Week 29 Update

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

    • Monday, March 28 – STEAM 
      • Reading calendar due (last day to turn in)
    • Tuesday, March 29 – Music 
      • Pizza Day (if you would like to help offset the cost, please send in $1 by Monday)
    • Wednesday, March 30 – Gym
      • Pajama Day
    • Thursday, March 31 – Sunday, April 10 – Spring Break

After Break:

  • Monday, April 11 – return to school

Notes for Parents:

  • As a reminder, we will be having a pizza lunch on Tuesday. If your child does not like pizza, please send a lunch from home.
  • If you are planning on leaving early for spring break, please send me an email to let me know which days your child will be gone. Thank you!

Celebrations:

Star Students – This week Landon, Ally, Mya, and Lexi enjoyed being star student and got to eat lunch with Mrs. Cooley on Friday.

Mystery Reader – We loved having Lexi’s mom,  Mrs. Van Hal come in and read to us! We also got to enjoy some special March is Reading Month Mystery readers, two of Mrs. Cooley’s former first graders- Cambry and Kennedy, and Mr. Hall, our school board president.

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.”  Kenzie was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  Landon joined the shoe-tying club this week.

 


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  We started the end of book reviews this week.  We focused on our introductions and conclusions and all the other important parts we have learned.  It has been fun tying this into the March is Reading Month book battles and being excited about books. 

Math –  This week in math, we focused on looking at data sets with three categories. We also created our own data by going around the classroom and having students choose their favorite color out of three different color choices. We then compared the data to see which color had the most and fewest votes. We also compared only two colors at a time using the terms more and less. This can be a tricky skill for kiddos when they only are supposed to compare two of the categories at a time. You can see how they did with this concept on the first quiz that came home this week!

Reading – Our reading focus this week was all about putting all that we’ve learned into a final reading celebration. We learned that Readers Have Big Jobs To Do like reading with expression, fluency, and understanding the story. We celebrated our learning by starting to record ourselves reading a just right book out loud. 

Word Study- Our vowel team chart is filling up! This week we learned about oi and oy, which make the same sound (coin, toy). We also learned about ew and ue, which both say /oo/ like in stew and blue. 

Social-Emotional- We talked all about respect this week! This can be a tricky time of year for kiddos because it is the longest span of school between breaks. It was the perfect week to review what it means to be respectful. We brainstormed ways we can be respectful in the classroom and at home. We talked about how respect is making people feel cared for and important, saying please and thank you, and having the power to choose who to listen to and when.


Week 28

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

    • Monday, March 21 – Art 
      • Reading calendar due
    • Tuesday, March 22 – Steam 
    • Wednesday, March 23 -Music, LIBRARY, CHANGE baggie books 
      • Wear a shirt with winter words
    • Thursday, March 24 – Gym
      • Family Charter Night
    • Friday, March 25 – Art

Later this Month:

    • Tuesday, March 29- Restaurant Retell and Pizza Party Day, you can send in a dollar to help offset costs if your child wants pizza, please put it in a baggie with their name on it. You can pack snacks and/or a home lunch that day if they do not want/cannot eat pizza.
    • Wednesday, March 30 -Pajama Day last day of school before break
    • March 31-April 10 – Spring Break
    • Monday, April 11 – return to school

Notes for Parents:

  • If you are planning on leaving early for spring break, please send me an email to let me know which days your child will be gone. We have some assessments we are doing that week and I will try to squeeze it in for your child before the break. Thank you!
  • Please join our PBIS team on March 24th from 6:30 for a Family Charter Night. During this time we will introduce you to and guide you through the creation of a Family Charter. Please RSVP here if you plan on attending. 

Celebrations:

Star Students – Kenzie, Landon, Brayden, and Hannah enjoyed having Olive over this week.  We’re excited for Cammy to be our last friend to have her next week!

Mystery Reader – This week Mrs. Cooley’s family were our mystery readers! Her parents and son, Willem came in and read Little Owl and Dino the Dinosaur.  What a fun surprise.

