Sterling's Snippets: Fall Greetings

It has been a great month so far! Students attended their first field trip to MSUM for their Learning Bank field trip. At MSUM, students enjoyed a performance by MSUM's band, Fuego Tropical. The students learned about many instruments and enjoyed the performance. It is always fun to go on a bus ride too!

Conferences are just around the corner. Thank you for returning your conference slips promptly. If anything should change with your scheduled time, don't hesitate to contact me. This first conference will provide a great opportunity for us to visit about your child's strengths and set goals for the remainder of the school year. Watch for a pre-conference survey to come home soon.

We will have a Pumpkin Party on Wednesday, October 31. The day will focus around pumpkins as students participate in literacy, math, science and writing activities. In the afternoon, students will have a short celebration with games and a snack. Just a reminder, students should not wear or bring costumes to the party.

Star Student

We had a lot of fun getting to know more about James in our classroom. James is one of the hardest workers in 1st grade, always persevering! We had fun celebrating his 7th birthday at school too!

A Peek at Our Week

Reading: This week in reading we will learn about another Notice and Note Signpost: Aha Moment. Students will hear the story I Want My Hat Back and try to determine when a character has a "light bulb" moment. They will also work to summarize the main idea of a story. In phonics we will practice using double consonant blends such as ll, ss, and dd. We will also practice using final ck blends.

Math: Math workshop began today! Students began math with a whole-group mini lesson on subtraction. Following the lesson, students rotated through four stations: Math with Teacher, At Your Seat, Technology and Hands on. During each station, students had the opportunity to reinforce our new skill. The students are very excited to try out their independence during math. Ask your child what his or her favorite part of Math Workshop is! Below is our Math Workshop rotation board.

Writing: Students are busy working through the writing stages. Today we learned that some students may be planing where as others are drafting or revising. No matter what stage of writing students are in, the most important thing is that they are writing. We've enjoyed examining several personal narrative texts such as The Night of the Veggie Monster and Fireflies. By examining real mentor texts, students are able to imagine themselves as real authors!

Science: We are busy being engineers during our first STEM unit of the year. Today students explored the STEM design map by imagining, planning, designing and experimenting with their STEM teams. Students built beanstalks using only tape and index cards. In the end, team four managed to build a beanstalk that was 27 inches tall. All teams worked hard to collaborate and communicate through this challenge!