August 18-22

Wow, The Cheetahs accomplished a lot in their first full week of first grade!  We wrote a class mission, learned how to be proactive, talked about setting goals, and much more.

Reading
We've been talking about how readers are a lot like runners.  Readers, like runners, build stamina, warm up, set goals, and work hard for a long time.  During our reading time, our students have been able to begin readers workshop with their 'dessert books,' and we have begun to book shop for our 'dinner books.'

Writing
This week we have been working hard on reviewing the writing process.  We have practiced thinking of ideas for our stories, planning out our writing, drawing simple sketches, adding sentences to our writing, adding in details to our illustrations, and revising our sentences and pictures.

Word Study
I have administered our Words Their Way assessment this week and will be working on forming word study groups.  We have also been using our word study time to review kindergarten and first grade sight words.

Math
Our students have been focused on efficient counting strategies in math this week.  We explored with 'mystery bags' and tried different ways of counting what was in our bags (i.e. by 1s, 2s, 5s).  In addition, our students have also started to become familiar with the 100s chart by practicing different counting activities. 

Social Studies
Our first unit in Social Studies is 'What is a Citizen?'  We have been discussing how everyone is different and how we should celebrate that!  Also, we've been having discussions of what a good citizen looks like in our community, what rules are and how they help, and what the Constitution is and connecting that to our mission statement.