Week of 3/2

Read Across America

Monday, March 2nd was Dr. Seuss' birthday! We joined many classrooms at Skillin (and around the country) to celebrate this special day. We spent lots of time reading his famous books and completing follow-up activities. We read There's a Wocket in my Pocket and created a class book by brainstorming our own silly rhymes to follow the same pattern. We read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and created our own fish addition problems. We also completed a 100 grid mystery picture of the Cat in the Hat and used Green Eggs & Ham to write about a food we thought we wouldn't like, but surprisingly did! 

Math
We continued to put our addition and subtraction strategies to good use this week by playing familiar games and solving story problems. Students used different strategies such as counting on, counting back, drawing pictures and hopping back and forth on a number line. Some students have begun to use a more sophisticated strategy - using a combination they know. For example, to solve 8+5, a student might already know that 8+2=10, so adding three to an addend will also add three to the total. We revisited Today's Number, which is an important number sense activity we do to practice showing a number in lots of different ways. Students were able to show several addition and subtraction equations to make 10. Students applied their knowledge of the commutative and identity properties of addition by including equations such as 3+7, 7+3, and 10+0.
We also spent time practicing telling time to the hour and half hour. Using a sample daily schedule, we used small clocks to move the hands to show times to the hour and half hour. We recorded the times on the white board, and then practiced reading the digital times. Students are showing a great understanding of this important skill.

Upcoming Dates

• Parent-teacher conferences have been scheduled! All families should have received a green confirmation note or an email from me this week. I look forward to meeting with you soon!
• Wednesday, March 25th is an Early Release day. Students will be dismissed at 12:35pm.

Thank you,

Mrs. Bradstreet

Week of 2/24

100th Day of School!
We celebrated this milestone day of school on Tuesday. Throughout the day, we enjoyed many activities and projects that had to do with the number 100. Students enjoyed imagining what they might look and act like at 100 years old for a creative writing project.  They enjoyed designing movement breaks by thinking of ten different exercises and repeating each one ten times. We also read two stories about the number 100 - William's 100th Day of School and One Hundred Hungry Ants. Then, we counted in many different ways to 100 (ones, twos, fives and tens). Students created a counting by 5s cupcake project and a name pattern on a 100 grid!


Writing
We planned and wrote the beginnings of our third narratives - all about snow day adventures. After listening to The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, students brainstormed a class list of snowy day adventures. Ideas included going snowboarding for the first time, having a snowball fight with siblings, going tubing and building a snowman. Our writers thought about the beginning, middle and endings of their own stories and drew pictures for each part, in the proper order. We began to write sentences to go with our illustrations and we will continue to work on these next week. Our goal is to share these with you during conferences in a couple weeks!

Upcoming Dates

• Parent teacher conferences are currently being scheduled for March 12th and March 18th. Sign up forms were sent home in red totes this week. If you haven't done so already, please fill yours in and return it to school as soon as possible.
• Wednesday, March 25th is an early release. Students will be dismissed at 12:35pm.

Thank you,

Mrs. Bradstreet

Week of 2/10

Read to ME Challenge
Mrs. Connolly visited our classroom on Wednesday during her Read to ME challenge. Throughout the month of February, she will visit each classroom at Skillin and share a favorite story. The students enjoyed listening to her read Thank you, Omu by Oge Mora. They loved hearing this wonderful story about the importance of sharing! Ask your child to tell you about it.


Writing
We read a story titled Jake's Valentine Treats. In this story, Jake shows his love for shelter pets by baking homemade treats for them. Students brainstormed people or animals who make their hearts feel "full." We completed a Valentine project for these special people in our lives.

Math
We played a couple of new addition games this week. In the game Ten Plus, students had to add two cards together and find the equivalent "ten plus" equation. For example, the cards 7+8 had the same total as 10+5. In the game 5 in a Row with 3 cards, students had to turn over three number cards, choose two of those cards to add together, then cover the total on a game board. Students are becoming quite skilled in their addition! Many students know their combinations of 10 and can count on quickly to add.

21st Century Skills & Tales2Go
We revisited our critical thinking skills this week with Mrs. Stanbro. She read us a nonfiction book titled Inky's Amazing Escape. This story is a contender for the Chickadee Award. After listening to this story, they thought about whether it had an important message or interesting facts, and detailed illustrations that helped support the text. Mrs. Stanbro even showed us an actual video of this famous octopus!
We were also introduced to a new listening station in the library. Students will be able to listen to an audiobook on Tales2Go while they are in library. A few students tried this new station out and loved it! All Skillin families have access to this amazing resource (information was sent home in red totes earlier this month). We strongly encourage all families to use it!

