Please remember that parent/teacher conferences are this week. Report cards will be available to view on Genesis on Monday at 3pm and then conferences have been scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday. If you have not been able to access your conference time or you are unable to make your scheduled time, please let me know ASAP. Tuesday and Thursday are 12:45pm dismissal days in order to allow for parent/teacher conferences.
Here's what we've been working on in 1-Bu:
Reading : Since I gave the last recap, we've finished learning about all of the nonfiction conventions that we're going to go over in first grade. The students now know how to gather facts from, and effectively use and locate, labels, photographs, captions, comparisons, cutaways, maps, close-ups, different types of print, table of contents, indexes, and glossaries.
Math : A couple of weeks ago, the students learned about two different strategies that they may find helpful when solving math facts - the 'near-doubles' strategy and the 'making ten' strategy. The students got a lot of practice using each strategy in the classroom, but I don't expect them to successfully use each strategy on their own quite yet. Just like decoding strategies in reading, my goal is to teach the students numerous strategies that they can use to solve math problems. Hopefully the students come across a strategy or two that 'sticks' with them.
Last week, we spent time investigating more complex word problems and how to solve them. We also talked about equivalent numbers and name collection boxes.
Science : After learning about plants for a few weeks, we have moved on to learning about animals and how they use their body parts to survive. The students are really enjoying learning about different animals in this unit. Some of the animals they've enjoyed the most have been the caiman, ghost green crab, ring-tailed lemur, cape porcupine, and the leaf-tailed gecko.
Technology : The students became a little familiar with Google Sheets last week (which is a lot like Excel, in Word). They are pros are locating certain cells and inputting information into specific cells.
Here are some pictures of the fun we had during Read Across America week: