Newsletters

WRITING

This month we will be working on writing true narrative stories from our lives--being brave, being funny, things we love to do with our family. We first draw our stories across three pages to show our beginning, middle and end of the story. Then we work on hearing sounds to write words for our story. We think about what our characters think, say, do, and feel to bring our stories to life!

MATH

This month in math we will be exploring numbers and math tools. We begin with Unit 1 in our math books. We will be working on adding and subtracting within 10. We are also working on collecting and representing data.

PHONICS

We use use three phonics programs in First Grade:

Lively Letters allows students to learn the letters and sounds with a story and song for each letter.

Heggerty's Phonemic Awareness is a 15 min practice we do every day just with listening games. "Phonemic awareness is the ability to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes, and it’s one of the best early predictors for reading success." (quote from the program)

In Teachers College Phonics, we will study our class names to start to identify parts of words: syllables, vowels, digraphs, and blends.

READING

At the beginning of the year we establish routines around reading: finding "just right" books with words that each child can begin to start to read at their level. We practice techniques for becoming a strong reader, such as taking a "sneak peak" at the cover and first few pages to get a sense of the book. We also very much encourage looking closely at the pictures. We want children to feel excited and comfortable with books and they are given new books every week to read as well as having an extensive classroom library.