End of the Year

 “Never say goodbye, because saying goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”

-Peter Pan

Parents,

As we pack up and leave for the end of this school year, I want to thank each and every one of you for all of your support and encouragement you have provided.  You have helped this year become a success for each child.  Thank you for trusting me to have the honor to educate and care for your child this school year.  I am so proud of each child’s accomplishments, and I cannot wait to see what they do in the years to come. We have made many great memories for us to remember.

As many of you know, it’s not goodbye, it’s see you later.  I hope to see many of you within the next couple years again.  Have a fun, safe, and relaxing summer!

Sincerely,
Carrie Nagy

Summer Reading List

Here is a copy of a suggested reading list from Scholastic's Website.  Please know that this list contains a range of reading levels, so it you want your child to read independently, check out the Book Wizard and reading chart if needed!  It's also fun to read some of these together!

Click the following link to access the list: Summer Reading List

Summer Reading

Good morning!  In reading we have been learning a lot about reading with stamina in order to prepare for the summer and second grade.  I have provided a reading level chart for your convenience over the summer.  For a lot of my own books, I have been using Scholastic Book Wizard to level them by Fontas & Pinnell reading level.

I would highly suggest using the Scholastic Book Wizard to find 'just right books' for your child this summer.  All you do is enter the title of the book and look at 'Guided Reading Level' to help determine the reading level.  Sometimes that will not be provided, but a Lexile score will be, so you can use the reading level chart to help determine the guided reading level (Fontas & Pinnell).

Happy Reading!

Edible Botany

The Cheetahs were very adventurous eaters today!  Here are some of our pictures from Edible Botany.  Thank you for all who helped and volunteered!

Check out what happens during P.E. in first grade!

May 11-15

Our last full week of school was packed with fun and learning.  As school and curriculum are coming to an end, so are our blog posts.  Please know that this is the last weekly update before the end of the school year.  Take a look at how we ended our last full week of school...

Reading
In reading this week our focus shifted from nonfiction reading to reading with stamina.  Stamina will be extremely important over the summer.  Our focus was on:

• fluency
• accuracy
• expression
• comprehension

Question:  How is working on our stamina in reading going to help us become better readers over the summer?

Writing
We completed our Nonfiction Mentor unit this week in writing!  This week we focused on:

• editing
• revising
• publishing
• celebrating our published pieces

Question:  What was your published nonfiction piece about?  What is one way you revised your book?

Math
We finished our Geometry unit last week, so this week we reviewed important math concepts in first grade such as:

• word problems
• addition and subtraction
• place value

Question:  What has been your favorite math game this year and why?  What math concept did it help you learn?

Social Studies
We are working hard on our Location! Location! Location! unit in social studies.  Concepts we worked on this week include:

• map features
• cardinal directions
• creating symbols for a map key

Question:  Can you name the six map features maps should have?  How are they important?

Upcoming Dates

5/18 - Summer Reading Club Information

5/20 - Flip Day

5/ 21 - Last Day of School, 1:05 Dismissal

Surprise Visit!

We had out JA Day program this afternoon, and we has a surprise visit from the St. Louis Rams' mascot, Rampage!!

Missouri Botanical Garden

Even though it rained, the Cheetahs carried their own sunny weather! We had a blast at the a Missouri Botanical Garden. 

May 4-8

We are in the home stretch and continuing to enjoy every moment of learning together.  This week brought beautiful weather and awesome memories.  A big thank you to all our field trip volunteers and an extra special happy mother's day wish to all our first grade Mommas!

This week in reading we spent time working on sharing our learning with others.  We...

• practiced talking about what we noticed, questioned or learned
• created posters of our learning
• presented our posters and our knowledge

Questions:  What did you chose to present on to your classmates?  What was one new learning you gathered in the process of researching and teaching about your topic?

Our focus on non-fiction  writing continued to centered around making sure our books are strong representations of all we've learned about non-fiction writing in first grade. This week we...

• looked closely at page design
• Added captions/split screens/labels and diagrams to our illustrations to add information to our pictures
• worked on our closings-sending off with a fact, question or clever link
• including interesting facts on every page
• adding fast facts
• completing a glossary

Question:  What did you add to your book to share more information with your audience?

Our geometry unit was working its way to a close this week.  We did some review of...

• composite shapes
• defining attributes of 2D and 3D shapes (vertices, angles, open/closed shapes)
• fractions (1/4,1/2, splitting into equal parts)

We ended the unit with an assessment on Thursday

Question:  Can you name three 2D shapes and share their defining attributes?

We began a new unit this week in social studies.  We are learning about maps and had time to...

• read about different types of maps
• explore google earth
• create 3D block model maps of our classroom
• create 2D paper maps of our classroom
• discuss key features of a map

Question:  How does a map help us understand the space around us?  What is one way we could use a map?

Upcoming events

5/13- Mrs. Nagy out AM

5/14- JA in a day

5/15- Edible botany, Mr. Halley taped to the wall for jump rope for heart 1st grade prize

5/18- Summer reading club information

5/20-Flip Day

5/21- Last Day of school, early dismissal

April 27 - May 1

Only 14 more days until we are second graders! That is a short amount of time, but we have plenty of learning left. We are working hard up until the last day of school. Check out what we've been up to this week...

Reading

We continue our work in our Nonfiction Reading to Become Experts with...

• sharing key ideas with others
• finding and recording key ideas and key details
• compare and contrast the same topic in different nonfiction texts

Question: What were two nonfiction texts that you looked for similarities and differences in your reading club?

Writing

Our writing unit of Studying the Craft of a Nonfiction Mentor Author fits in perfectly with our current writing unit! This week we...

• chose a topic and created questions to guide our research 
• researched our topic and questions
• made our plan for our nonfiction books
• began the opening page to our nonfiction book
• made table of content page to our nonfiction book

Question: What two databases have you been using to research your nonfiction topic?

Math

Geometry has been a lot of fun this week! We are continuing to learn how to...

• divide shapes into equal parts
• partitioning circles and rectangles into halves and fourths
• recognize which shapes are cut into quarters or halves

Question: Do you want 1 half or 1 fourth of a pizza?

Question:  How many quarters make up one half?

Science

Observing organisms has been a lot of fun and hard work! This week we...

• observed pill bugs
• observed millipedes
• observed what's happening in the terrariums
• discussed the plant life cycle

Questions: What is one similarity and one difference between pill bugs and millipedes? 

Upcoming Dates
5/4 - Mrs. Nagy Out

5/8 - Field Trip to the Botanical Garden

5/14 - JA in a Day

5/15 - Edible Botany

5/20 - Flip Day

5/21 - Last Day of School (1/2 Day)