First Grade News
Hello Families,
We had a very exciting week in first grade!
We went apple picking and celebrated Rosh Hashanah together, eating lots of apples and honey:) Also, Rabbi Menashe came to visit our classroom and gave us a live demonstration of how to blow a shofar. In Hebrew, we learned the letters hey and we added new words to our word wall like: har (mountain), hege (wheel) and hadas (myrtle).
In Reading workshop, we started learning about good first-grade reading habits such as taking a sneak peek, checking our sneak peek, and doing something at the end. We know after reading we can reread our favorite part of the whole book, retell it to ourselves, or think back over the parts of the book. We also chose just-right reading books for our in-school book bag. We are forming strong reading partnerships! In Phonics have met our friend Rasheed (our lion mascot) who helps us read and write. We practiced finding syllables, rhymes, and words we know in our names through the rhymes “Katie, Katie, Bo Batie”, “Hickety Pickety Bumble Bee”, and “Willaby Wallaby Woo”. We also started studying our names and what makes them special. Do they have long vowels, blends, tall letters, 2 syllables, double letters?
In writing workshop we started our small moments unit. We are learning to think about true stories that have happened to us and finding a small moment in the story to tell about. We are finding the beginning, middle, and end of our story and working with a partner to plan our book. First graders have worked on sketching out their book, writing labels, and writing on the line to match their picture.
*At home, have your child practice finding small moments (seed stories) in their day and telling the beginning, middle, and end of the story. An example is “I walked in the living room. My brother jumped out from behind the couch!, I jumped in surprise and we laughed.”. First graders are used to telling BIG stories (watermelon stories). An example is “I went on a plane to Israel. I gave my uncle a hug. We went swimming in a pool.” This is a challenging concept for them and the more they practice thinking and telling, the better they will get at generating stories and planning their books. We also practice looking for small moments by remembering big emotions. When was I scared, excited, disappointed, hungry, surprised?
Check out our pics:
Wishing you all a Shana Tova Umetukah (a Happy sweet new year)!
Ilana and Liz
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