First Grade News

Hello Families,

This week we celebrated the incredible nonfiction writing our first graders shared at their publishing party! We read to our buddies and they wrote a compliment about our book. Then we read, chit-chatted, had a toast, and a sweet treat! We are now ready to move on to opinion writing!

In reading, we have been getting to know our characters better. We are noticing who characters are and what they do, say, like, and dislike. We also pay attention to the main character’s relationships with other characters.  Are they friends, siblings, neighbors,  enemies, etc? This helps us to understand more about the star of the story (main character). We are enjoying buddy reading and are working on bringing our characters to life by sounding just like them!

In Music class, First Graders have continued their study of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals and tempo. We have examined most of the movements now, learning about tempo, instrumentation, music notation and the joy composers get borrowing from those before them and having fun writing music. First graders are also practicing for their Siddur Ceremony!

In math this week, we learned about lining up our tens and ones (the stacking method of addition). This year, we have been practicing composing and decomposing, organizing numbers by tens and ones, and number bonds. Those skills are helping us now as students learn to add quickly and efficiently by stacking numbers. Students played a game called “Spin and Add,” which helped us set up problems to try.

In science, we are beginning to learn about organisms by studying bell peppers! Students looked closely at a pepper and recorded what we observed. We cut it open and looked closely at the pieces with magnifying glasses! Students used all five senses to share and record what they noticed (some kids tasted peppers for the first time!).

This week we also celebrated Yom Ha’atzmaut with singing, dancing, snacks, and games!

In art class, students made flags for Yom Ha’atzmaut, thinking about how symbols can convey meaning, and making creative versions of the Israeli flag.

Shabbat Shalom,

Liz, Talia, and Ilana