Helping Out

While this upcoming week is a short week with a student holiday and teacher work day on Friday there will be plenty of opportunities to lend a helping hand. Our week's reading theme in based on helping out and the story Little Red Hen. First graders will focus on retelling stories to make sure they understand what happened. When retelling we will make sure that the events we share are in chronological order. Spelling words and phonics instruction for the week will center on words with the short e sound like the sound we here in the word ten. Spelling words are: beg, get, hen, leg, let, and men. High frequency words to know and use are: who, some, of, no, and eat. Kindergarten will continue letter work learning and practicing naming letters and sounds, as well as writing the manuscripts for "K" and "U." This weeks Dolch Sight words are: up, we, where, yellow, and you.

Tomorrow is Columbus Day. We will take some time to discuss who Christopher Columbus is and what he did way back when in 1492. In social studies Kindergarten will continue their study of community helpers and are invited to dress up as a community helper they might want to be when they grow up on Thursday October 14th. This means that they can come dressed to school as a teacher, fire fighter, police officer.... and the list goes on and on.

In science both 1st grade and Kindergarten will be classifying the world around them and the objects they come into contact with by their physical features such as size, texture, temperature... We will also review our senses as we use them to classify.

Mad minutes in mathematics. A skill that is all too important to go unnoticed and under taught is our addition facts. This week first grade is going to continue to practice and learn about addition principles as well and practice quick recall of basic addition facts. It is vital that the students learn these facts now so that all other math concepts that use addition facts will be mastered much easier. Kindergarten is continuing to build upon their number sense, counting and identifying numbers on their hundreds chart. This week we will be learning and practicing how to count by 10's, 5's and 2's.

Our World the Earth

Wrapping up another week and moving into a new month. I cannot believe we have made it to October already. Time really does fly when you are having fun! I am enjoying each and every day with your children and would like to take this time to thank you for sending your child to spend their days with me.

This past week our review went very well. All students are making progress with the reading skill of author's purpose. We went over all of the concepts and main selection thus far and know that "Good readers reread!" We had our first oral spelling bee this past week. All of the first graders did so well that we went through the unit's spelling list and moved into high frequency words and even more difficult words that related to the selections we had read. The spelling bee ended in a two-way-tie of McKenzie and Kaley.

I was very proud of our Kindergarten students this past week as well. As a K class we have been exposed to over 30 of our sight words for this year. We can find these words in books and on our word wall to use in our writing. As a Kindergarten we read our first decodable reader together in small group. We read it as a group and then independently aloud. I am so proud of the readers our Kindergarteners are becoming!

Next week we will start our second reading unit in first grade. The theme for the week will revolve around animal families and how animal parents care for their young. Our reading skill will be main idea and detail. The main idea is what the selection is mainly about and the details tell more about the main idea. Spelling and phonics will center on words that all have the short o sound. High frequency words for the week will be one, two, they, her, and does. Spelling words are hog, hot, log, top, hop and lot. In Kindergarten we will continue our review of letter names, sounds, and phonics identification for letters "e," "b," and "l." Our sight words for the week will be see, the, three, to, and two.

In mathematics we our continuing to explore number sense finishing up our chapter on comparing and ordering numbers and moving into addition concepts and how to use addition.

Social studies has brought us to the study of our world which is the Earth. We started the week by introducing the concepts of landforms on Earth through a brainpop jr video in the media center. We continued our exploration with maps and globes of the Earth as well as images of the land forms around us. First grade expanded upon this concept and is currently learning about the continent and oceans found on Earth.

I would like to start the gears turning for our annual Story Book Parade. This parade takes place the Friday before Halloween. I have chosen an Eric Carle book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" for our K-1 classroom. In this parade our classroom will dress up to depict the story, characters and events of this book. Students and myself will dress up as the caterpillar, the foods he eats and then finally the butterfly the caterpillar turns into. Along with the whole school we will parade around the campus showing off our literary costumes. I will be sending home further details about this event and specific costume ideas for your children. I look forward to this being a wonderful event for everyone involved.

I would like to apologize for the lateness of this recognition, it was unintentional. I would like to thank the Graham family for donating more pillows to the classroom for our quiet reading time in the afternoon as well as all of the many families who have purchased and made donations from our class wish list. Please remember that donations of monetary value count towards volunteer hours so make sure you get those logged into our volunteer folder found in the classroom.

Miss Ellis

K-1

Week 6: We are on a team!

This past week we finished our 5th week in our reading series. The theme was teamwork and our main focus was soccer. Every 6th week we review the previous 5 weeks. This new week we will focus our review on characters, setting and author's purpose. (You might want to review author's purpose with your child. Author's purpose is why the author wrote the story... was it is tell us something real? or to tell a story?) Also during this 6th week we will have our first spelling bee. This will be an oral spelling bee reviewing all of the spelling and high frequency words covered thus far. In Kindergarten we will be moving forward practicing letter name, sound, and manuscript for letters h, r, and d. Sight words for the new week are: one, play, red, run, and said.

Technology and writing combined! This past week K-1 teamed up with Mrs. Riddle our wonderful enrichment teacher and started our digital story books. The students wrote all about how they use their senses. They took their own digital photos to illustrate their digital story books and this next week we will try to finalize our project by adding our recorded stories. Get ready for some very good projects soon!

In math 1st grade finished our place value unit and is now moving on to comparing and ordering numbers. Kindergarten is keeping with the number sense theme moving on to identifying and writing numbers through 20.

I would like to thank everyone who came out and participated in our Fall Fundraiser! What at success it was. I know a lot of people put in hours and hours of time to make it so great. Please remember to come into the classroom to log any volunteer hours you may have completed for this event.

Looking forward to another week of learning!

