Mrs. Adlers and Ms.

Zimmermanns First Grade

Weekly Review
September 28, 2017

Past Weeks Review

WELCOME TO THE FIRST GRADE!
Its been a great week in first grade! We have been enjoying starting our mornings outside
underneath Emerys Sukkah and learning so much about Yom Kippur every day.

In Language Arts, during Readers Workshop we began a new unit on Author Studies. Our
first author is Marc Brown, author and illustrator of the Arthur books! The students have enjoyed
reading Arthur books as they are not only relatable, but also fun to read. It has been fun to see
how the author makes his stories special. We have also been learning about elements of a story.
For example, we can identify the title, author, illustrator, setting, characters, problem and solution
in a book. Learning and identifying the elements of a story help us practice our comprehension
skills. Understanding the problem and solution helps us to understand the lesson the author is
trying to teach us.. We are still continuing to work hard in our handwriting books to learn how to
properly write our letters and numbers using the Handwriting Without Tears program. Last but not
least, we are growing our knowledge of verbs. We know that verbs are action words or something
you can do. Then, the students created verb poems about themselves reinforcing the lesson.

In Writers Workshop, we continued writing about small moments in our lives. We

focused on unfreezing characters and bringing them to life. How do we do this? In our writing we
concentrated on adding details that described what we were thinking and how we were feeling.
In our illustrations we added facial expression to convey feeling and speech bubbles to show
thinking. We can even add action to our illustrations by showing movement! In phonics, we learned
how to use familiar words to spell new words, specifically with the patterns ap and an. We know
that we can change the first consonant in a word to make a new word. For example, changing the
m in man to a t makes the new word tan and adding t to the beginning of ap makes the word
tap.. We can also add a consonant cluster to make a new word, for example, adding th to the
beginning of at makes the word that and adding tr to the beginning of ap makes the new word
trap. Using what we know of spelling to help us learn new words builds our confidence in writing.

In Math, we had our first Drops In the Bucket quiz and continued to work on our number
stories. We know that a number bond consists of a part, part, and a whole, and now we can take
those parts and plug them into a number sentence. Taking this idea a step further we are now
working on identifying is an equation is true or false. For example, 3 + 3 = 2 + 4 is a true equation
because 6 is equal to 6. However, 7 = 4 +4 is a false equation because 7 is not equal to 8. We
then reviewed everything we have learned thus far and begin working on subtraction stories.

In Social Studies, we began our unit on shelters. We know that a shelter is something that
protects living thigs from natural elements such as rain, wind, snow, and so much more! We
discussed how there are many different types of shelters and that they vary in shape and size
around the world. The students are especially excited to bring the shelters they have been working
on at home to school on Monday.
 In Science, it has been so much fun continuing to teach your children this year in science
and watch their love of science grow. For the last few weeks, we explored the Scientific Method
and even integrated the holiday of Rosh Hashanah with science. We learned that scientists ask all
kinds of questions about things around them. Our first question was, "Will an apple float or sink in
water?". We learned about making a hypothesis, testing our hypothesis, and observing and
recording our results. We learned that an apple will float in water because it is made up of 25% of
air. To continue learning about the scientific method, we asked another question, "What can you
put on apples to keep them from turning brown?". We put slices of apple in a bag of milk, water,
lemon juice, and soda. We made our hypothesis, observed and records the results, and made our
conclusions. For our next experiment to continue exploring the scientific method, we wanted to
learn more about things that float or sink. We collected 10 items and made our hypothesis for
each one. We learned that if our hypothesis is wrong, that just means we learned something new!
Shana Tova and I hope you have an easy fast. -Jackelyn Silverman

In Art, this week in art the first graders learned about the artist Henri Matisse. They listened
to a short story about the artist and observed his cut paper collages. They practiced their cutting
skills as they had fun cutting positive, negative, and free form shapes and then clued them to black
paper to create their own "Matisse" style cut-paper collage.

Last but not least, if there is one thing we can suggest or encourage for you to be doing at
home is to read with your child every night. This is a wonderful bonding time for you and your
child. Please make sure that you are also recording in your daily reading log what you are reading
at home and returning the reading logs to school on Mondays. Please make sure that you are
reading for at least 15 minutes every day.

Important Dates Ask Your Child

Friday, September 29th, Yom Kippur 10 + 0 = 5 +5 true or false?
(No School)
What is the setting in a book?
Monday, October 2nd, Shelter Project
Due
Describe yourself using three different
Thursday & Friday, October 5th 6th verbs!
 Sukkot (No School)
What is a shelter?

Important Info

Please remember to send snack with your child every day! They get very hungry
and a mid-morning, as well as mid-afternoon, snack really helps out! These should
be healthy snacks which can be eaten in a 5 minute time frame!

Every Monday is spirit dress day! Students may come dressed in a spirit dress shirt
and denim bottoms! If there is no school on a Monday, Tuesday becomes spirit
dress day.

We are looking forward to a

GREAT school year!!!