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it yet.”     Sam was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  

 


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  This week in writing we are focusing our review writing on book reviews.  This is a great tie into March is Reading Month because we have a school-wide book bracket and we are voting for our favorite books.  We are really focusing on adding details and making our writing exciting and convincing.  We worked to introduce the characters, use conjunctions, and made sure we told our book title and author. 

Math –  We learned a lot of new vocabulary words to help us be stronger mathematicians for this new unit! The kiddos learned words like: data, sort, compare, more/most, and fewer/fewest. We started the week by sorting bugs into groups like legs vs. no legs and colors. We then used that data to compare and see which group had more or fewer bugs in it. The remainder of the week was spent strengthening this skill through the use of various categories.

Reading – This week in reading we continued to be the boss of our own reading.  We tried to track dialogue and figure out which character is talking.  This is a great question to ask your child while they are reading. “Who said that?” We also worked to make sure we understand the words we are reading.  Our read-aloud right now is The Mouse and The Motorcycle.  We had to stop and look up the work antimacassar because even Mrs. Cooley didn’t know what it meant. 

Word Study- Our exploration of vowel teams continued this week with some sounds that have multiple different spellings. For instance, ‘ou’ and ‘ow’ both say the same sound (couch, cow). We also learned that the spelling ‘ow’ can make two different sounds (cow, snow). Plus, we practiced reading and writing words with the two sounds made by ‘oo’ (book, spoon). 

Social-Emotional- As we have wrapped up most of our RULER lessons we are going to focus on Little Penguin lessons.  This week we are talking about Growth Mindset. We talked about a fixed mindset, like the examples below, and then focused on using the word yet!! A growth mindset means we keep trying and do our best, even when it’s hard. 


Week 27 Update

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

  • Monday, March 14 – Art
    • Blue reading calendar sent back in folder to earn raffle ticket
  • Tuesday, March 15 – STEAM
  • Wednesday, March 16 – Music, Return Library Books, Baggie Books 
    • Sports Day -wear sports gear
  • Thursday, March 17 – Gym
  • Friday, March 18 -Early Release (students dismissed at 12:15 p.m.)  
    • Costume Day (to celebrate earning our outstandings, just for our class, just like Halloween.  Have it be something they can be comfortable and warm enough in all morning. Also, no weapons and appropriate for school.
  • Saturday, March 19 – Boys Day Out

Notes for Parents:

  • You are welcome to join our PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports) team on March 24th from 6:30 for a Family Charter Night. During this time we will introduce you to and guide you through the creation of a Family Charter. Please RSVP here if you plan on attending. 

Celebrations:

Star Students – This week Liam, Nora, Ruby, Ethan, and Daniel enjoyed having Olive at home.

Mystery Reader – We loved having Lily’s mom, Mrs. Olivarez in to read to us. What a treat.

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “You don’t need a cape to be a hero, you just need to care.”    Ruby was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  We also celebrated a lost tooth from Hudson.


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  We are continuing on with our review writing.  We are now focusing on writing to persuade others and convincing them of our opinion.  We tried adding in comparisons like Mcdonald’s is better than Arby’s because… Many students have the structure of opinion writing down, now we are looking to make their writing come alive and really show their voice and thorough details. 

Math –  We wrapped up unit 5 this week. We practiced for our test for a couple days to help the kiddos feel ready to tackle it! This unit included some tricky concepts, so I am proud of all their hard work. 🙂 The test came home today and you may have noticed it more marked up than usual. It was easy to add or subtract incorrectly. You’ll also see it covered many different standards.  This can be tricky because students had to use a variety of different strategies to solve different problems.  Unit 6 is all about comparisons and data.  We took a pre-test today to see where we can help provide extra support to some students and enrichment to others. They will learn how to represent, collect, and compare data. 

Reading – This week we continued to build on our independent reading skills and focus on asking ourselves, “What’s happening?” and “What might happen next?” so we can understand the book as a whole. 

Word Study- We continued our exploration of vowel teams this week by learning about the following vowel teams: ai, ay, ou, and ow. We add each vowel team to a special chart to remind us of their sounds, and we practice reading and writing words using these sounds.

Social-Emotional- We started Unit 14 this week and are working to resolve conflicts. We are using the blueprint reflections to help us think about conflicts. 


