First Grade News

Dear First Grade Families.

There was much excitement in first grade this week. We had a celebration for Adar with pajama day and for the 100th day of school. Students were full of joy!

In Reading we continued our exploration of “Charlotte’s Web”. A new character named Charlotte came into the story and the students were eager to hear that Wilbur had a new friend. During word work, we continued our exploration of silent e. The students learned how to make a short vowel word into a long vowel word and played a game of “Go Fish”. We matched words such as kit and kite and slim and slime. As we continue with our word work, we have been making sure to pay attention to any exceptions to the rule. For example, love is an exception to the rule!

During Writers Workshop students started writing reviews for their favorite restaurants, movies, toys, and games. In order to do so we have looked at examples of student reviews from the past. We also made sure to edit the student example. This helped us understand that we need to be mindful of when we write reviews. The students also took the time to brainstorm multiple ideas of topics that they could write a review about in order to help them generate ideas. Some examples of topics were: Pokemon, Nairobi, Salt Lake City, and Osaka the restaurant. We can’t wait to discover and learn about all of these reviews!

In Math students have been working on ordinal numbers and position numbers. This week we focused increasing our vocabulary for position words. We also worked on making sure we were reading what the question was asking. We noticed that sometimes with identifying what is first, second, third and fourth the sequence of the number could start from the right as well. We have been learning the word forms and matching them to the number forms. For example, 1st and first. Next week we will be learning about place value.

In Science we discussed the connection between colors and the weather. We focused on the colors black and white. Why do many people have white cars in places like Israel that are very hot in the summer? How come people wear white in the summer more than in the winter, and black more in the winter? Everyone made a box out of either white or black construction paper and next week we well put thermometers in them, set them in the sun, and read the temperatures. Scientists predicted if the temperature would be higher in the black box, the white box, or if they would be the same. Stay tuned for the results…

In the Hebrew classroom, we had a party in class (we roasted marshmallows) to celebrate our accomplishments – finishing learning the Hebrew alef-bet and our nitzanim workbooks. I encourage you to look through your child workbook to see the amazing work that he/she has done! The first graders were also very excited to get a certificate for learning all the Hebrew letters. On our 100 days in school we wrote 100 words in Hebrew and created the number 100 on our bulletin board.

In Yahadut, we learned a new prayer from the Amidah called, matzmiach keren yeshuah. We listen to Louis Armstrong song – “What a Wonderful world” and made a list of all the wonderful things in the world. We discuss what we can do to make the world a better place. We started to learn about Purim. We read the story of Purim and got to look at a very small megilah that belongs to the first grade. We also spoke about all the things that we do to celebrate Purim – giving Mishloach Manot, gifts to the poor, reading the megilah, and of course, having fun and eating!

In Parasha, we learned about Parashat Terumah. We learned about the mishkan, the temporary place of praying while the Israelites wandered in the desert. We spoke about the similarities and differences between the mishkan and a modern-day synagogue. We also spoke about the additional laws that God gives the Jewish people and thought about things that we are responsible for at school and at home.