1st Grade - Smith's Sentinel

January 30

Thank you so much to all of you that sent in items for our 100th day snack. The students loved it. We did several fun activities. I hope you enjoyed the "When I am 100 I will look like..." papers. These were hilarious!  

Learning Links: On the right side of my blog is a link to a page called "Learning Links". There you will find all types of games that support math concepts from class. Have your child play, write "Learning Links" in their agenda for a prize!   

Math: We are beginning to learn the concept of fractions.  We will work on halves, thirds, and fourths.

Reading: Our word work for the next week will focus on  ee and ea. We will continue to practice how to attack a word that we don't know, and searching for familiar word "chunks" like ai, ay, or, er, ir, ch, sh, th, ing, etc.

Science: The children will explore light and shadows.

Writing: We will discuss problem & solution in stories and begin to decide a problem for our realistic fiction stories. 

Quick Question: What is the name of our new classroom bear? Ask your child and write their answer in their agenda. 

Thank you to Elijah's mom for cutting, copying, and laminating; our Literacy Center moms for helping out; and Kaitlyn's mom for assisting students take AR tests and check books out.

SPECIALS: 

Monday: Art

Tuesday: PE

Wednesday: Music

Thursday: Technology

Friday: PE

Dates to Remember: 

***February 15:  Friends & Family luncheon. The students will be performing.

January 23

A full week awaits us and we have a ton of great lessons planned.

The students who turned in 3 completed star reading sheets earned a special tag to put on their bookbags and got to eat lunch in the classroom with a movie. Make sure your child is coloring in a star each time they read a book at home (one star per night - weekends too!) This 9 weeks I want to have ALL the students earn a reading tag and a special reward!!!

Also, we had lots of students pass their doubles facts test!!! They will get a reward this week. Look for more challenges in the coming weeks.

A Note From Mrs. Talley about Friends & Family Day: 

"You are cordially invited to our annual Friends and Family Lunch" on February 14 for grades 3, 4, and 5 and on February 15 for grades K, 1, and 2. On Tuesday, February 14, the 3rd graders will perform prior to lunch being served and on Wednesday, February 15, the 1st graders will sing. Information about lunch choices and times will be sent home at the beginning of February. We hope you can join us!"

Math: We will continue to work on fact families to 18. We will also work on thinking about different ways to make a given number. Ex: 10: 2+8, 5+5, 6+4, etc. Make sure you are assisting your students with practicing their addition & subtraction facts. We want them to know them by heart!

Reading: Our word work for the next week will focus on the _ay and _or. Our reading skills will vary with different students, but we will all discuss problems and solutions in our reading and in our writing, how to attack a word that we don't know, and searching for familiar word "chunks" like ai, ay, or, er, ir, ch, sh, th, ing, etc.

Science: The children will explore the muscular skeletal system. We will learn about how muscles help us move.  

Homework:
Each night your child will need to:

Read-AR or not, record on reading log and color a star. 
Math homework 
Sight words-the faster they master these, the better readers they will become. 
-Spelling 3Xper week

Specials:

Monday: Art

Tuesday: PE

Wednesday: Music

Thursday: Technology

Friday: PE

Upcoming events:

**Monday 1/23 Snowman materials due.

                                  Otter's Chicken Night 3-9PM

 

January 16

**Report cards went home Friday. Please sign the signature card, place it back in the envelope, and return it to school in your child's blue folder. The report card is yours to keep.

**Please help your child practice their doubles facts. I will assess them on these facts on Friday, 1-20.

**There is a school improvement survey online that we would like you to take. It will help the school be more responsive to parents  questions and concerns. It will also let us know what areas we are succeeding in. The link is http://www.cobbk12.org/sisurvey 

Math: This week we have learned some strategies or "tricks" for solving addition problems. The students just love thinking that they know a "math secret" for completing math problems faster. We have worked on using what we know about doubles, tens, and nine (one less than ten) to do our math problems. Next week we will begin subtraction again. This can be tricky. We will use some of the same strategies, and add in some fact families and counting back.

Reading: We practiced being pirates with our "AR" words. They seemed to get that particular  sound "chunk" very quickly. Next week we will focus on "ai" and "er" words.

Writing: We practiced goal setting and writing our New Year's resolutions. Check them out in the hallway if you can! Next week we will write in response to Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream..." speech.

Social Studies: Harriet Tubman is our American Hero. The students will learn about her positive contributions to our country and how her character is to be emulated.