These little sweeties got me through a tough week. Love their teamwork and am amazed at how they are growing and maturing.

Week 26

What a pleasure it was to meet with you all this week for conferences.  While yes, the days are long, I love the chance to meet and be able to celebrate your children with you.  I know many of us commiserated on what another tough season this has been.  The constant questioning of how best to keep our kids safe, healthy, and happy has weighed heavily on all our minds. But, we are doing it!!  They are learning, growing, maturing, and continuing to develop as great tiny humans.  I appreciate your partnership, grace, and continue to be grateful for the opportunity to walk alongside you in your child’s journey.  I wish you a peaceful weekend.  Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes.  On a sad note, I lost my grandma today.  I am not sure of the details but I will likely be out for the funeral sometime next week. (I didn’t tell the kids yet.) Kind regards, Victoria

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

  • Monday, March 7 – Gym
    • place the reading calendar in your child’s folder for raffle entry
  • Tuesday, March 8 – Art
  • Wednesday, March 9 – Steam, Send in LIBRARY BOOKS/BAGGIE BOOKS
    • Team USA – wear red, white, & blue
  • Thursday, March 10 – Music
  • Friday, March 11 – Gym

Notes for Parents:

  • Please join our PBIS team on March 24th from 6:30 for a Family Charter Night. During this time we will introduce you to and guide you through the creation of a Family Charter. Please RSVP here if you plan on attending. 
  • We kicked off March is Reading Month this week! The theme this year is Go for the Gold to tie in the Olympics. Your child came home with a reading calendar last week that can be completed and signed each week. Every Monday, it can be returned to school to earn a raffle ticket for a free book from the book fair! Every Wednesday will be a dress-up day, and Fridays we will receive a special snack from our PTC.

Celebrations:

Star Students – Olive got to go home with some new friends this week. She is loving being read to and having dinner with her friends- Henry, Daniel, Ally, Kaiya, and Kat.

Mystery Reader – It was great to have Brayden’s mom, Mrs. Taylor, join us in our class. We loved her story of Skippy John Jones.

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also gave awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go. – Dr. Suess”    Ethan was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  Kaiya, Sam, and Lexi joined the shoe-tying club this week.

                            Shoe-tying Club

                   Quote of the Week- Ethan


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  We started a new unit this week and are learning to write reviews and give our opinions.  We started with the great cookie debate and decided what was the best cookie.  Our class picked oreos.  We then started writing about the collections we brought in and giving our opinion for our favorite and least favorite items.  We will follow the OREO structure for Opinion writing. O-Opinion R-Reasons E-Examples O- (restate) Opinion. 

Math –  This week in math we worked on writing numbers through 120. We learned how we can use a number grid to help us find 10 more or 10 less than a number. We looked for patterns in the grid to help us with this. For example, when we write the numbers in rows, the ones increase as you go across a row and the tens stay the same. We also learned how to add and subtract 10s as well as multiples of 10. You should see the second quiz coming home soon for this unit, and we will be taking the unit 5 test next week!

Reading – This week we continued to build on our independent reading skills and focused on asking ourselves, “Does that look right?” We practiced reading words part by part, trying the vowel sound many different ways, and using a word you already know to figure out a bigger word.

Word Study- As word builders, we’re learning how to “build” (read and write) words using vowel teams. This week, we focused on the following vowel teams: ai, ay, oa, ou, and ow. Encourage your first grader to hunt for vowel teams in the books they read at home!


 

Week 25

Upcoming Dates and Reminders

  • Monday, Feb. 28 – Music 
      • Wesco coloring sheet due
  • Tuesday, March 1 – Gym
    • Book Fair Preview 1:30-1:55 
    • Conferences
    • Boys Day Out Money is due
  • Wednesday, March 2 – Art, Library Books due, Bring Baggie Books to change
  • Thursday, March 3 – STEAM
    • Conferences
    • Book Fair Shopping 1:30-1:55
  • Friday, March 4 -Music 

Notes for Parents:

