First Grade Newsletter

This week is our MAP growth assessment for Reading and Math! Please have your students on time each day, having eaten breakfast, and well rested! Have students in bed early the night before.

For DLI students: Your students will be taking English MAP the week of the 21-25th, and the Spanish MAP the following week.

Please remember to send your students with a water bottle, and tennis shoes every day! We do a lot of running and playing and we want to make sure your student is prepared.

Please also remember to send headphones with your child as part of the supply list. Headphones should go over your child's ears and plug into the computer. It is very important that all students have headphones, as we will be using them this week for MAP assessments, as well as in normal classroom activities.

Thank you to all of the parents who joined us for our ESOL Parent Meeting!

Scan below to access the Parent Meeting presentation.

Reading: This week we will begin our first full unit of Stories that Build Community! We will be looking through the lens of what is a community and and the different character traits of a community. We will also be beginning our reading small groups for targeted differentiated small group instruction.

Writing: We will continue working on the writing process and discussing the foundational skills of writing. We will be working on writing throughout the day with responses to reading and discussing how we pull information out of informational text to use in our writing.

Math: In math we will finish up looking at place value and how to make tens using a variety of numbers and models. We will also be starting to look at comparing numbers, and solving addition and subtraction problems with the change unknown. Students will engage in framework task and practice.

Social Studies: We will begin discussing landforms! What are landforms? Where do we find different land forms?

Vocabulary Words for the Week:

Winsome, Begrudging, Empathy, Persevere, Related, Haven

Reading: This week we will begin our first full unit of Stories that Build Community! We will be looking through the lens of what is a community and and the different character traits of a community. We will also be beginning our reading small groups for targeted differentiated small group instruction.

Phonics: This week we will be working on initial blends with our students. We will be practicing blending, segmenting sounds, and writing.

Writing: We will continue working on the writing process and discussing the foundational skills of writing. We will be working on writing throughout the day with responses to reading and discussing how we pull information out of informational text to use in our writing. We are officially starting our Informational writing unit! We are starting with finding out facts about different objects in order to create unique full sentences.

Math: In math we will be continuing our look into comparing numbers, and solving addition and subtraction problems with the change unknown. Students will engage in framework task and practice. We will also use our background knowledge from the previous week of building 10s, to figure out building teen numbers up to 20. Students will engage with tens and ones to figure similarities and differences of numbers.

Social Studies: We will continue our look into landforms and building background knowledge about geography to support our students in our upcoming "Me on a Map" and "Habitats" unit!

Vocabulary Words for the Week:

Scowled: an angry frown

Polite: to use manners

Honest: to keep your promises

Cooperate: to work together

Discovery: The act of learning something new

Transforming: To change in form

Community: A group of people working together

Coincidence: a surprising connection

Unique: special, one of a kind

Haste: quick

Diversity: differences

Adversity: difficulty

Continue to focus on building positive evening routines such as: reading together, talking about your day, and going to bed on time.

Have students go over adding and subtracting within 10 and 20.

Practice handwriting at home and spelling high frequency words such as: said, ask, you, their, six, two, who was, ran

Make sure you and your student are going over homework and practicing concepts within the packets given out on Mondays. The homework packets represent skills that we will be working on during the week. While we are not grading homework, it is important that your student is completing the homework on their own/ with your help. This is a great time for siblings to work together, have your first graders older sibling assist them to also reinforce concepts.

Other alternatives:

Go over your address with your student. Make sure they can tell you and write their address and full name.

Go on a nature walk and talk about different habitats you see! (This builds great background knowledge for our upcoming units)

Cook together! Going through a recipe with your student assist in their reading skills, measuring skills, and understanding about how things go together! You can also use your pre-cooking trip to the grocery store to help students with their basic math facts! ("We have two apples and 6 bananas, how many pieces of fruit do we have altogether?")

Check out The Reading Buddies:

https://www.thereadingleague.org/reading-buddies/

Brains On Podcast:

https://www.brainson.org/

Math Games based on Standards: This can be used for students of all ages and math skills

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/counting

Here are two videos to start practicing the Spanish alphabet and numbers at home!

Check out: Arbol ABC at arbolabc.com

8/21-8/25: MAP Testing English

8/28-9/1: MAP Testing Spanish Reading

9/4: Labor Day NO SCHOOL

9/11-9/15: Spanish MAP MATH

9/14: DLI Family Night 5:00pm

9/20: Fall Picture Day

9/25-9/29: FALL BREAK

All students are expected to be in uniform. Students may wear jeans or Marietta or Park Street gear any day. Please make sure that jeans do not have holes in them. Also please have your students bring a jacket to school if they get cold easily. While it is hot outside, it can get chilly inside the school building.

Reminder that all students should be wearing tennis shoes every day.