 

Specials:

Monday: No School 

Tuesday: PE

Wednesday: Music

Thursday: Technology

Friday: PE

Important dates to remember:

Tues. Jan. 17 - Chick-Fil-A Night 5-8PM

Weds. Jan. 18 - Stevi B's Night 5-9PM

Mon. Jan. 23 - Otter's Chicken Night 3-9PM

 

**WANTED**

• Individually wrapped snacks
• Spiral notebooks

January 10

Happy New Year! I hope all of you had a restful two weeks spent with your family and friends. I can't believe it's over already. We have lots of work to do this half of the semester to get our children ready for 2nd grade!!!

Make sure to send in the winter break reading challenge by Wednesday. Also, if your child read books over the break, please be sure to color a star for each one read and send in. I will be collecting these Wednesday.

We have been doing so much writing in our journals. We are now in need of spiral notebooks. Please send one in with your child by next week. Thanks!

Math: We will be working on addition and subtraction to 18. This week we will be adding  with three addends! 

Reading: Our words this week are long u in combination with magic "e" and "ar" (bossy r). 

Writing: We will be writing our New Year's resolutions this week.  

Homework:
Each night your child will need to:

Read-AR or not, record on reading log and color a star. 
Math homework 

Specials:

Monday: No School

Tuesday: Music 

Wednesday: Technology

Thursday: PE

Friday: Art

Important dates to remember:

Weds. Jan. 11 - Walk to School Wednesday

Mon. Jan. 16 - No school - MLK Holiday

Tues. Jan. 17 - Chick-Fil-A Night 5-8PM

Weds. Jan. 18 - Stevi B's Night 5-9PM

Mon. Jan. 23 - Otter's Chicken Night 3-9PM

 

December 19

We we are done with checkpoint and benchmark testing.  The students did well and we are all glad to be done.

We have a new procedure for going home on the bus with a friend. If your child wants to ride a bus that they normally don't, there is a form that you must fill out and give to the bus driver. I will send a copy of this form home. There are also copies in the front office.

Have a great week and try to take a moment to relax and enjoy the magic of of the season.

Math: We will be working on relating addition and subtraction facts to 12. Think fact families! 

Reading: More talk about long vowels in combination with magic "e". No spelling this week! And we didn't get to our phonics test on Friday. I will test them on Monday. 

Writing: On Monday we will write a story to assess how the students are progressing in writing so far. I will be looking for capitalization and punctuation.  

Homework:
Each night your child will need to:

Read-AR or not, record on reading log and color a star. 
Math homework 

Specials:

Monday: PE

Tuesday: Art 

Wednesday: PE

Thursday: "Winter Wonderland"

Friday: NO SCHOOL

Important dates to remember:

**Polar Express Day 12/22: Polar Express reading and writing activities. Wear a robe over your clothes:)

**12/23-1-10: Winter Break

 

December 12

We will begin checkpoint testing this week. The checkpoint test is a Cobb County assessment for all grade levels. It briefly assesses the students on what they have learned so far and on what they already know about the curriculum for the rest of the year. It is short and the scores are meant to assist teachers in planning. Look for a letter to Santa to come home this week. I (wink wink) can't afford to give a stamp to each child so I am sending their wish lists home for you to mail:)  Please remind your child that we still have nine days left of school and lots of work to do -- and good behavior is important.  

Don't forget to send in your child's wrapped puzzle for our puzzle exchange.

Ho Ho Ho! Have a great week.

Math: The students have done a great job counting money. We will continue to practice this skill every day in our team money cups.   We will review our math skills learned thus far.

Reading: More talk about long vowels in combination with bossy or magic "e".  Our phonics and spelling work will revolve around long vowels and reviewing the consonant blends.  

Writing: We will complete our narrative story this week about a reindeer (not Rudolph:)  We will use planning, editing and publishing to complete this project.

Social Studies: We will continue our study of Thomas Jefferson. We will learn why he is an example of good character and discuss his contributions to our country.  

Homework:
Each night your child will need to:

Read-AR or not, record on reading log and color a star.
Math homework 
Spelling 3Xper week (No challenge words this week)

Specials:

Monday: PE

Tuesday: Art 

Wednesday: PE

Thursday: Music

Friday: Technology

Important dates to remember:

**Tuesday 12/13 Decorated bell due.

**Wednesday 12/14 Checkpoint test for Language Arts. Chick-Fil-A Night

**Thursday 12/15 Checkpoint test for Math.

**Polar Express Day 12/22: Polar Express reading and writing activities. Wear a robe over your clothes:)

**12/23 -1/9: Winter Break  School resumes 1/10

WANTED

Individually wrapped snacks

December 5

It's the most wonderful time of the year! We are very busy learning at school while we are enjoying the season. We had a great time making ornaments for our class tree. Thanks to Elijah, Miranda, & Cassidy's moms for helping out and as always a big thank you to our weekly Literacy Center helpers and those of you who have been sending in items for Snowman Soup! The students and I are so thankful for all the support our parents give to us. Also, thank you to those of you who sent in puzzles for the gift exchange. You can send these in any time until Dec. 19th.

