October 1st  We are starting Unit 1 in our new ELA curriculum today.  It's all about communities.  Today we read a story about a community garden and how it came together.  Then the kids had to tell a key detail from the text. That was hard!  This is something we will work on all year.  When you are reading at home with your kiddo, ask about important details in the story.  This is a huge concept, but an important one in first grade!  We are finishing up our Unit 1 in math - all about number partners. We'll take the Unit 1 test on Thursday. Then Friday we will make a fun math craft! Next week we will start focusing on addition and subtraction strategies.  For social studies, we are still focusing on character, classroom citizenship, and kindness. 

The first two weeks....

During the first two weeks, we've spent a lot of time learning routines and procedures.  We've talked a LOT about being a good listener and what that means.  We learned about "whole body" listening - ask you students to tell you about it!  It includes listening with your eyes, ears, arms, feet, body, brain and heart.   We've started learning about what reading will look and sound like in our classroom, and begun routines for Readers Workshop each day, where kids will be working at different tasks while I pull reading groups and kids to work with. We talked about what Mathematicians do, explored our math manipulatives and discussed the difference between math tools and toys.  We've had two great music classes and visited the library today.  We have been VERY busy!