Miss Ellis

k-1

Week 5: Science is Fun!

Hello friends and families!

What exploration we have had here in our K-1 classroom. In science we have learned and used our 5 sense to explore the world around us. We know our senses and their related body parts; sight- we see with our eyes, hearing/sound- we hear with our ears, taste- we taste with our taste buds on our tongues, smell- we smell with our noses, touch- we touch with our skin. We cannot wait to use all of our senses to experiment and explore the world around us for the rest of the year.

http://slideshow-4.chrisanne.imageloop.com/

We finished our 4th reading unit this past week themed around pets. We had a lot of fun sharing what we already knew and learning more about pet needs, what pests can do and some professions that incorporate pests. Our reading skill was setting and characters. This next week our reading theme will center on sports and more specifically soccer. First grade students will study the reading skill of author's purpose. Our high frequency fluency words for the week are: very, help, use and our. We will continue to review the grammar skill of properly punctuating sentences. Kindergarten will continue to learning and study letter names, sounds, and manuscripts for the letters "F" and "O". High frequency sight words are: look, make, me, my, and not.

Patterns, patterns, patterns... There are patterns all around us in the world and both first grade and kindergarten finished our math unit on patterns. This next week we will start our study of number sense in kindergarten, identifying numbers, counting objects and representing those objects through the numbers we know. First grade will be reviewing numbers and place values through hundreds.

We hope you have enjoyed this brief look into our K-1 window and hope you stop by again to see what is happening and how we are learning and growing!

Miss Ellis' K-1 class

Wednesday September the 15th

This upcoming Wednesday will be full of events.  During the day our students will take their school pictures. (Students should wear school uniform.)  The day is an ERD so dismissal is at 1:15pm.  In the evening there will be a general PTA meeting followed by our annual open house.  We invite all parents and guardians to attend both of these evening events.

A-M-E-R-I-C-A!

What a jam-packed short week of school we had!

In social studies we continues our National theme, practicing the Pledge of Allegiance and learning about some of the nation's well known symbols.  We studied the U.S. Flag, Liberty Bell, Statue of Liberty and bald eagle.  After learning about these common U.S. symbols we colored, cut and collaged them for a final visual display of our learning. Our social studies unit was completed with learning and performing "Oh, I Love America" during our special person and spirit day in remembrance of the tragedy of September 11th.  Below is a video of our K-1 students practicing for the big performance.

In math we finished our unit on spatial relationships.  We reviewed following right, left, up, and down directions, learned about and created lines of symmetry in 2-D shapes as well using half a picture to create a symmetrical mirror image.  Kindergarten learned and practiced spatial relationships as well.  We followed directions to find objects to the right and left, above, below, over and under other object.  Next week both kindergarten and first grade will study patterns.  

In reading we completed our 3rd unit centered around how we learn, grow and change.  We continued to study the text structure of beginning, middle, end and first, next, and last when retelling story events in order.  The class practiced this skill in both narrative and nonfiction articles.  Our new reading unit next week will focus on pets.  We will be learning that every story has a setting, which is where a story takes place.  We will also continue to learn and discuss characters within stories.  First grade spelling and phonics will be related to the br, fr, cr, gr, and tr beginning sounds.  The weeks spelling words are: crab, crib, grass, trap, trip and grab.  High frequency words to know are: come, that, on, and good.  In Kindergraten we will continue our study of high frequency sight words of: funny, is, it, jump, and little.  Our letters of the week that we will continue to study are "N" /n/ and "C" /k/.   

Next week is a science week and we will be studying our 5 senses using hands on exposure and experimentation.  We will continue to use scientific skills such as observation, hands on manipulation/ experimentation and recording our learning in our science journals.  

Added on the right hand side of our blog is a classroom wish list that will be updated.  If you would like to purchase or donated any needed items it would be greatly appreciated and go directly back into your child's learning and classroom environment.  Please remember for every 10 dollars of purchases donated that equals one (1) hour of volunteering.  Make sure that your monetary donations make it into the volunteer log kept in the classroom.  

As a final note I would like to thank all of the moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who came into the classroom this past Friday.  You truly made our special person day a success and your special student was very happy to have you there to share the time with!

I hope you enjoyed this past week and are looking forward to next weeks activities as I am.

Miss Ellis K-1

Week 3 goes by real fast!

Hello friends!

Another week goes by and it goes by very quickly. In large part the week went by very quickly because both Kindergarten and first grade completed the Stanford 10 testing. We tested for 4 days in the afternoons. I am so proud of all of the testing endurance and positive attitudes of the students. On Saturday I spent 3 hours grading all of the Standford 10 assessments and as we already knew, our class is full of a lot of smart cookies!

In math we finished our 2-D and 3-D shape unit with mastery across the board. A BIG shout out and thank you go to Mrs. Slucher for bringing in and sharing 3-D bubble objects with the class. What a fun mathematical experiment we had during our morning meeting. This upcoming week we are moving into spacial relationships and patterning.

Science was a lot of fun. We read two books, "What is Science?" and "What is a scientist?" As a class we recorded our findings from these books in our science journals and then looked back at our initial "When we learn we grow" long term experiment. On Friday we practiced our scientist skills and predicted, observed, experimented and recorded a simple color and density experiment.

In reading we studied how different animals move. We discussed that an author writes in order or in sequence and we can see things that happen at the beginning, middle and end of a story. We learned about and used labels in nonfiction photographs and practice our oral fluency getting ready for a puppet show oral performance. We made our first trip to our "Learning Center" where we learned about the library and checked out our very first books of the year to take back to the classroom with us for the week.

Take a look at some of the fun and learning that took place below!

Signing out,
Miss Ellis' K-1 class