Next week we are going to work on some more conventions. We are still in need of some lessons and practice on periods, capitals after punctuation. For some reason :) it's just not sticking. So we will read lots of books and really stop and break down why and where punctuation needs to go and what comes after. Just basic conventions in writing practice will help and we will do both whole group and individual work on these. Hopefully it'll lightbulb and they will start using those practices and habits in their own writing! :) It'll come I know! Also a part of our conventions work will be focused on new vocabulary and parts of speech: noun, verb and adjective. I have some fun chants they will do to help them remember these and some great practice to reiterate their learning!
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This week we will take back out our National Geographic Kids books and other nonfiction books I have in the room: Biographies, Plants, Butterflies, Insects, Animals etc. We will sit in a circle and talk about how many wonderful things there are to research!! After going through many examples, I'm going to give them the week to dig through the bins, think and maybe talk with you all at home about what they would like to research. They will let me know each day (1 research subject per student) and by Friday, every student should have picked out a subject. For the month of May, they will take these subjects and research. I will check out books, maybe send some emails and ask for some help (internet research?) and then will complete a comprehensive research project. More details to come! This week we will also go back and review how to take notes from nonfiction texts without copying. They will do a 3 day quick review of sticky note research on an animal: Giraffe. I mean how cute is that picture!! Hopefully this will refresh their minds and be ready to dive into this project the following week! This upcoming week in math, Geometry will be our focus. It's one of our longer topics. We will learn about plane (flat) shapes: square, rectangle, circle, square. From those shapes, we will make new shapes and build new shapes. All these shapes have different properties: vertices or corners and sides. We will organize shapes by these attributes. By using the shapes and manipulating them, they will better understand the properties and shapes. This topic will take around two weeks, maybe a little more. Then we have our last topic of the year: fractions. Depending on the time of the year, we will extend our math into fun games and logic/problem solving activities. My background (undergrad) was marketing and advertising so I get really excited for this part of economics! On Monday we will talk about what an advertisement is, how they are used to persuade people to buy things that they need and want. We will watch a few kid examples to help get them thinking. They will then as a table, create both an advertisement (via iPad) and a paper ad to hang on their table. They will work on this for about 3 days, because they will also use this time to come up with their idea for the product or service they will be providing during Market Day. Tables/students will be in various places throughout the week, but by Friday, the goal is to have an advertisement to watch, a paper ad, product/service to sell, listing materials they need to create/make their service. Next week, we will start creating their products and planning. I will send emails if your child needs anything specific to make their Market Day a success. In economics this week, we will talk about what goods and services are. I am sending home a "homework" sheet that you will have the week to complete. It's just an opportunity to have a discussion, find different examples of the goods and services your family may use/get. We have some fun activities with movement where they will jump/hop based on the good or service I yell out, with a follow up sheet where they are going to apply their new knowledge. After we have a good foundation of what a good and service is, I will introduce the vocabulary terms: producer and consumer. We will discuss and give examples of different local producers and consumers, as well as others and tie that into their letters they wrote. I will explain Market Day this week and we will brainstorm goods and services they can ACTUALLY do/create in school. In the past, we have had nail polish, gel hair station, made art work/pictures, decorated pencils etc. It should be a fun end of the week and brainstorm! Last week, we focused on READING different contractions. This week, we are going to practice writing them. We will start out with a game of memory and for each match, they will write down both words, then the contraction that matches for beginning practice. Then the rest of the week, they will be working on their own "contraction surgery" booklet. They will cut out the letters they don't need within the two words they are given and then glue the contraction on their booklet. I will do a lot of modeling, whole group instruction until I feel comfortable that they are able to do the "surgery" on their own. Based on what I see this week, I will plan on if we will do more practice with writing contractions next week. They will see this content again in 2nd grade. This week, we will work on collecting information/data and learning how to create our own data graph. They will also learn how to understand the information that the graph/information they collected. One of the topics is understanding how to read a bar graph (both vertical and horizontal). Picture graphs are new to them, so we will look at some examples of different picture graphs. Then they will start from the beginning: collect data and record. Then use that data to create some sort of graph (picture, bar) and then answer questions. Their assessment on Topic 14 will be on Thursday and we will pre assess for Topic 15 on Friday. This week we will work on reading and writing contractions. Today we read a Piggie and Gerald that had both words that could be written as contractions and some basic contractions to kick it off! We created a short list today of some contractions that we will read and write: can't let's we'll don't you're diddn't we're I'll We will continue to add contractions as the year progresses for them to refer to. They will play some matching/memory games with these new words, as well as practice writing contractions. This week in social studies, we are going to begin talking about economics. We will start out with the basics: wants vs. needs. There are some good nonfiction social studies books that do a great job helping to explain this. After reading, we will create a list of what we need. Then create a list of what we want (that should be fun :) and interesting!). They will fill out and draw in their economics journal our needs as well as five things they want. This topic will probably cover a few weeks as we will try to apply as many real world applications as we can (lemonade stand, connecting to their own life-shopping/grocery store, birthdays and daily life). Wants vs. needs will help set us up for goods and services. We will spend the rest of the week talking about what are goods and services, again creating a visual list for them to refer to. This background will be important when we get to the stage of learning about producers and consumers and how they effect people's wants. We will watch some commercials, talk about advertisements as well. My undergrad was in marketing so I love trying to talk/teach this to first graders! After teaching and vocabulary (again made visual to help them) they will become producers and consumers, making goods and services for their classmates. We will have a market day, were they will sell their goods and services to their friends! I will let you know when that gets closer and what items we may need from home, after I figure out what they want to make/do :) Some examples from the past have been: hair styling station (gel/updo's), nails, decorated pencils, making special goods to hold stuff (treasure boxes), fake money and others. This week we are going to start data. They have some background on this topic, as one of their choices during math workshop is to survey their classmates, take that data and make a graph. We will review the basics, as well as talk about the different kind of graphs you can make/read: bar, picture and tally. With some review, they will begin to create their own graphs (both picture and bar) and be able to analyze it. The area I see them needing to work on based on their pre assessment and end of the year assessment that we had to give, is comparing data on a bar graph and picture graph. As well as understanding the different types of information |
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