  • This week one of our first-grade teachers, Mrs. Kuiper welcomed her son, Isaiah. We are so excited to have Taylor Diniz teaching with us while Mrs. Kuiper is out. Mrs. Diniz comes to us after teaching kindergarten in Chicago. She is a great addition to our team. We wish Mrs. Kuiper and her family well as they enjoy this special time!
  • On Tuesday, March 1 we will begin our 3rd unit of writing, “Writing Reviews.” Please have your child bring in a shoebox or Ziplock bag, filled with a small collection on Tuesday, March 1. This will help your child to write opinions about his/her collection! Please do not let your child bring in food, pets, items of great value, or toy weapons. Please email me if you have any questions! Here are some ideas for shoebox collections:
Rocks Shells

Pennies

Crayons Stickers
Legos Buttons Marbles Figurines Cards
  • We will be kicking off March is Reading Month next week! The theme this year is Go for the Gold to tie in the Olympics. Your child will be coming home with a reading calendar today that can be completed and signed each week. On each Monday, they can be returned to school to earn a raffle ticket for a free book from the book fair! Every Wednesday will be a dress up day, and Fridays we will receive a special snack from our PTC. Look for this calendar to be sent home next week.
  • Georgetown Boys Day Out will be held on March 19 in the afternoon. A paper was sent home earlier last week with the information. If you have any questions, email Kristi Floriana at kristen.floriana@gmail.comBoys Day Out 2022.pdf 
  • Scholastic News- I will place the order this weekend.  Please order ASAP if you want to get books.

    Class Order Due Date: 2/25/2022


Celebrations:

Star Students – Our friends, Mila, Lexi, Sophia, Mya, and Bryson, enjoyed having Olive sleepover again this week. Olive was snuggled a lot and read to!

Mystery Reader- We loved having Henry’s dad, Mr. Stadt, in this week to read to us.  He read us a great story about lighthouses.

We also had an HPS Eagle’s Basketball Player, Mikayla Meyer in to hang out with us Monday afternoon.  She read us a President’s day story and then showed us some basketball moves.

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.”    Mya was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  We also celebrated a lost tooth from Hayden.    

Hayden’s Lost Tooth

Quote of the Week- Mya

Lunar New Year – On Friday, we had fun learning about the celebration of Lunar New Year which is celebrated earlier in the month.  We practiced our short vowels with paper lanterns, made a dragon, wrote some Chinese characters, and learned about the Year of the Tiger. We enjoyed snacking on a fortune cookie. (Pictures below)


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  This week we wrote our last nonfiction piece.  This week students were left to brainstorm, draft, and publish their pieces independently.  This helps us to see what they have learned throughout this unit and are able to do by themselves.  We look forward to sharing their end result with you at conferences. 

Math –  We completed our first quiz for unit 5 which we will be keeping until conferences so we can discuss how your child did! The quiz focused on addition and subtraction equations with the unknown in various places. We also learned about story problems with three addends, so they had a problem like that on the quiz as well. The kiddos thought it was super cool to be able to add together 3 different numbers. We talked about strategies we can use to help with that. We also practiced circling groups of 10 objects to help reinforce counting on with groups of 10 and ones.

Reading – This week in reading we continued being the boss of our own reading! We talked about how readers need to self-monitor by asking questions like “Does it look right?”, “Does it sound right?”, and “Does it make sense?”. We also focused on the importance of setting goals for ourselves and some habits that we want to get better at! We ended the week learning that sometimes we can get help from partners when we need it too as long as we try on our own first.

Word Study- We started a new unit this week: “Word Builders.” Just like construction builders create big buildings part by part, we are learning to read and write BIG words by including every “part” (sound). We started learning about vowel teams (ea) and (ee).


Week 24

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

  • Monday, Feb. 21 – Music, PAJAMA DAY
  • Tuesday, Feb. 22 – Gym
  • Wednesday, Feb. 23 – Send in Baggie Books, Library Books, Art
  • Thursday, Feb. 24 – Steam
  • Friday, Feb. 25 – Early Release- Lunar New Year Celebration

 

  • Spring Conferences – March 1 & 3 Calendly sign-ups will be coming soon.  You will have the option to do zoom or in-person. In-person is easier for me to share and show you your child’s work but I understand the ease and comfort of Zoom so please pick what works best for you and I can send work home with your child the following day. I look forward to meeting with you.

