Mrs. V's All Star Learners Classroom: 11/9/13 Newsletter

Dear Parents of First Grade All Stars,
     Last week held many interesting Social Studies lessons, discussions, and activities concerning civic rights, responsibilities, privileges, and duties. We read about and discussed the voting process for Election Day. I told the children a cute story about the first time I took my son into the voting booth with me and let him press down the levers. Many of them shared that they, too, accompany their parents when they go to vote. Yesterday was full of Veterans' Day work, and even our graphing question of the day was about Veterans. We read and discussed the latest "Scholastic News" issue entitled "Thank you, Veterans!" (This issue should have made its way home yesterday for discussions and/or rereads. Please let me know if you did not receive it.) I read a book called Veterans' Day to the students and they had fantastic questions that showed their good listening and thinking. (One boy even asked if he could take the book home over the weekend for a reread...hooray!) The children worked on a cut-and-paste activity showing different ways communities celebrate Veterans' Day. Then at the end of the day we attended the whole-school assembly for Veterans' Day. This was planned and lead by Mrs. Bacher's second-grade class and their fifth-grade buddies in Mr. Betor's class. There were veterans in attendance who were recognized and thanked. The special guest speaker was our B.C. Director of Transportation, Mr. Karam, who served with the Marines. All the children sang patriotic songs, and I was VERY PROUD of how seriously our first graders took their participation in this assembly. A GREAT BIG THANK YOU to Mrs. Bacher, Mr. Betor, and their classes for their time, efforts, and performances that made this Veterans' Day Assembly very special!
Our literacy work this week included work on short o words. We developed our class anchor chart of short o words throughout the week, and the "word detectives" were hard at work again discovering short o words in their readings. Before reading their just-right books, the students selected and read short books like Hot Rods, Pop, Pop, Pop, Hop On - Hop Off, The Fox and the Box, etc. that are chock-full of short o words. They read-to-self and also read with a buddy. Many students were yet again "caught" adding these short o books to their book bins and doing rereads! Hooray! We learned and practiced the short o poem/song called "Hop, Hop, Plop" about a frog in a bog. Both Ms. Stella and I worked with small groups of kiddos on letter sounds and word attack skills. We started our reading and practice of our November poems. One of the short November poems is only funny if the children understand the word "anticipate". So we talked about anticipating coming events, and then we laughed about the poem saying turkeys are not able to "anticipate". THANK YOU again for all the awesome at-home reading logs you've been sending in. The children are very proud to hand them in to me and to share what they are reading at home. Reading to, with, beside your child is not only a fun together time, but also a tremendous motivator that helps to build the love of reading as well as skills. I truly appreciate your at-home reading time with your child!
     The children recorded their short o and priority spelling words in their spelling journals and practiced with "look, say, cover, write, check." Throughout the week the children practiced studying both with a partner and by themselves. Yesterday our fourth-grade buddies came during the morning to give the spelling tests to their first-grade buddies. Thanks, Fourth Graders! Thanks also for the at-home spelling practices. Without your super extra practices at home, the children would not be doing as well as they are on their spelling tests. We took the pretest on the short u base words, but due to the short week next week we will NOT have our regular spelling routine. Instead we will be practicing proofreading and editing by learning how to do D.O.L.: Daily Oral Language and doing "try its" of these skills on the children's own personal-narrative writing. (The short u spelling lists will come home on Monday, 11/18, when we resume our regular spelling routines.)
     During our writers' workshops we continued our lessons on personal-narrative writing. The children continued to work on their rough drafts of their small moment "me" stories. They are working hard to try to "write across pages" as they build a story with a beginning, middle, and end. I modeled and the students practiced sitting EEKK (elbow-to-elbow and knee-to-knee" to try their first peer writing conferences. The picture dictionaries and personal dictionaries are being used more and more as the children write. I have been asking the students to try to "push" themselves to write more. They have writing folders with pockets to store their pieces-in-progress. One side of the folder says, "Still Working On" and the other side says, "Done FOR NOW." The "smart cookies" were very quick to notice that nowhere did it just say "done"! The writing process can be very demanding for first graders, but they are already rising to the challenges. One example of this is that many students are asking for the stapled pages to create EXTRA books! In fact, two little girls even wrote books at home "for fun" (hooray!) and brought them in to share with the class. So of course we had to make time to have them be our "Guest Readers" to read their books to their classmates. The kiddos LOVE hearing their classmates' stories and even clap for their friends at the end of the sharing. The children also had time to make entries in their writers' journals. ALL of the Alphabet Books are now completed! Way to go, Authors!
     Our math this week included work on how to make and how to read math tables. The children very quickly saw the patterns and the advantages of making organized tables! We used the ten-frame "foamies" and individual white boards to review and practice all the skills and processes in this chapter in preparation for the end-of-chapter test. Our graphing questions again this week included math practices. The children took the chapter test on Thursday and did a great job! Yesterday we did our first "try it" to see how many addition facts are "snap facts". The children know that they are working to memorize the facts so they can do 30 facts in about a minute. However, for our first "try it", the kiddos were given three minutes to do as many as they could do. We will keep practicing and practicing to increase memorized facts and speed of recall. The children also made their first attempt at writing numbers up to 100, or as far as they could go. (This practice was NOT timed.) Many children surprised themselves with how far they could write their numbers and some even asked me if it "was O.K." to go beyond 100! Wowie-Zowie!
   Both the first graders and the fourth graders were happy that we could squeeze in some "Buddy Work" time yesterday before the assembly! The first graders read their Alphabet Books to their buddies. The book sharing was "kicked up a notch" into a peer conference: the fourth graders were asked to tell their first-grade buddies some things they liked about the books and something they could do to make it a little better. Then the first graders practiced their Thanksgiving readers' theater and November poems with their fourth-grade buddies. What a great reading session!
   I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to all Veterans for their service. Happy Veterans' Day to all!
    Thank you again for all your fantastic support at home.
Respectfully,
    Mrs. V.