Mrs. Hogue's 1st Grade Class: "Peek at the Week" October 4-11

Thank you to everyone who attended Open House on Thursday! The kids had so much fun showing you everything they have been working on.

Here is a peek into our week!

Writer's Workshop

This week we focused on including a lot of details and carefully planning our writing. We looked at examples of stories that included very few details and compared them to stories full of details. We realized very quickly how important details are to the story.

Then we learned that writers must make a plan before writing. Writers think of a story, plan the story, sketch the pictures, and write the words. We even learned a song to help us remember the steps. Ask your child to sing you:

Think, Think, Think,

Plan, Sketch, Write

Plan, Sketch, Writer

Reader's Workshop

We put on our 'detectives' hats this week as we became word detectives! We began learning strategies to help us solve unknown words. We focused on four strategies this week:

-look at the picture

-think 'hmm..does this make sense?'

-look at the first and last letter

-does the word sound right in the story?

We practiced these strategies together and during independent reading. We used a sticky note on Friday to mark a spot in our book that had a tricky word that needed to be solve. We stuck the notes on the strategy that we used!

Please note....sound it out is not a strategy! Our focus when tackling tricky words is to think about the meaning and the word that would make sense within the context of the story. Since most words in our language are not spelled phonetically, sounding out the word is not a useful strategy.

Word Work

This week we learned an activity called making words. Children were given letters and encouraged to make as many words as they could from the given letters.

We also learned an activity called "If you know.... It helps you know..."

We also learned some new first grade snap words!

said

had

have

was

saw

then

they

We added these to our word wall!

Math

This week we focused on adding strategies! We learned that problem solvers use pictures to help solve problems. They draw the picture, include the number partners, and the total.

Next, we learned that problem solvers use simple shapes to represent their drawings. We noticed that it takes a long time to draw castles, etc. and it is much quicker to use a simple shape.

Then we learned about the equal sign and how we can make equations to represent story problems.

We also began learning our new routines for guided math/math workshop! When children finish their class activity practice page they have choices they can make that focus on strengthening concepts or extending their learning! While students are independently working on activities I am meeting with small groups of children to provide additional instruction!

3rd Grade Buddies

We met our buddies from Mrs. Johnson's 3rd grade class this week! We will be getting together with them about once a month to work on some fun projects together :) This week we made name skeletons!

I wrote the children's names in cursive.