IMPORTANT DATES
Tuesday, October 4th: First Grade Open House. 8 am beginning in the library.
Monday, October 10th: No School, Columbus Day
Wednesday, October 12th: Field trip to Tougas Farm for apple picking. More details to follow.
CLASSROOM ROUTINES
We continued to do lots of practicing of our routines. These include:
1. Morning meeting (greeting our classmates, reading the message and schedule, and playing a game).
2. Quiet Signals (2 fingers up in the air, or the chimes).
3. Clean-up routines
4. Lining up (push in chairs and make a calm, quiet line).
5. Following our class rules (1. Take care of other people’s feelings. 2. Take care of your body and be safe with other people. 3. Take care of our classroom and our school.)
COMMUNICATION I check email regularly (Katrina_McNamara@brookline.k12.ma.us) and will reply as quickly as possible. You may also leave a message on the classroom phone (617.879.4430) or with the Devotion School office (617.879.4400).
If you would like to be “invited” to the blog please let me know. If you prefer the paper copy, I will put it in your family mailbox each Thursday.
THIRD GRADE READING BUDDIES
This week, we will meet with our third grade reading buddies for the second time. Our first meeting was a huge success. We saw so many great reading habits and the beginnings of many new friendships. We are paired up with Ms. Driscoll’s third grade class. We will meet once a week on Fridays during our literacy time. For most of our meetings, we will read with our buddies (either third grade buddy reading, first grade buddy reading, or a mixture of both). Some meetings we will work on projects together, related to the season, the curriculum, or community service.
LIBRARY
Our visits to the library continue to be exciting and successful. It really works out to check out books before we have Third Grade Reading Buddies. This way, everyone has a new book that they are excited to read.
MATH
We are wrapping up our unit on Patterns and Shapes this week. We have identified and created a variety of patterns, both repeating patterns and growing patterns. We studied the attributes of the following shapes: Triangles, Circles, Squares, and Rectangles by identifying the number of sides and corners, and whether the shape has any curves. Next week we will begin Chapter 2 focusing on the Number Line.
LITERACY CENTERS
week, we are continuing to practice choosing centers and moving among the centers. We learned a few new centers this week: Letter Stencils, Making Books, Name/ face Match, and Writing.
WORD WALL WORDS: a, I, the
We will be including Word Wall words in the newsletter every week. Word Wall Words are high frequency sight words. They usually cannot be sounded out like some of the other words we will study in first grade. Please help your child to learn these sight words. Some ideas for practicing and learning these words are:
1. Make flash cards.
2. Post the words on your refrigerator or other location for daily practice.
3. Ask your child to find these words in books, magazines, or newspapers.
We added 3 words to our Word Wall this week. We will try to commit these words to memory, but the Word Wall will serve as a permanent place to look for spelling clues.
COMMUNITY
To continue our study of community and to begin to explore maps, we will read and refer often to My Map Book, by Sarah Fanelli.
Thank you so much to Tali, Dor's mother, and Orit, Lior's mother, for coming to our class on Wednesday. We learned about Rosh Hashannah and the meaning behind many of the traditions and sayings of this holiday. Children had the opportunity to ask questions and share wishes for friends and family. We enjoyed apples dipped in honey to celebrate the sweetness of the new year. It was so special to have parents in the classroom sharing with the class.
We will have many more opportunities for families to support the class. If your family celebrates a particular holiday or cultural tradition that you would like to share with the class, please let us know. We would love to include family’s traditions in the classroom; the class loves the variety, and individual students enjoy having their parents in the classroom.
SNACK
We will have a morning snack every day. Please pack a nutritious, filling, low-sugar snack for your child each day. We eat lunch at 12:40pm everyday, so our snack is very important to keep us energized during our long morning. Please encourage your child to eat his or her entire snack so they do not get too hungry before lunch.
FIRST GRADE WISH LIST
We welcome donations of the following items for our classroom:
• Bottles of hand soap
• Thick Markers
REMINDERS
Please wear sneakers in PE days: Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is a great idea to wear sneakers everyday in first grade.
Please dress for the weather. We will go outside for recess every day (unless it is raining). As the weather shifts from day to day, or throughout the day, please send your child with jackets, sweatshirts, etc. If it is raining and stops by recess time, we will still go outside, so rain jackets and boots are helpful on rainy days.
ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
• What did you draw in your science notebook during Project Time?
• What books did you read with your third grade reading buddy this week?
• How do we play the game Zoom?
• What languages have we said “Good Morning” this week?
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