First Grade News

Dear Families,

In the Hebrew classroom, we started to learn about Pesach (Passover)! We reviewed the story of Pesach. We spoke about the different symbols of the holiday, including the hagadah, the seder plate (kearat seder), and matzah. We learned that Pesach has 4 names: Chag Hapesach, Chag Haaviv (the spring holiday), Chag Hacherut (the holiday of freedom) and Chag Hamatzot. We are going to continue to learn more about Pesach throughout next week. We also learned how to write the letters pey, fey, chaf sofit and samech in script and continued practicing our reading and writing in Hebrew. The first graders were so excited to learn the Hatikvah – the national anthem of Israel. We spoke about the meaning of the word tikvah (hope) and we shared things that we hope for. We will end our morning Tefilah with Hatikvah.

In Math, we are practicing our subtraction facts. Through number stories, we reviewed how to break apart teen numbers into a ten and some ones. Next, we learned how to use our Making Ten Math Facts to help us subtract. For example, if Talia has 13 oranges, and Liz takes 5 of them, we can break 13 into 10 and 3. We know that 10 -5 is 5, so after we subtract them, we are left with 5 and 3, which is 8! This is one of several subtraction strategies we are learning. Everyone has a favorite strategy, but all students are practicing different one, to figure out what they like to use. We also played a board game called Dinosaur Subtraction!

On Wednesday morning, students discovered that our class lion, Rasheed, was missing! He and Mabel, the elephant from kindergarten, had gotten lost in the school! The Super Secret Detective Agency sent us a message and some tools (notebooks and invisible ink pens) to help find him. Rasheed left clues as he went around the school, to show us where he had been. We had to use all our phonics skills (such as silent e, blends and digraphs, and compound words), to solve the clues! The Red Snakes found Mabel in Shelley’s office, and the Blue Dolphins found Rasheed in the fourth-grade classroom! What an adventure!

On Friday, first graders celebrated being experts on nonfiction topics! The blue dolphins paired up with the red snakes to show off their reading of a nonfiction book they have practiced.  Outside we practiced reading with drama, feeling, and “punching out” keywords to make our reading more interesting to our reading partner. Next, we study characters in fiction!

Shabbat Shalom,

Ilana, Talia, and Liz