Unit 4 Week 5 Preview

We will explore animals working in teams. Insects in colonies, cleaner fish, and the protective nature of herds are a few examples. We continue to work on narratives using a flow map to brainstorm beginning, middle, and ends to our creative response to literature stories. Our oral vocabulary words are: behavior, group, plead, soar, and vivid. In phonics we will continue work with long-vowel 'e' and use its spellings 'y' (sunny) and 'ey' (monkey). Our high frequency focus words are: also, because, blue, or, other, and until. We will analyze text structure in order to hone our retelling comprehension skill.

In spite of the fact we are still working on the weather unit in science, it will be necessary to overlap our 3rd unit and immediately begin our growing plants and animals-life-cycle unit.

In Social Studies our work with relative direction came in quite handy when we were left a map of sorts to a hidden stash before our break. We will continue work with maps intermittently in the coming weeks.

We will continue our study of coins and counting money in math as this concept will be covered in our next and final District Quarterly Math Exam which comes up in less than two weeks' time. The test appears rigorous yet fairly straightforward. We will soon be taking timed math tests as well to show our ability to apply math strategies learned this quarter.

Some of Room 11's work is currently being displayed in the main office for the month of April.

Second Day

Today we reviewed the letters 's' and 't,' and the sight words 'we' and 'like'. We discovered something that we liked in common with out partner and wrote about it. We listened to The Little Engine that Could and examined narrative story structure focusing on beginning, middle, and end. We segmented words listening for initial and final sounds. We discussed syllables and counted syllables in multi-syllabic words.

In PE we played a tag and chase game. A note about footwear: we normally participate in physical activities every day. With that in mind, the best type of footwear is a sneaker or tennis-type shoe with laces or velcro. Shoes with buckles or slip-on type shoes, or boots are insufficient for first-grade physical activities.

In math we continued with number sense for 6-10 expressed as 5 and another quantity. We had time to free explore math manipulatives which will be used throughout the year. The homework will look much the same as last night's homework. If your child returns home with last night's homework, it is because a problem is either incorrect or incomplete. If this is the case with your child, I discussed the problem with your child today; they are to correct the problem and return the homework for credit. I will discuss homework in detail with parents at Back-to-School Night.