First Grade News

Dear first grade families,

Welcome back from Thanksgiving break!  We hope you had a lovely time with the extra days off with your families.  We have been hearing about all the travels, food, and adventures your children have had!

In Reading this week, we have been continuing our work in digraphs.  We learned the sounds for th, wh, ch, and sh.  We also have been starting to work on blends like tr for tree.  Students have learned that when the t and the h are together they make a particular sound and when it is in the beginning of the word or the end of the word it makes the same sound.  For example, bath and that.

Here is a riddle we learned at school using digraphs. See what other digraphs in the books you are reading at home!

Rasheed’s Digraph RIddle

I have sharp teeth.

I use them to chomp and chew.

I swim in the ocean.

I am bigger than a goldfish

but I am smaller than a whale.

What am I?

In Reading this week we also read the book Zero by Kathryn Otoshi.  In this story, students hear the perspective of the number zero and how empty zero feels having no value.  We then talked about what the word value means and how it can mean different things.

In Math this week we have started in our journey in subtraction!  We learned a few different strategies in order to do subtraction.  One strategy involved crossing out the numbers we have cancelled in order to find our difference.  We also used the material counting tape in order to find the difference. We learned that the words take away, minus and subtraction can mean the same thing and that is is important to look at the operation when we are solving the problem to make sure we do not add when it says subtract.

In Writing this week we started working on our new unit on non-fiction chapter books, called our All About books.  We have been reading a National Geographic book about sharks and learning that each page can be a new section or topic. We also learned that we can ask ourselves the questions Who What When Where Why when writing a book about a topic that we are an expert about.  Lastly, we learned that pictures can help the reader understand what is happening in our non-fiction text by thinking about the shape or size of the picture and adding arrows or color!

In Science we had a big surprise this week in terms of weather as it snowed for the first time! There was much excitement to see the precipitation falling from the sky.  The meterologists also learned about putting data into a graph.  Each made a Wind Data Graph, using information about wind from our weather calendar from last week.  We have been recording the wind on a scale of 0-2, zero is no wind, 1 is some wind, 2 is strong wind.  Students learned how to read the graph to answer questions such as: What day or days would be a good day to fly a kite?  Which day had the most wind?  We began reading about Tornadoes, a topic of great interest to our little scientists, and watched a video about real tornadoes!

A note from Keledy –  our Technology integrator teacher at Hannah Senesh

In Hebrew, we learned the letter samech as well as a new vowel, which makes the “eh” sound. We also learned the verb Kanah (buy, masculine) and kantah (buy, feminine) and we practiced using those verbs in writing and speaking. We added lots of new words to our word wall and our vocabulary just keeps growing. We continued to practice our reading with all the letters and vowels that we have learned so far.

In Yahadut, we learned two new prayers from the Amidah. The first one called harotze betshuva. We spoke about what or who reminds us to make good choices in our lives. The second called chanun hamarbeh lisloach. We spoke about the importance of apologizing to people when we make mistakes and forgiving others after they say that they are sorry.

This week Parasha is Vayetze, which is about Jacob leaving his home to go to Haran and on his way, he had a dream. In the dream God promises to protect him. We spoke about that at times we must try new things even if we think that we are not capable to do them and to believe in ourselves like; Jacob didn’t know what waits for him in a different place, but he goes on his journey with confidence and hope. We also read about how Jacob met Rachel and Leah.