Here's what we've been working on in the classroom:
Reading : We continued learning about different nonfiction conventions that authors use to portray information in nonfiction texts. We learned about cutaways, close-ups, maps, and different types of print (bold, italics).
Writing : We are nearing the end of our Writing for Readers unit, and the students have chosen a piece to publish. Since this unit's focus was on making our writing easy to read, we're going to spend quite a bit of time during the publishing process to make sure that we have done our best to put capital letters and punctuation in the right places (among other things).
Math : We spent a lot of time deepening our understanding about fact families last week, mainly through the use of fact triangles. Fact triangles are a great way for the students to gain understanding about the relation of numbers in addition and subtraction, as well as a great tool to develop fact power. Please hold on to the fact triangles that your child brings home and have him/her practice his/her math facts regularly.
Phonics : Last week we learned about y as a vowel. For first graders' sake, we say that y is a vowel when it makes a vowel sound (usually the long i or the long e sound). We also learned about our first digraph, the 'sh' sound. (A digraph is a combination of letters that represent one sound.)
Science : We were incredibly lucky and got to go to the Discovery Lab again last week! The students did an investigation with movement. As you can see in the pictures below, they worked with a partner to try and get a tennis ball to reach the end of a string without touching it. Some partnerships tried blowing, while other partnerships tried creating a ramp with the white board.
Here are some pictures of 1-Bu in the Discovery Lab last week: