We are happy to announce our first field trip is scheduled for Thursday, October 30, 2014. We will be visiting Hacienda Hay and Feed from 8:50-11:10 am. Students may wear free dress with appropriate footwear. We will return to campus for lunch.
This week in math we started math sprints to practice automaticity of addition and subtraction facts within 10. We investigated the importance of zero as a place holder and continued our exploration of the difference between digits and numbers. A review of everything we have studied up until this point is being conducted and the unit on adding and subtracting within 20 is well underway. In literacy and reading we are studying parts of words and have introduced the glued sound of "all." The first dictation of the year took place as a practice and will become a regular informal assessment for trick words, decodable vocabulary and sentence structure. Good fit books and the difference between reading for meaning and reading for fun is a basic part of our conversation in Grade 1. This week we conducted two informal assessments focusing on following verbal directions including position of shapes, numbers, right, left, top, and bottom. The Empathy Tool was introduced as a carpenters level where each of us strives for a balance between caring for ourselves and caring for others. The empathy tool is the basis of all the work we do with perspective taking and "walking in another's shoes." In Science this week we opened our unit on autumn with a Science Eyes project where we studied acorns and sorted them in several ways. We also created a list of vocabulary to describe what we are looking at. This helps students to develop their attention to detail so they can better observe patterns in nature and the world. Visual motor integration and fine motor skills were mediated through the use of painting, directed drawing, tracing, and cutting out. Next week we will be looking at pumpkins and gourds. The children are always welcome to bring artifacts from home that connect with what we are studying in school. Thanks for another great week!
This week in math we started math sprints to practice automaticity of addition and subtraction facts within 10. We investigated the importance of zero as a place holder and continued our exploration of the difference between digits and numbers. A review of everything we have studied up until this point is being conducted and the unit on adding and subtracting within 20 is well underway. In literacy and reading we are studying parts of words and have introduced the glued sound of "all." The first dictation of the year took place as a practice and will become a regular informal assessment for trick words, decodable vocabulary and sentence structure. Good fit books and the difference between reading for meaning and reading for fun is a basic part of our conversation in Grade 1. This week we conducted two informal assessments focusing on following verbal directions including position of shapes, numbers, right, left, top, and bottom. The Empathy Tool was introduced as a carpenters level where each of us strives for a balance between caring for ourselves and caring for others. The empathy tool is the basis of all the work we do with perspective taking and "walking in another's shoes." In Science this week we opened our unit on autumn with a Science Eyes project where we studied acorns and sorted them in several ways. We also created a list of vocabulary to describe what we are looking at. This helps students to develop their attention to detail so they can better observe patterns in nature and the world. Visual motor integration and fine motor skills were mediated through the use of painting, directed drawing, tracing, and cutting out. Next week we will be looking at pumpkins and gourds. The children are always welcome to bring artifacts from home that connect with what we are studying in school. Thanks for another great week!