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First Grade News

This week the first graders did a lot of sharing.  Whether it was through editing our writing with a friend, spending time with our 5th grade buddies or working with a partner during word work.  We love working together with our friends!

In Reading the students have continued their exploration of the’ magic e’ rule.  We made sure to explore books in our library and found a lot of words.  We noticed that their are other words with ‘magic e’ besides words that the ‘e’ made the ‘a’ vowel say its name.  For example, we noticed that the vowels i and o could also be long vowels.

In Writing we finished writing our reviews of our collections.  In order to publish our work we worked on making spaces between our words, being mindful of different parts of punctuation, and making sure we started a sentence with a capital letter.  We also learned about quotations.  We practiced quoting an expert in our writing in order to make it more juicy and make sure we had evidence to back up our reasons.

In Math we completed our unit on shapes.  We practiced making shapes into fourths and halves and folding a square to make triangles. The language we have been using with students is parts of a whole.  Two rectangles can make a square.  We used paper in order to explore different shapes and folded our paper into equal parts.  Students discovered that folding a rectangle multiple times resulted in smaller rectangles and that each time the number doubled, from 2 to 4, to 8, to 16, to 32!

In Science students assembled their individual thermometers that they created last week.  They demonstrated their ability to show different temperatures, ranging from below zero to very hot!  Each table of scientists made four different thermometers which their classmates will have to read correctly next week.  Students also discussed the differences between indoor and outdoor temperatures and why there are or are not fluctuations.  In terms of data collection, students will be getting additional practice as we soon begin to graph the daily temperature outside as well as the number of teeth lost by 1st graders.

In Hebrew, we learned the letters tzadik and tzadik sofit (final tzadik). We talked about Tu Bishvat (the birthday of the trees) and spent time learning Hebrew words related to the holiday. The first graders draw beautiful trees and wrote the parts of the tree all in Hebrew. We practice changing words from singular to plural tense using different parts of trees. The first graders created two beautiful trees on our bulletin board. Each student described in writing what the tree has using different parts of the tree (leaves – alim, flowers – prachim, fruits – perot) and their colors. Feel free to look at our bulletin board at our beautiful trees. We enjoyed reading stories about trees like, “What to do with a leave?” and the “Giving Tree”. We are looking forward to celebrating Tu Bishvat together next week!

In Yahadut, we learned a new prayer from the Amidah called mishan umivtach latzadikim. We spoke about what it means to be a righteous person. We also share about the good things that happened to us when we are doing good things.

In Parasha, we learned about Parashat Beshalach. This is when Pharaoh changes his mind about freeing the Israelites slaves and chases after them. The Sea of Reeds splits, the Israelites escape the Egyptians, and they celebrate their freedom. We spoke about what it must have felt like to feel free after having been slaves for so long.