Mrs. Mueller's 1st Grade: First Grade News

What a wonderful celebration we had today for Ms Moore! We were able to celebrate her time with us, enjoy a tasty treat, and shower her with goodies to get her ready for her new classroom (thank you, families!). This is my first time taking a student teacher in my 18 years of teaching. I could not have asked for a better future teacher to work with. We have been so fortunate to have Ms Moore teach these first graders, all while they were teaching her. Scroll to the bottom for pictures from today!

This morning we had our first opportunity to use laptops. Mrs. Chatfield's 4th grade class buddied up with our first graders to teach students how to remove laptops from the cart, how to log in, how to use a reading website, and how to log out and return laptops to the cart. We appreciated their help!

Coming Up:

December 12: Marco's Pizza Night (be sure to mention my name - we'd love to earn a free pizza party!)
December 14: Santa's Secret Shop - we will shop at 9:30am
Thursday, December 21: Christmas Party - 9am (wear red and green!)
Friday, December 22: Last Day of School Before Break
December 23 - January 8: Winter Break
Friday, January 12: Early Release Day

Reading: This week we continued our character unit. We studied what our characters like and dislike. We also thought about what our characters might be thinking. We have to use the words on the page and the picture to figure out a character's thoughts. Finally, we practiced reading in a storyteller voice to better represent our characters.
Math: We completed our unit 3 test this week - it was so fun to see students show all they have learned about story problems. Their work as readers and mathematicians paid off! Unit 4 will begin next week. We will be studying place value and learning about tens and ones. So far we have been working with numbers 1-10. We will move on to 2-digit numbers.
Whiteboard Practice: This week we learned about 5 different ways that the /a/ sound (like in day) is made - ai, a, ay, eigh, ey. Have your child write these headings on the top of their board. Then have them read a page from their WEB book (or any book). If they notice a word with the /a/ sound, have them record it in the correct column. If it does not fit in any of the columns, like in the word break, write it on the bottom. This is the /a/ sound, not the letter a. The word have, for example, should not be recording because it does not make that sound. Your child practiced this in reading workshop this week, so it should be familiar to them. They could follow up by writing a sentence with one of the words, remembering to say as they write!

Enjoy these pictures of our celebration with Ms Moore!