The conferences are over and I'm sitting here reflecting on all the learning that has happened so far this year, and there's still more to come! Your children did an excellent job of articulating their strengths, goals and progress in their conferences. I was very proud of them. Thanks for coming and supporting them so well.
So what's next?
The unit of study in reading for this month is Focus on Connections, Thinking, and Monitoring Comprehension. This Unit of Study continues the idea that it’s important to understand the words as we read, rather than just decoding them. Although we will still work on decoding strategies in our Guided Reading groups, we will be keeping the focus on Comprehension.
Some ways that you can support this work at home is to:
• Talk about books and stories with your child. Talk about the books you are reading and ask them questions about their books (like in a Book Club). Focus book discussions around-
· Feelings they get when they read
· Pictures that they create in their mind as they read
· Confusing parts of the book
· Questions they had about the story or the characters
· Connections they can make with the story, the setting, the characters
· Predictions they may have had about the book (before, during and after they read)
The April unit of study in writing is the Craft of Revision. In this unit, first graders will be invited to revise their writing- to resee, reform and strengthen their writing. First Graders will come to know that all writers revise their writing by adding or taking away words and that writers look for ways to make their writing stronger (better) before they publish it or share it with the world.
Some suggestions for supporting this month’s work at home:
• Continue to provide tools for at home writing (pencils, pens, paper, a quiet place to work) and encourage your child to write daily.
• Encourage your child to reread their writing to make sure it makes sense, has the right words and the correct punctuation (capital letters and periods). Encourage them to “fix” it (edit) where they notice any errors.
• Initiate a daily discussion with your child about what they did as a writer in school that day and encourage them to begin to make plans for what they are going to do the following day in writing workshop.
First graders are engaged in other meaningful literacy activities during the course of the school day to support the work they are doing in the reading and writing workshop.
Thank you for your continued support at home.
In Math we are currently learning about 2-D and 3-D shapes, then we will move onto more work on money and place-value concepts, then fractions.
In Science we will continue learning about Air & Weather including observing weather, measuring rain, watching types of clouds, discussing wind speed, and wind vanes.
In Social Studies we will learn more about Singapore, answering the broad questions of
- Where is Singapore?
- How has Singapore changed over time?
- What are the diverse cultures that live in Singapore?
I plan this unit with four other teachers and we each teach one part of it. Each Wednesday for the next 8 weeks, the children will go to one of the other four teachers for 45 minutes for a Social Studies lesson.
