also have things that are unique to them. In first grade language, we often say "Same, same but different." We have learned that many winter traditions are focused around family and the celebration of light. With each holiday that we have learned about we have completed a learning log and a hands-on activity. While studying Hanukkah, we learned to play dreidel. For Chinese New Year, we made dragons that are now hanging from our ceiling. Today we created rain sticks and learned about Kwanzaa. Next week we will learn about Christmas and Winter Solstice.
Beebot Celebration
Thank you to the families that contributed snacks to our Bee-Bot Celebration. We were also fortunate to be joined by many adults. The Bee-Bot portion of our community unit focused on the basics of coding. Coding is a wonderful way to reinforce directionality and sequencing for learners. Students also learned to work collaboratively while helping but not telling their group what to do.Writing
Our focus during writing has been on penmanship and writing conventions. It is important that first graders write using both upper and lowercase letters without having to spend a lot of time thinking about how to form the letters. It is now expected that all writing be in lowercase letters unless capitals are needed. The students have learned to capitalize specific names (aka proper nouns), the beginning of a sentence and the pronoun I. We are also working to space words correctly and to end each sentence with a punctuation mark.
Math
During math we have been working to improve our understanding of place value. Place value is one of the key concepts in mathematics and though it is primarily taught in early elementary the understanding of place value (or not understanding it) will follow students through their mathematics journey. It is essential that students understand the meaning of a number. For example, in the number 635, the 6 represents 600. Without this understanding, students often struggle with higher level math such as when adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers make little sense. However, being able to say that 635 is 600 + 30 + 5 does not, in and of itself, mean that a student understands place value. Place value encompasses not only position and value of digits but also decomposition of numbers and a number’s relationship to others in the number system. Next Week
Tuesday - we will be decorating cookies. We are still in need of volunteers to send in frosting. If you have volunteered to send cookies, feel free to drop them off Monday or Tuesday. The cookies do not need to be fancy, the kids will take care of that.Thursday - we have ECO. Please be sure your child has warm, dry clothes to spend the morning outside.
Friday - we are working toward earning a Grinch Day on Friday. I'm confident the class will earn the celebration. Please let me know if you would like to contribute to the special snacks.
