August 24 - 28

This week we introduced math and reading centers. The students are doing a good job learning how to work in a small group and stay on task for up to 20 minutes. Math centers included exploring the 100 pocket chart, playing two math partner games, counting objects and recording the totals, and coloring in sets of 10 on a 100 grid. Reading centers included making words and names with magnetic letters, writing words we find around the room, matching pictures of classmates with their names, making an alphabet book, and reading classroom books on the carpet.

We are also working on becoming independent writers who write down the sounds we hear in words and who can show a story in words and pictures. We have used ThinkBlocks to practice telling and listening to the different parts of our stories. Many students have been enjoying going to the library before school starts to enjoy browsing and checking out new books.

We have started sending homework folders and agenda notebooks home this week. Please take a moment to look in both the folder and the notebook each night and remind your child to bring them back to school each day. In addition to any math worksheet or note in their homework folder, students are expected to talk about their day at school and read for at least 20 minutes with someone at home.

We are very sad to say good-bye to two special friends this week who will be going to new schools for the rest of first grade! We wish them luck and hope they will stay in touch.

 

From ATES 2009-2010

Back to School!

We have been very busy these past few weeks of school. We have been learning each others' names, the classroom and school rules, and how to take care of each other and the materials in our room.

We are working on reading by ourselves using the pictures in the book, the words or letters we know, and our memory or imagination to fill in the story.

We are also working on reading and writing numbers, finding patterns in numbers, counting groups of objects accurately, and putting numbers in order.

Here are some of the tools in our classroom that we have been exploring:

  

We have used ThinkBlocks  to discuss what makes us happy and doesn't make us happy, what helps us learn and doesn't help us learn, and the parts of an apology (I'm sorry for ______.  Are you OK?).  We have also used them to retell the parts of a story and to represent the sounds we hear in words.

 

We have played math games with dice and counters to practice writing and counting numbers to 20.  These games have helped us learn about taking turns, communicating with and helping a partner.

 

We have been using magnetic letters and alphabet books to learn about the sounds letters make in each others' names and to make our own alphabet chart for the classroom.  We also learned a motion for each letter (more pictures and video of that coming soon).

  

 We have been learning how to speak in front of the class and how to listen to each other.

 

Enjoy this slideshow featuring more pictures from the past few weeks.  I will try to update this each week with more detailed information about what we have been learning.  Thank you for your patience!