First Grade Blog

Everyone in first grade was excited to have a full week of school!

In Writing this week we continued working on our small moments writing by revising and making sure we are using a picture to add details.  We focused on: “When you are done you have just begun”.  We also have been learning about our school’s namesake, Hannah Senesh.  We learned that she was from Hungary and looked on a map of Europe to find the city she lived, Budapest.  We saw photographs of Hannah as a young girl and with her family.  We focused on the fact that she was a poet and wrote in a journal.  We looked at pages from her journal and what her handwriting in Hebrew looked like.  We talked about how to write a journal entry and then wrote our own entries which we illustrated.

In Reading this week we began our guided reading small groups.  Students were very excited to meet in a small group with a teacher and were very proud of exploring books with their group.  We went through a story walk before reading, and made predictions about what would happen.  As we read, we learned if our predictions were correct.  We also learned some spelling rules in our groups, for example the “at” or “an” word family.

In Math we learned about number bonds.  Using unifix cubes, dominos chains and numbers we decomposed numbers and put them back together.  For example: 10 and 3 is 13.  We also worked and will continue to work on making different combinations of ten.

The Fall weather has given the class plenty to talk about in Science this week!  We start each class with the song: “What’s the weather like today? Like today? Like today? What’s the weather like today on this __________?” (fill in the day of the week), and talk about the day’s weather using weather words and symbols.  We learned about what a meteorologist is and does by reading about a real weather woman.  We also watched a short PBS video about a 14 year old girl who is interested in being a meteorologist and why.  Students worked with a science partner to write weather observations about snowy, stormy, windy, sunny, cloudy, or rainy in terms of the four senses (see, hear, touch, feel, and smell).  Each pair presented their information to the class.  It was the first time students worked in pairs as well as stood and spoke in front of the class. They did a great job!  We also started a list of questions they have about weather which we will explore and answer as we continue our weather study.

In Hebrew, we learned the letter lamed and hey as well as the vowel chirik, which makes the “Ee” sound. We also learned the verbs,ba (come masculine) and ba’ah (come feminine) and each student shared how he/she comes to school verbally and in writing: by rakevet (train), ofanaeim (bicycle), mechonit (car), otobus (bus) or baregel (walking). Check out our bulletin board for their impressive work! The first graders were so proud to write full sentences in Hebrew for the first time using only the letters that we have learned so far. We also spoke about the life of Hannah Senesh and we learned one of her songs called “Eli, Eli “, which the first graders will sing during the school tekes (ceremony) next week.

In Tefilah, we learned about the amidah prayer. We learned about the meaning of the prayer, when to bow, and how we stand. We talked about our forefathers (Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov) and our foremothers (Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah) and we added one more page to our siddurim (prayer book).

This week parasha is parashat Noach. We read the story about Noah’s Ark. We learned the Hebrew names for many animals that Noah took with him on the ark. We also spoke about how God sent a rainbow to show that he promised to Noah never to destroy the world again.  We made our own rainbows and wrote our own promises.

In the past few weeks as part of our social emotional curriculum, we have been exploring how we feel.  We read a book, Aaron’s Hair, by Robert Munsch, and talked about what emotions we would have if we had crazy hair.  We drew faces using references based on how we would feel on a crazy hair day.

There is a lot happening next week: Tuesday is Picture Day, Wednesday is the Hannah Senesh Tekes, and Thursday late afternoon to evening are parent conferences.  Shabbat Shalom!

Art with Iviva:

We have spent the past few weeks exploring abstraction, making oil pastel drawings and collages emphasizing color, shape and line, without making recognizable scenes, people, animals, etc. We are learning more about blending oil pastels to create new colors and shades, and improving cutting skills for collage. Below are some of our works in progress.