Mrs. Barenbrugge 1A
Published by Mrs. Barenbrugge 1A January 3rd, 2010 in Announcements.Happy New Year and welcome back! I hope you have all had a wonderful holiday break. I would like to thank everyone for the wonderful gifts, cards and contributions to the teacher gift fund. You are extremely generous and I feel very blessed…thank you! During the past two weeks I enjoyed some extra sleep and lots of time with my family. I hope everyone is feeling reenergized and ready to learn-I have been planning a lot of great things!
In religion this week we will be talking about The Lord’s Prayer and exactly what the words mean. We will also be exploring different ways to pray. Another topic we will discuss this week is where can we pray? Next week we will be having a religion test-look for the study guide to come home towards the end of the week!
In Social Studies we will be exploring why we need laws and who makes laws. We will also talk about rights and responsibility of good citizens. Be sure to ask your first grader why we need laws in our communities.
This week we will begin a “How To” writing project. We will discuss transition words that help readers follow along when the author is explaining how to do things. Our budding authors will work through the entire writing process with this project. They will brainstorm, make a “sloppy copy,” edit and revise their work and then recopy it into a final project!
In math class we will pick up where we left off before vacation. Both the orange and blue group will be working on shapes. We will be discussing plane shapes and solid shapes. Some of the key vocabulary terms include: edge, corner, face, cone, cylinder, pyramid, cube, square, triangle, circle and rectangle. We will also continue on our good “Math Thinking” in our daily journal as we trek closer to the 100th day. During calendar time we will focus on time and money. These important topics will be coming up soon in our text! Keep working on math facts at home. The quarter is almost over and we will be moving on to sums to 12 soon! Homework should come home today–due back next Monday!
In Reading the Lions will be working on the story Let’s Go Camping. Towards the end of the week they will be taking the unit 3 test. We will be reviewing the parts of a story and comparing and contrasting. We will also review diagraphs-wh, ch, and nk. We will focus on using apostrophes to show possession or to make contractions. The Lions spelling words for this week are: sticks, mud, sun, snow, fire and twigs. The bonus word for the week is snowman. The sentence for the week is: The sticks and twigs are on fire. The high frequency words we will work on include: eat, us, try, just, old, blue, under, and red. I will also be assessing the lions knowledge of high frequency words we have studied so far.
The Tigers and the Bears will be reading Sam’s Song this week. We will be working on the diagraphs ch, wh, nk. This week we will begin to focus on comparing and contrasting and we will review story elements. The children will get more practice with contractions. As you read with your first grader be sure to point out contractions and stop to discuss them. The spelling words for this week are: chick, chin, sink, think, when, and wink. This bonus word is snowman. The sentence for this week is: I think I can wink. The sight words we will concentrate on are: eat, now, together, too, are, come, now, came.
All three of my reading groups will begin taking home accelerated reader books and taking AR tests over the next few weeks. Mrs. McMahon, Mrs. Jablonski and myself are working to implement a system that will ensure that children are choosing books that are at their level. We want every first grader to be successful! You will receive more information on the AR program in your child’s backpack over the next few weeks!
As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns you have! Have a great week!