Notes for Parents:

  • Next week, your child will get a note with the following info:
    • On Tuesday, March 1 we will begin our 3rd unit of writing, “Writing Reviews.” Please have your child bring in a shoebox or Ziplock bag, filled with a small collection on Tuesday, March 1. This will help your child to write opinions about his/her collection! Please do not let your child bring in food, pets, items of great value, or toy weapons. Please email me if you have any questions! Here are some ideas for shoebox collections:
Rocks Shells Pennies Crayons Stickers
Legos Buttons Marbles Figurines Cards

 

  • Friday is the end of the Kids Heart Challenge (KHC). For more information and details please visit the PE Blog. http://mvankoev.edublogs.org
    • Georgetown Boys Day Out will be held on March 19 in the afternoon. A paper was sent home earlier this week with the information. If you have any questions, email Kristi Floriana at kristen.floriana@gmail.com

    Boys Day Out 2022.pdf


Celebrations:

Star Students – This week Sam and Sawyer enjoyed getting to have Olive, our class cow, at home.

Mystery Reader – We enjoyed having Ruby’s Grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Bruins, come in to share a book with us.

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “The biggest mistake you can ever make is to be too afraid to make one.”   Ally was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  We also celebrated a lost tooth from Hayden.   No new friends joined the shoe-tying club this week.

Valentine’s Party – We had a blast at our last holiday party this year! The kiddos loved playing Valentine’s games and making some Valentine’s crafts. They also enjoyed a yummy Valentine’s treat! They have lots of goodies to show you in their Valentine’s bags. Thank you SO much for sending things in the last couple of weeks! We really appreciate all you do to help support us at school. 🙂 I loved making Valentine’s with them and loved the kindness it helped to spread. 

Teacher Rotations – During our morning on Friday, all the first grade teachers rotated from class to class to complete a fun activity in each room. Mrs. Cooley did an adorable cardinal craft, Miss Hutchison played Bingo, Mrs. Kuiper played a math game called Rollin’ Hearts to 100, and Mrs. Blauwkamp did a directed drawing with the kids!


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  This week we had a mini-unit reviewing punctuation and capitalization.  We practiced the rules and then went back through our nonfiction writing and made sure that we were using capitals and punctuating correctly. 

Math –  We focused a lot on math mountains this week and how we can use them to help us solve story problems. We talked about how we can have mixed story problems and that sometimes there is an unknown partner and other times there is an unknown total.

Reading – We began a new unit of reading this week called “Readers Have Big Jobs to Do.” We learned how to be the boss of our reading and say “I can do this!” when we get to a tricky word. Readers practiced stopping at the first sign of trouble, trying something, and then trying something else to get the job done!

Word Study- This week we did sentence dictations to practice all the skills we have learned like digraphs (h brothers), blends, and CVCe words.

Social-Emotional- This week we talked about and celebrated World Kindness Day!


 


Teacher Rotations and our Valentine’s Party

 

 

Week 23 Update

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

  • Monday, Feb. 14 – NO SCHOOL
  • Tuesday, Feb. 15 – NO SCHOOL
  • Wednesday, Feb. 16 – Gym, Library, Return Baggie Books
  • Thursday, Feb. 17 – Art
  • Friday, Feb. 18 – STEAM

Notes for Parents:


Celebrations:

No Family Time or Mystery Reader this week. Stay tuned for next week.

Star Students – Olive, our class pet (cow) went on some fun adventures this week.  She had cake to celebrate Reagan’s birthday, went to Costco with Hudson and spent the snow day with Lily.  It’s been so fun to see the kids’ excitement over having her for a sleepover.


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  This week we started (or continued) working on new Non-Fiction pieces. We are working to fine-tune the pieces we are writing and thinking about ways we could improve them by adding photographs or more detailed drawings, adding ending punctuation, and using craft moves like other authors do. For example, speech bubbles or POP OUT words. We have a week and a half left of this unit. 

Math –  The kiddos received their new math books this week! We started unit 5 which is all about place value situations. We will begin to work more with subtraction into the teen numbers and continue working on finding various unknowns in teen problems. One strategy is the making a ten strategy to help us find the missing partner for addition and subtraction equations and story problems. This is very difficult for many students and so I encourage you to have them either practice counting up from the known partner to the total or counting down the known partner amount from the total. 

Reading – We wrapped up our nonfiction reading unit with a celebration this week! Students chose one nonfiction book to become experts on. Then, they recorded a Flipgrid video sharing their name, the title of their book, and three facts they learned from the book! Our first graders all did such an amazing job, if you would like to watch your child’s Flipgrid you can do so HERE.

Word Study- This week, we practiced looking for snap words we know inside of bigger words (For example, if we know “eat,” we can use it to read “beat,” “eating,” etc.) We also learned to read and write contractions! We played word games like memory and match-up to practice reading contractions. 

Social-Emotional- This week we wrapped up Unit 9.  We continued to talk about how we can be our best selves and we talked more about how we could use the meta moment in certain situations. We practiced breathing and role-played through some scenarios. 


Week 22 Update

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

  • Monday, Feb. 7- Music
    • PE Apparel sale ends
  • Tuesday, Feb. 8- Gym
    • Tarry Hall Skating Party @ 6:00 p.m.
  • Wednesday, Feb. 9- Art, Library, Change Baggie Books 
    • Feb. 9 – Valentine Cards Due (if doing them) (We’ll decorate bags at school, no boxes needed)
  • Thursday, Feb. 10- STEAM
  • Friday, Feb. 11-Music
    • Valentine’s Day Party
  • Feb. 14 & 15 – NO SCHOOL (Winter Break)

Notes for Parents:

  • Report Cards came home today in your child’s take-home folder. They are in the back, backward.  I look forward to discussing your child’s report card with you at parent-teacher conferences next month (March 1 or 3). The scale we use is as follows- 3-proficient, 2-progressing, 1- beginning.  Please keep in mind that at this time of year, your child may have some 2’s and that’s completely normal and common as we work toward mastery by the end of the year.  Please also know that our intervention time has been limited this year and we appreciate all you are doing at home to support your child. 
  • GT Students have kicked off Kids Heart Challenge (KHC) this week in P.E.  For more information and details please visit the PE Blog. http://mvankoev.edublogs.org
  • As a reminder, the annual PE Apparel ONLINE sale is open until February 7.  Click the link to place an order from the online store https://onitink-hps.square.site/

Celebrations:

Star Students – All of our friends have led us in the pledge.  Next week, we are excited to get to take our class pet, Olive home for a sleepover when we are the Star Student! Olive will come with a journal if you want to note the activities she does while at your house!

Mystery Reader – Hayden’s mom, Mrs. Beverwyk joined us this week.  We loved having her in!

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “Don’t let your ice cream melt while you’re busy counting someone else’s sprinkles.”    Lexi was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  No new friends in any other clubs. 

100th Day – The kids all looked so cute dressed as their 100-year-old selves.  We enjoyed thinking about our future life and celebrated all we’ve learned in 100 days!!


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  This week we continued on with nonfiction chapter books.  It’s great to see the amount of writing some students are turning out. We thought about how our readers may look at our books and made sure the facts we were including were on topic and taught our readers. We also practiced editing to make sure our writing had capital I’s, finger spaces, end punctuation and it was neat. 

Math –   We finished up unit 4 in math this week! We started the week by practicing some methods we learned to help us add when working with 2-digit numbers. Then we took a practice test as a class to help us prepare for the test on Thursday! You should see the tests coming home soon. Your kiddo will also be coming home with their math book because we will be getting new books next week for the second half of the school year. Some pages might not be completed, so you can work through those at home to help reinforce those skills if you would like to!

Reading – In reading this week we worked on reading aloud like an expert! We practiced reading with feeling and making our voice match the feeling in the words we read. For example, when we read a page about an owl finding prey we should read in a loud, strong voice and when we read a page about owl babies we should read with a sweet, soft voice. We also worked on reading like writers by noticing numbers, pictures, and maps in our books and talking about keywords. 

Word Study- This week we spent a lot of time studying snap words.  We also practiced Karate Chopping words into the parts and then crashing them back together. We have started daily spelling challenges so that we can continue to apply all we are learning and see these skills transfer into our writing. On Friday, We enjoyed a new word study game- fly swatter sight words. 

Social-Emotional- This week we started Unit 9.  Our focus question was who is my best self? We read the book Big Bear Hug and drew a self-portrait.  We thought about what words we would want others to use to describe us. We also taught students about Meta Moments.


Week 21 Updates

Upcoming Dates:

  • Monday, Jan. 31- STEAM
  • Tuesday, Feb. 1-  Music
  • Wednesday, Feb. 2- PE, Library, change baggie books
  • Thursday, Feb. 3- Art
  • Friday, Feb. 4 – STEAM, 100th Day of School (student can dress like a 100-year-old version of themselves)

Later this month:

  • Feb. 8 – Tarry Hall Skating Party @ 6:00 p.m.
  • Feb. 9 – Valentine Cards Due (if you are sending separate ones, class list
  • Feb. 11 – Valentine’s Day Party
  • Feb. 14 & 15 – NO SCHOOL (Winter Break)

Notes for Parents:

  • Report Cards will be sent home on February 4th.  The scale we use is as follows- 3-proficient, 2-progressing, 1- beginning.  Please keep in mind that at this time of year, your child may have some 2’s and that’s completely normal and common as we work toward mastery by the end of the year.  At GES in first grade, we also do not use the 3* (this denotes above grade level.) Please also know that our intervention time has been limited this year and we appreciate all you are doing at home to support your child. 
  • Our new secretary, Mrs. Audrey Straub (our former PTC president) has been a familiar face around GES for a while.  Be sure to say hello to her next time you are in the office. Please email Mrs. Amy Hoekstra (ahoekst2@hpseagles.net), Mrs. Audrey Straub, (astraub1@hpseagles.net) and your child’s teacher with any absences or pick-up changes.
  • The annual PE Apparel ONLINE sale is open now until February 7.  Click the link to place an order from the online store https://onitink-hps.square.site/

Celebrations:

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- “Fall down 7 times, stand up 8.”   Daniel was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  No new lost teeth or shoe-tying friends this week. 

Class Birthday Party- We had so much fun celebrating everyone’s birthday at our class birthday party.  It was nice to be able to take some time and enjoy just being together.  We loved playing bingo, a cup stacking game, making necklaces, and party hats, and also having a special treat. The kids had such fun sharing their gifts with each other and celebrating their friends. 


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  This week we learned how we can add different types of writing into an informational piece. We tried things like making lists, putting in some how-to writing, and making the writing persuasive.  We wrapped up our second piece and moved on to writing our own independent idea for an informational piece. 

Math –  We studied place value more this week in math and looked more at adding tens and ones. For example, 20+40 or 60+2. Some strategies we are using is using our fingers to count on or picture drawings of tens sticks and ones. We also compared 2-digit numbers.  You can see our beginning work on this from quick quiz 2 which was sent home earlier in the week. We tried to make connections like 4+3 = 7 and so 40+30 = 70. 

Reading – In reading we continued to get smart about nonfiction reading. We found keywords in our nonfiction books, worked to make our voice smooth and lively while reading, and worked to make our reading interesting and point out the important facts. 

Word Study- This week we spent more time looking at words all the way from the beginning to the end.  We practiced strategies for how to read long, tough words by looking at chunks, we learned the difference between then and than, we worked to spell words by hearing all the sounds, and we paid attention to the vowel in each syllable. 

Social-Emotional-  This week we started Unit 8.  We had the guiding question- What can I do to help my classmates and myself feel our desired emotions at school? We reviewed our class charter and thought about-How do my emotions influence me and others? We read the book, How Full is Your Bucket? and challenged each other to think about how we can fill other people’s buckets. We also read Hey, Little Ant and talked about empathy, trying to imagine how friends might feel in certain situations.  Here is the preview link for Unit 9.



Birthday Party Fun!

