First Grade News

Hello Families,

It was lovely seeing your (unmasked!) faces last night during our back to school night.

In Hebrew we learned the letters mem and mem sofit and we were able to learn a lot of new words which we added to our word wall like; menorah (lamp), melech (king), mechonit (car), matanah (gift), magafayim (boots) and michnasayim (pants). We also practiced reading and writing with the letters that we have learned so far.

In Yahadut, we learned about Yom Kippur and that it is a day where we reflect on the year and we say that we are sorry. We learned about Tashlich and we reflected on the things we wish to keep from last year, as well as what we would like to throw away. We also learned the prayer mah tovu. We discussed what must happen in our classroom/home so it will be a good place and we added another page to our siddurim.

In reading we have been exploring our library books and practicing good reading habits.  So far we have practiced:

• Take a sneak peek before reading
• Check our sneak peek during reading (was our prediction true?)
• Do SOMETHING after reading a book – reread, retell the book, reread our favorite parts, talk about the book with a friend

We have chosen leveled books for our book baggies and next week we are going to talk about how to choose a just right book.

During writing workshop we have practiced the steps to create small moment stories while remembering how to use our writing tools and strategies from last year.  Here is how we write a small moment story:

• We think of an idea of something that happened to us or something we did
• Touch and tell our story across the pages (beginning, middle and end)
• Sketch our story across the pages
• Label our pictures
• Write!
• Revise

Next week we will practice exploring how to make are stories even better (revising).  At home you can practice finding small moments to talk about.  Try and encourage your child to find the emotion that drives the story.  Instead of “I walked to the park, we saw a woodpecker, we walked home”. try to zoom in to the main event such as ” I was walking in the park and heard a loud knocking, I looked up and saw a woodpecker!, The woodpecker flew away.” This can be tough to do for 1st graders – they feel like they have to cover the whole time they were doing something.

In math this week we’ve been practicing our number sense as well as playing with math materials. We used new dice and created a math monster using our prior knowledge of addition! Below is Ferguson our class math monster! — 

Shabbat Shalom,

The first grade team