First Grade News

First graders have been working hard for the past few weeks! In Math we learned about solid and plane shapes. First graders learned to classify and categorize these shapes. We also learned about tangram puzzles and made Thanksgiving themed tangrams. This week, we began our unit on numbers 0 – 20. We’ve begun learning about place value by thinking about larger numbers in tens and ones.

First Graders continued their opinion writing unit by judging a polished rock competition. They picked their favorite rock and wrote about why it was the best. First graders learned about what it means to be a fair judge and how to convince someone using lots of reasons and adding details. First graders then began writing opinion pieces on some of their favorite things. They are now writing about their favorite neighborhood spots.

To learn more about opinion writing, we read the book Earrings by Judith Viorst. Earrings is about a young girl who is trying to convince her parents she should get her ears pierced. She uses many of the opinion writing strategies we learned about: using many reasons, adding details, and anticipating disagreement by talking back.

We also read The King of Little Things by Bil Lepp to learn about sparkly words. Sparkly words are a way to add some excitement to our writing. For example, first graders came up with different words we could use instead of the word good, such as great, magnificent, awesome, and Fantastic.

First graders continue to participate in biweekly reading groups where they get a chance to read books with friends, play phonics games, and learn new reading strategies! We also introduced partner reading, where students sit “elbow to elbow knee to knee” and share a book.

In Social Studies, first graders are learning about community helpers. They are practicing their interview skills and getting ready to interview community helpers in our school.

In Hebrew, we learned the letter chet, pey,fey and  fey sofit as well as the vowel which makes the “oh” sound. We also started to practice for the Chanukah Hebrew Play and spent time learning about Chanukah! We read the story of Chanukah – all in Hebrew and learned how to say the symbols of the holiday in Hebrew. The first grader made beautiful dreidels which we used to decorate our hallway. Next week we will continue to learn more about this special holiday!

In Yahadut, we continued working on our siddurim and learned two more prayers from the amida. The first prayer called hael hakadosh, which we thank God for the holly thing (siddur, mezuzah, etc.) and times (Shabbat, chagim, etc.) in our life. The second prayer called chonen hadaat.  We spoke about the word “knowledge” and how we can be thankful to God for our knowledge. Our siddurim are coming together beautifully!

Last week parashah was parashat Vayishlach. This is when Jacob and Esav reunite and apologize to each other and we continued our discussion about the importance of saying sorry and forgiving each other. This week parasha is parashat Vayeshev. This is when Joseph receives a special coat from his father and his brothers sell him to be a slave.  We spoke a lot about the importance of telling the truth and treating people fairly.