First Grade News February 1, 2016 Curriculum Highlights

• Writing – non-fiction – research, collecting dash facts • Math – number stories and problem solving • Word Study – learning from love - no word in English ends with ‘v’ - write ‘ve’

instead, avoid writing uv - write ov instead, prefixes, bases, suffixes • Science – Living Things – Observations – habitat, behaviour, appearance

Reminders

• Save the dates - March 3 & 4 – Parent Teacher Conferences

Word Study

love loving lovely loveliest unloving loved lovelier unloved lover loves

   News  From  Ms.  Tindall’s  Class    I’m so proud of how far each student has come as a reader this year. They are decoding words, increasing fluency and highly engaged in book discussions. Next step is to ensure comprehension – especially with non-fiction texts. At this age many children draw on their own background knowledge to answer questions about a topic. We are striving however to get them to evidence their answers from within the text itself. You can help at home, by encouraging your child to warm up before beginning to read. Look at the title, read the blurb on the back and read the table of contents. Talk about what you think you already know about this topic. Talk about what you expect to find in the book using the table of contents, blurb and title as references. Dur ing and a f ter reading stop at the end of every page and use a thinking routine we use in class. 1. Confirm – What did you find on this page that confirmed something you already knew. 2. Change – What information challenged your thinking? What did you think before, but now have to change and replace with new thinking? 3. Add – What new learning did you add to your mental file? Also note this week that the base word for spelling is “love”. So the word sum for “loving” is actually: love + ing. When you write out the word “loving” you would say, “l-o-v-…no e…i-n-g.” When you add a vowel suffix to a base word with a silent e, you drop the e and add the suffix. In partnership, Ms. Tindall  

Monday Reading: Focus on comprehension strategies as outlined in the newsletter. Math: Play games to increase fluency and flexibility in basic facts. Please remember the goal is NOT memorization. The goal is understanding. We want children saying things such as I know 5 + 6 = 11, because I know 5 + 5 = 10, and 6 is one more than 5 so, 1 more than 10 is 11. At the end of this newsletter I’ve attached some games, but I’m sure you have card/ board games that you already use, which are equally as good.

Tuesday Reading: Focus on comprehension strategies as outlined in the newsletter. Math: Grab piles of coins (and notes if extending). Practice organizing and counting amounts. Write the amounts you grab in cent notation (dollar and cent notation for extension). Purpose is to skip count, and count on by different numbers (not money itself, but the math involved in counting by groups).

Wednesday Reading: Focus on comprehension strategies as outlined in the newsletter. Math: Play games to practice addition facts such as Addition Top-It or any other games you might have at home that enhance understanding first, then speed and accuracy in this skill.

Thursday Reading: Focus on comprehension strategies as outlined in the newsletter. Word Study: Tell someone the rule about no word in English ending in ‘v’ and what you have to write instead. Find some other examples besides love. (EG have, give…) Math: Play games to practice basic facts – goal: increase understanding, speed and accuracy with single digit addition. Friday Reading: Focus on comprehension strategies as outlined in the newsletter. Poem collection: Recite poems and sing songs from your poem collection. Return it to school on Monday.

Math games below are taken from www.makingmathmorefun.com Please scroll down to find the games. All can be played with a regular deck of cards, removing changing the value of the Ace as need be. We’ll be working on this all month, so please keep the games and work one daily into your routine.