August Update

The first month of school has come and gone already! We have had such a great month getting used to our school procedures and diving right into learning!

Please remember TOMORROW (8/30/17) is early release! All students in elementary school will be dismissed at 12:15 instead of 2:15.

Here is a breakdown of what we have been learning in class lately:

Science/Social Studies- Weather and the seasons: What are weather patterns? What are seasons? Why are they important to me and my life? 
We are now transitioning into our Social Studies unit! We are starting by introducing the 5 themes we will be covering all year: "Where we live matters," "Our choices can harm or help others," "Some things change, some things stay the same," “Culture is how people think, act, celebrate, and make rules, and that is what makes a group of people special," and “The ways people make, get, and use goods and services may be different from how people in other places make, get, and use goods and services.”
Writing- We have started discussing how to take a big moment (spilling markers), and break it into certain parts that happened, or small moments (Ms. Scales tripped, she spilled all the markers, the students helped her clean them up). As a way to help conceptualize this concept, we thought of it as a movie: The "Big Moment" can be thought of as the title of a movie (Finding Nemo), and the "Small Moments" are all the parts that would be shown in a movie trailer (Marlin and Dory go out to find Nemo, they meet many animals to help them along the way, they found Nemo and made their way back home).
Reading- We have been getting the framework of our Guided Reading groups concrete! The students have been practicing how to work and read on their own, collaborate with a group quietly, and work with teachers. This will be our set up for reading for the rest of the year. Our groups will consist of: Read to Self, Word Work, Work on Writing, Listening on the iPad, and a Teacher Guided group. 
Math- We have started taking off with our learning in math. Our focus right now is Place Value, and the idea that double digit numbers are composed of a certain number of groups of 10, with some remaining ones left over. i.e. 12 is one group of 10, and 2 extra ones- 10+2. We have been creating various numbers on tens frames to visualize each group of 10, and how many extra ones are left over. From there, we will begin to build our number sense and place value concepts by using our tens rods and ones cubes and working hands on with our manipulatives. We are also starting to introduce Guided Math Centers, in which students will either be working with a teacher, or will be expected to work independently on their own center.

Please remember that the CogAT testing is starting for 1st grade on September 5th, 6th, and 7th. We will be testing all 3 morning and attendance is VERY important! We will have incentives if all students are in attendance for all three days. Stay posted for more details on testing and our own classroom incentives for attendance!

We recently got to attend a Bus Safety training that was conducted by our very own bus drivers. Each student learned the expectations when entering, riding, and exiting the bus. There is a slide show below of a couple of the stations we were able to visit!