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about characters from the text. For setting, we read Where the Wild Things Are and illustrated the two settings. We analyzed Rainbow Fish to find the problem and discover that the solution is what makes the problem go away. Finally, we learned that sequence is the order of events in a story. Students made picture stories of how a pumpkin seed becomes a jack-o-lantern. Then they used transition words to sequence the events. Now we know that every good story has characters, setting, problem, solution, and organized information. This concept will be explored and deepened throughout first grade.

Language Arts

Writing Workshop
Students are working on a final piece for personal narrative, and we will have a celebration next week. Each child will read their best personal narrative aloud for the whole class. Among many other things, we have learned the very grown up work of revising. We learned that writing isnt just filling pages with words that repeat ideas and go off topic. I cant wait to hear their stories! Next unit of study is fiction, and students will learn to prewrite their story idea with a character/setting/problem/ solution web.

We learned the phonetics generalization of /ow/ and /ou/, as in the words owl and ground. We lightly pinched our skin and said ouch to help us remember the sound of /ow/ and /ou/. We created a beautiful autumn tree with scrapbook paper owls. Come by and check it out.

Last week we read several fun Halloween stories and we learned the phonetic generalization of /oo / as in book and boo. We recorded our oo words on ghosts that say, Boo! And finally, this week we learned how y can sometimes be a vowel. The students have been on the edge of their seats to learn this onethat sometimes y says long i and sometimes y says long e, as in the words fly and lady. Ask your child what the trick is with clapping syllables for this rule and why July is a rule breaker.

Every story has a problem and solution, characters, a setting, and organized information. Over the past month, we have broken down each story element and studied it in isolation. We studied Louis from Trumpet of the Swan and learned about character traits and how to prove what we know

Comprehension

We finished Charlottes Web. It was fun to read two of E.B. Whites books and compare similarities. We speculated that he must have loved animals because he uses them as main characters in both books. Students have become skilled in making connections between texts and therefore learning to think deeply about their reading. In response to our reading students built webs and searched the room for beautiful words to write in the webs. These are

Read Aloud

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displayed inside the classroom. Students also made event cards illustrating and writing about the character, setting, problem, and solution in Charlottes Web. Our next read aloud is Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We will use this book to study past and present in social studies. Ask your child one way they already learned about how life was different for Laura and her family in the Wisconsin woods about 100 years ago. subtraction strategy crossing out. Look for these wintery masterpieces in this weeks Friday folders. their math fluency so that addition and subtraction facts become more automatic.

Science
This group has strong problem solving skills and the ability to talk about patterns in numbers and how they arrive at their answers. They noticed immediately the advanced concept that subtraction is the opposite of addition, AND they were able to verbalize this observation! So
many, aha, now I get it!

We have a very cool science experiment going in our room. Come by and check out what is happening to the grass seeds in a closed zip lock vs. an open ziplock.

Social Studies
We started learning about traditions and where they originate. Students learned about Samhain (pronounced sow-in) celebrated in Ireland 2000 years ago. We learned that some of our modern Halloween traditions date back to this harvest festival. Ask your child how they are the same.

Math
We wrapped up our unit of addition concepts and strategies by creating pumpkin word problems. They now have a variety of addition tools: counters, counting on, number lines, touch dots, and of course, ultimately memorization. We like to call this, just knowing. We began our subtraction unit by reading Too Many Mittens. Students created visuals and a number sentence to learn the

We combined language arts and math by reading, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Students noticed their phonics rule in authentic text and learned ordinal numbers at the same time. They created construction paper animals and put them in order first through seventh. We wrote out the abbreviated forms, as in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and then underlined the letters st, nd, rd, and th in the words. The whole room exploded with, now I get it! It was beautiful! I love first graders. (And it was a good review for me that first is NOT spelled fisrt.) Ha! I hope your children are enjoying their subscription of First in Math. We will be using it in class, and my hope is to begin building

Music Performance Wed Nov 14, 1:30

Our class music performance is scheduled for Wed Nov 14. The performance takes place in the music portable outside by the after lunch playground.

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Casis Website
Dont forget to check on Casis News and Updates on the Casis website. PTA information as well as announcements from Mrs. Martin can be found at www.Casiselementary.com