Math:  Money, money, and more money. We will continue practicing counting combinations of pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters. The difficult part of this is counting dimes by 10's then switching to counting by 5's to add nickels onto the amount. This is something you can work on anywhere. You just need a flat surface and some coins. Line up the dimes, then the nickels, and then the pennies. Add from left to right.

Reading: We will begin to talk about long vowels in combination with "magic" or "bossy" e.  Our phonics and spelling work will revolve around long vowels and reviewing the consonant blends.  

Writing: We will begin a narrative story about an elf.  We will use planning, editing and publishing to complete this project.

Social Studies: We will begin a two week study of Thomas Jefferson. We will discuss his contributions to our country.  

Specials:

Monday: PE

Tuesday: Art 

Wednesday: PE

Thursday: Music

Friday: Technology

Important dates to remember:

**Monday 12/5 Children preview items in Santa's Shop

**Tuesday 12/6 Children can purchase items in Santa's Shop

**Saturday 12/10 Santa's Workshop and pancake breakfast at Still. I'll be there and would love to see you.

** 12/22 (Polar Express Day): Polar Express reading and writing activities. Wear a robe over your clothes:)

**12/23-1-10: Winter Break

November 28

It was so great to see all of you at the Cultural Feast. Thank you all so much for coming. The children were so proud to have you there. All the food was delicious! Your help with the feast made it possible.

I hope you all had a wonderful week with your children! I definitely spent some much needed quality time with mine!

I went ahead and sent you the information about our puzzle exchange. I thought that you might do a little shopping over the break and you could check that off your list. Also, I sent out a Sign-up Genius for Snowman-Soup. Thanks to those who signed up. We will send out another one for the December activities later this week. 

Math:  Money, money, money! We will practice counting combinations of pennies, nickles, and dimes. The difficult part of this is counting dimes by 10's then switching to counting by 5's to add nickels onto the amount. This is something you can work on anywhere. You just need a flat surface and some coins. Line up the dimes, then the nickels, and then the pennies. Add from left to right. Remember to send in a labeled baggie with 2 quarters, 10 dimes, 10 nickels, & 10 pennies by tomorrow. Thank you to those who already sent it in.

Reading: We will continue to learn about how to decode unknown words by thinking about what makes sense with the rest of the sentence, picture cues, and phonics. Our phonics and spelling work will revolve around the consonant blends bl, pl, and sl.  

Writing: We will continue to work with pattern books this week. We will work on editing our writing by looking extra capitals, missing capitals, and punctuation errors (periods, question marks, and exclamation points).

Homework:
Each night your child will need to:

Read-AR or not, record on reading log and color a star.
Math homework
Sight words-the faster they master these, the better readers they will become. Let me know if you need a new sheet.
-Spelling 3Xper week

Specials:

Monday: PE

Tuesday: Art 

Wednesday: PE

Thursday: Music

Friday: Technology

Important dates to remember:

**Thursday 12/1 Family Science Night

 

November 14

We learned about Veteran's Day on Friday and why we celebrate it. Thank you so much for helping your child with their instruments last week. They were awesome! We played them in our musical parade through the K/1 wing. So much fun! Also, the turkeys were so creative! The children are enjoying them in the hallway. And of course High Touch High Tech was great! The children really loved learning all about sound from Scientist "C"!  Thanks for supporting it!

Please have your son or daughter dress-up for our Cultural Feast. I've gotten the recipes back and I can't wait. Thank you!

Math:  More work with the study of numbers and estimating. We will also focus on skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10.  

Reading: Our phonics and spelling work will revolve around the consonant blends sc, sn, sw.

Writing: We will write a pattern book this week.

Health: We will continue to discuss the food groups and healthy choices.  

Homework: 
Each night your child will need to:

Read-AR or not, record on reading log and color a star.
Math homework
Sight words-the faster they master these, the better readers they will become.
-Spelling 3Xper week

Reading Eggs at your leisure - jot a note in agenda  ( I think we already have some certificates earned!)

Specials:

Monday: PE

Tuesday: Art 

Wednesday: PE

Thursday: Music

Friday: Technology

Star Student: Jamison Milsap -- can't wait to hear all about you!

Important dates to remember:

**Wednesday 11/16 Cultural Feast 10:00-11:00 

                                                Stevie B's Night

**11/21--11/25 No school Thanksgiving Break

**Thursday 12/1  Family Science Night

A big thanks to: Elijah's mom for making copies, laminating, etc; our Literacy Center moms.

November 7

Download 11-7-11