Week 20 Update

Hi all,

Thanks for the kind words and well wishes this week.  We are hanging in at our house.  Lots of fatigue, brain fog, and congestion but all relatively minor. I will return to school on Tuesday, January 25th. I look forward to being back with the kids.  -Victoria


Upcoming Dates:

  • Monday, Jan. 24- STEAM (Mrs. Jager to sub)
  • Tuesday, Jan. 25- Music
  • Wednesday, Jan. 26- Gym, LIBRARY, baggie books change
  • Thursday, Jan. 27- Art
      • Send in a medium/large gift bag by Thursday!
      • Send in gift/trinket (OPTIONAL)
      • Rescheduled PTC Meeting
  • Friday, Jan. 28 – Early Release (Birthday Party @ 10:45-11:45)

Next Month:

  • Feb. 4 – 100th Day of School (note coming home next week)
  • Feb. 8 – Tarry Hall Skating Party @ 6:00 p.m.
  • Feb. 9 – Valentine Cards Due if you are sending them in. (Class Lists Here)
  • Feb. 11 – Valentine’s Day Party
  • Feb. 14 & 15 – NO SCHOOL (Winter Break)

Notes for Parents:

  • Report Cards will be sent home on February 4th.  The scale we use is as follows- 3-proficient, 2-progressing, 1- beginning.  Please keep in mind that at this time of year, your child may have some 2’s and that’s completely normal and common as we work toward mastery by the end of the year.  At GES in first grade, we also do not use the 3* (this denotes above grade level.) Please also know that our intervention time has been limited this year and appreciate all you are doing at home to support your child.
  • ❤️ Valentines-  This year we are going to write and hand-make Valentines AT SCHOOL for everyone in our class! 😃 We will design and write the message.  (We have some stencils, stamps, and stickers but your child can bring in more stickers if they’d like.) You won’t need to do anything from home.  (If you already bought some you are welcome to send them but know you don’t need to.)
  • Just a reminder, Mrs. Mindy Jeltema is no longer working at GES in our front office. Our new secretary, Mrs. Audrey Straub (our former PTC president) has been a familiar face around GES for a while.  Be sure to say hello to her next time you are in the office. Please email Mrs. Amy Hoekstra (ahoekst2@hpseagles.net), Mrs. Audrey Straub, (astraub1@hpseagles.net) and your child’s teacher with any absences or pick-up changes.

Celebrations:

Mystery Reader – Hannah’s mom, Mrs. Pearson was in to read to us on Friday.  What fun!

First Grade Family Time – At the assembly, we celebrated our learning and birthdays from the week. We also give awards for the quote of the week, lost teeth, and shoe tying.

This week the quote was- ““The time is always right to do what is right.” MLK Jr.”    Brayden was the student who showed us what this quote means this week.  We also celebrated Hayden’s birthday on Friday and Nora’s half birthday Monday. (we’ll get you up for assembly next week Nora!)


OUR LEARNING:

Writing –  This week we started writing another informational piece.  We are handing over some of the ownership to the kids with this piece. We are all writing about the same topic but letting the kids draft each section on their own.  While doing this, we reviewed creating a table of contents, learned how to plan out a chapter, and practiced writing with details- helping the reader picture the details by using comparisons. 

Math – We practiced grouping ones into tens this week, but we made it a little trickier by adding a single digit onto a double-digit number. We learned that we have to borrow some ones from the single-digit number to help us make a new ten group. Last week we worked on this skill with only single-digit numbers. We also learned how we can add on with groups of ten. For example, we solved problems about boxes of muffins. Each box had ten muffins in it and then there were some extra muffins that weren’t in a box. We had 6 boxes of muffins and three extra muffins, so we had a total of 63 muffins. We counted on groups of 10 and then switched to ones like this: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 61, 62, 63.

Reading – This week in Reader’s Workshop we worked on good habits for solving hard words in our nonfiction books. We reviewed how to crash parts together to solve the whole word and how to do a s-l-o-w check. We also learned some strategies for learning new words. Good readers say the word the best they can and then use context clues to think about what the word might mean.

Word Study- We continued our practice of word endings this week by reviewing ending blends such as -ank, -ing, -ump, and more. We learned to break up big words into smaller chunks, then write them part by part. We are even reading words like “firecracker!”