Happy New Year!

Welcome back and Happy New Year!  We jumped right back into school on Tuesday preparing for the second half of the year. We began our morning with a quick review of school rules and routines and updated our class rules.  We wasted no time at all as on Tuesday morning, students completed the AIMSweb assessments.  I also have been busy completing some mid-year assessments in the classroom.  It is a great time to see just how far students have grown and make plans for new teaching.

You may have noticed on the calendar that the "Reading Medalist" program begins on Monday.  If you have had a 1st grader at Washington in the past, you are already familiar with this program.  An information packet and the first recording form will come home on Monday.  There are a few changes to the program, so please keep the packet handy for all of the rules and requirements.  If you were wondering where the January Book-It log is, there isn't one.  I will use the Reading Medalist tracking forms to award pizza coupons too.  No need to record books on two forms.

We celebrated two birthdays this week in 1st grade!  These cupcakes aren't helping with my New Year's resolution!  Happy Birthday to Jocelynn and Bentley!

A Peek at Our Week

Reading: We began Unit 3 in reading with the story At Home in the Ocean.  Students are working to identify the author's purpose while reading.  Additionally, they were introduced to proper nouns.  In phonics students are working on writing words with the digraph th.

Math: We began our geometry unit in math this past week.  Students were introduced to plane shapes and began to understand the defining attributes of each.  Next week we will work with three-dimensional shapes.  Addition and subtraction are reviewed daily and I am seeing huge gains in fact fluency as of recently!  The students are working really hard at Daily 5 Math too.  We just recently introduced some Everyday Math Games on the computer as well as Math with Partner.

Alexis and Sam play building towers to work on addition.

Saad uses the Everyday Math website.

Finn plays Rocket Math on the iPad.

Bo completes his math notebook (independent practice).

Pyper and Gabrielle make shape monster at math with teacher.

Science: We finished learning about seasons very briefly this week.  Next week we will begin learning about the states of matter.  We'll start with a fun Oobleck experiment that is sure to be exciting!

Writing: In writer's workshop we are working on our "How To" texts.  We had quite the lesson on adding details to our writing while the students instructed me in how to make a jelly sandwich.  They learned that they leave out quite a few details, such as spreading the jelly from the knife onto the bread.  I played it up and we were all giggles as I spread the jelly jar on the bread!

Upcoming Reminders:

January 10: Washington Skate City Night

January 10: Reading Medalist Begins

January 13: Popcorn Sales

January 13: Book Orders Due