Upcoming Dates

• There is no school Monday, February 17th - Friday, February 21st for February vacation.
• Family Literacy Night is Thursday, February 27th from 5:30-6:30. Please join us for an hour of first grade reading and writing fun!

Thank you,

Mrs. Bradstreet

Week of 1/27

Reading
We continued to learn about the central message of a story. In many stories, the author is trying to teach the readers an important lesson.  After reading Randolph and the Lion, students determined the main character's problem - nobody thought Randolph (a very small mouse) was big enough to be brave or helpful. Then, Randolph got his chance to prove everyone wrong when the Lion became stuck in a net. Randolph saved him by chewing through the rope. Students had great ideas about the message - that everyone has something they can be good or helpful at, regardless of their size.

We took our understanding about complete sentences to the next step by learning about nouns. Students should understand that a noun is a word for a person/animal, place or thing. We sorted examples of nouns into these categories, and then practiced identifying the nouns in sentences. We will continue this work next week!

Writing
We continued to learn about narrative writing, which is simply a story with a beginning, middle and ending to it. I read two stories to them - A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni and Bonaparte Falls Apart by Margery Cuyler so they could hear and see examples of narratives. Students brainstormed ideas for new stories and planned these new stories by illustrating the major events. While writing, many students included ordinal words such as first, next, then, or last to tell the order of events in their own narratives.

Math
We began unit 5 this week. A family letter was sent home in red totes explaining the major learning targets and activities in this unit. We spent much of the week focusing on combinations of 10. By playing routines and games such as Quick Images, Build It, Make 10 and Tens Go Fish, students practiced building 10 using two addends on ten frames and writing equations to go with it. Students are starting to build their "fact power" by knowing some of these combinations by heart (ex. 5+5, 1+9, 2+8, etc.).

Library
We continued our bridge building challenge with Mrs. Stanbro. Students were reminded of the steps needed to be effective problem solvers, as you can see in the photo. Using their sketches from last week, partners chose from a variety of materials including plastic cups, straws, cardboard tubes, and tape to construct their bridges. They tested its strength using weights. Some students discovered their bridges weren't as strong as they had hoped...and will be thinking about how to make them stronger for next week!

Upcoming Dates

• There is an early release on Wednesday, February 5th. Students will be dismissed at 12:35pm.
• There is no school Monday, February 17th - Friday, February 21st for February vacation.

Thank you,

Mrs. Bradstreet

Week of 1/21

Reading
Students are beginning to learn about the central message of stories. One way to determine an author's message is to first figure out the problem and solution of the story, then think about what the author is trying to teach us. We read the folktale Ant & Grasshopper and students found the problem and solution in the text - Grasshopper played his fiddle instead of gathering food for winter, then he was unprepared, cold and hungry when winter came. Ant offered to share his supply of food and reminded Grasshopper to work first, then play after. Students were able describe the message of this story as "It is important to get your work done before you play."

Writing
We spent time finishing and sharing our first personal narratives. Students worked extremely hard to write these stories. They made sure to draw detailed illustrations on each page of text. They even put titles on their stories! Lots of authors were interested in sharing. It is so exciting to have proud writers wanting to read their stories aloud to the entire class! The audience members practiced respectful listening and gave positive, specific feedback to each author.

We completed a mid-year primary spelling inventory for a formal check on student spelling. Students were given a set of 26 words with a variety of spelling features (short and long vowels, blends, digraphs, etc.) After reviewing them, I made some minor adjustments to spelling groups. Please remember that your child's spelling work is uploaded to Seesaw and sent home in red totes each week. Please let me know if you have any questions about your child's spelling progress.

Math
We wrapped up unit 4 on measurement. Over the past few weeks, students learned about fractions (equal parts of a whole) including halves and fourths. They practiced dividing shapes into halves and fourths using vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines. They spent time measuring the length of short and long objects using non-standard units of measurement including tiles, paper clips and connecting cubes. In addition, we practiced solving story problems using both addition AND subtraction equations (they're related!) and telling time to the hour and half hour.

Library
We kicked off a bridge building challenge with Mrs. Stanbro. This challenge will put our problem solving and critical thinking skills to the test! After listening to The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Jerry Pinkney, students learned about different types of bridges. They watched a video and then compared and contrasted three different types of bridges (truss, beam and suspension). Then, students were challenged to design a strong bridge that could hold a certain amount of weight. Our young engineers used graph paper to sketch out their bridges. Next week, they will have access to a variety of materials to build their designs.

Upcoming Dates

• There is an early release on Wednesday, February 5th. Students will be dismissed at 12:35pm.
• There is no school Monday, February 17th - Friday, February 21st for February vacation.

Thank you,
Mrs. Bradstreet

Week of 1/13

Reading
We spent lots of time learning about complete sentences. Students learned that every sentence needs to have a who and a what happens. This will lay the groundwork for an understanding of the parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives). We worked together to practice identifying the who and what of many sentences, including some with proper names and others with pronouns. Students coded sentences by circling the who and underlining the what.

In shared reading, we read Messy Martha. This was a great opportunity to review our digraph sounds (th, sh, ch), review rhyming and practice retelling a story.

Writing
We began to learn about narrative writing in writing workshop. Over the next few months, students will learn how to develop and write a short sequence of events, including supporting details, with a beginning, middle and ending. This week, I introduced the learning target with the mentor text Shortcut. Students listened to this simple narrative and retold the major story events using ordinal words like first, then, next and last. Then, they brainstormed and illustrated the four major parts of their own personal narratives. Using special paper, we began to write the beginning of our stories, making sure to describe the where, when and who of our story. We will finish and share these next week!

Math
We spent lots of time each day solving comparison problems, like the one pictured. Students used one inch tiles to build the fish and see how many extra tiles the larger fish had compared to the shorter fish. We also used number lines to find the difference between the two lengths. They were able to come up with both addition and subtraction equations that could be used to solve the problems.
Later in the week, we explored fractions. Students learned that a fraction is an equal part of a whole. They had fun designing half and half pizzas and half and half rugs to practice dividing circles, rectangles and squares in half using vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines.

Guidance
Mrs. Holt taught us another Second Step lesson on emotional regulation skills. When we are feeling a strong emotion (like anger or frustration), an effective strategy is to stop, take a belly breath, and identify the feeling. Ask your child to demonstrate this for you!

21st Century Skills - Critical Thinking
In library, Mrs. Stanbro began a critical thinking project with us. Our class will be using our special thinking skills to evaluate Chickadee-nominated picture books. After listening to Mrs. Stanbro read Can I Be Your Dog? students had to rate the story's message and whether or not the illustrator did a good job showing the mood of a story. Ask your child to tell you what kinds of colors can be used to show moods like mad, sad, happy and brave.

Upcoming Dates

• There is no school on Monday, January 20th for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Thank you,

Mrs. Bradstreet

Week of 1/6

Reading
We spent some time each day reviewing our vowels. Students should be able to tell you that a vowel makes an open-mouthed sound. Vowels are important because they can make different sounds (short, long, and other variations) and are present in every word in our language. We sang our Vowel Song (to the tune of BINGO) and used vowel cards to practice making the short and long sounds for each.

For shared reading, we read One Red Sled. We used this story to practice important reading skills such as making predictions, identifying story elements, and retelling.

Handwriting
We spent lots of time working in our handwriting books. Our focus was on "dive down" letters such as Nn, Mm, Hh and Bb. For these lowercase letters, students needed to dive down for their first stroke, then swim up to complete the letter. Students worked hard to follow the directions for each stroke and to make sure each letter was the proper size.


Writing
I read Knuffle Bunny to the class and we talked about how strong emotions, like feeling sad or mad, can lead to an interesting story. We brainstormed, wrote, illustrated and shared our own stories over the course of the week. Our young illustrators created impressive pictures by using labels and speech bubbles.

Math
We began Unit 4 in math, which is all about measurement. The family letter was sent home in red totes this week describing the specific learning goals and activities of this unit. Students learned measurement vocabulary such as "shorter," longer," and "compare." They used nonstandard units of measurement to practice finding the length of a variety of objects. Units included string, connecting cubes, paper clips, and tiles. They had opportunities to put sets of objects in order from shortest to longest. They also spent time measuring sets of fish and deciding if each fish was long enough to be a "keeper."


In addition, we spent time learning about analog clocks and and how to tell time to the hour. Students learned about the parts of a clock (face, hour hand, minute hand) and how to move the hands on a clock to show a time. Our current goal is to accurately tell time to the hour but by the end of the year, they will be able to tell time to the hour and half hour.

Upcoming Dates

• There is no school on Monday, January 20 for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Thank you,

Mrs. Bradstreet