Starfish Gazette- March 18, 2013

Starfish Gazette

 

March 18, 2013

 

 

Important Upcoming March Dates:

 

Reminder: Please bring costumes for class musical 3/22 for your child's role.

1. March 26: Starfish and Koala Class Present Friendly Neighborhood Helpers for 1st and 2nd grade at 10:15 in Cafe.

 

2. March 27: School Author Visit

 

3. March 28: Starfish and Koala Class Present Friendly Neighborhood Helpers for Families and Friends at 6:30 in Cafe.

 

4. March 29: Reading Celebration/ book swap and Pajama Day

 

5. April 10 and 17: Parent teacher conferences/ early releases.

 

**I will be sending an email about the upcoming parent teacher conferences.  I will send home a conference questionnaire about your child.  I will send it electronically too.  Please send me hard copy or electronic (Please choose the best for you!)

 

I look forward to meeting with you to discuss your child's growth in first grade!

 

 

 

We are Learning About:

 

• Dental Health
• Addition and Subtraction Fact Families
• Finding strategies to solve addition and subtraction number stories
• Reading about one topic across reading genres
• Animal Habitats- Marshes and swamps
• Public Speaking and learning how to perform in front of an audience.
• vowel teams

 

Here are some activities that we will be working on:

• Learning our songs for the musical, Friendly Neighborhood Helpers.
• Word Study activities with the vowel teams ai and ay.
   
• Watched vowel team videos on YouTube.  (This is a great way to learn a concept in a fun and exciting way!)
• Read I know why I brush my teeth by Kate Rowan
• Make fact family triangles and play card game with our triangles.
• Learning a new math IPAD app called, Tric Trac (an Everyday Math App- I recommend this one!)
• An Egg Science experiment on the effects of sugary drinks on your teeth.
• Make Tooth Fairies and Write about our Tooth Fairies! 
• Read Sweet Tooth
• Decide which foods will make our teeth happy or sad
• Finish writing our all about the author pages to publish our Mo Willems Books!
• Read It's Spring at the Swamp, a Scholastic News Issue
• Review the purpose of glossaries and ordering words in alphabetical order.

 

 

 

 

Congratulations to Manit on being a new big brother!! His baby sister was born on March 15th! What an exciting time for you buddy!! :)



 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Upcoming Events and Dates

March is a very busy month in the first grade!  We have many exciting things happening.
Here is a quick run down.

Tomorrow Read Across America Day (Dress as your favorite book character)

March 13  Leprechaun traps due

March 15  Teacher inservice No school for the students

March 27  Author visit

March 28th at 6:30 The Koalas and Starfish present, "Friendly Neighborhood Helpers"

March 29  Book swap and pajama day

The Life of a Starfish! Check out our video slideshow!!!!!

The Life of a Starfish!

Starfish Newsletter March 1, 2013

Hello Starfish families!

Happy March!  I hope your family had a spectacular week filled with lots of family fun time! Students will be returning to school next week looking forward to completing their Mo Willems inspired books, start working on our class musical, learning how to write informational books, and participating in a March reading challenge! I look forward to the kids coming back rested after vacation ready to tackle new challenges!

 

 

Did you know the starfish

have been working on?

1. Bossy R words (ar, er, ir, or, ur, and ore)  Bossy R says, "I boss the vowels and control the sound.  But I am polite because I let the vowels go first.   We focused primarily on 'ar' words last week.   We will continue with Bossy R after vacation.


2. Added a few new poems to our Poem and Song Books- "The Or" Song, "100 days of school", "Happy Valentine's Day", and "The President's Day Song"
   


3. Celebrated President's Day by reading about Abe Lincoln and George Washington.  We read the Scholastic News article, played a President's game on the Smart Board.  We looked at a chart of all the United States Presidents.  We tallied up how many Presidents were named John vs. James.  We discovered that there have been 4 presidents with the first name John and 6 with the first name James.  The kids thought this was pretty cool!  (Especially our Friend Jon!!)


4. We did a class science experiment on the best way to clean a penny (tying in with Abraham Lincoln being on our Penny!)  We used water, water and soap, and vinegar and salt for our science experiment to find out which cleaning solution would clean best. 


5. Played 'Beat the Calculator' as a class.  We divided the class into two groups.  One group being the 'brains' and the other being the 'calculators'.  The object of this game is for the brains to beat the calculators which would mean our class has addition fact power.  The kids enjoyed the friendly competition!! 


6. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) with February stories.  Children's literature can often be a very useful tool for discussing feelings, choices, actions, behaviors, and decisions.   We read the book, Somebody Loves you Mr. Hatch. As we read the text together, we had in-depth discussion about how Mr. Hatch was feeling throughout the story and why.  We talked about how happiness can easily spread from person to person.  The Golden Rule, treat others how you would like to be treated, which we work to follow in our classroom, helps the entire community grow stronger.  If we help others, we end up strengthening the entire community.  A little collaboration and kindness goes a long way!  It's a really great children's book and I recommend you take it out of the library to share with your family.

After vacation we will be working on...

1. Start working on our musical
2. Write informational books
3. Begin a March Reading Challenge
4. Build Leprechaun traps
5. Create leprechauns
6. Finish My Father's Dragon.  We will read the second book in the chapter book series. 
7. Make their own word walls. 
8. Continue with our number scrolls
9. Continue learning about function boxes.
10. Read Dr. Seuss Books

 

 

Other News and Announcements...

 

1. Enclosed in your child's blue folder on Monday is a very important March Reading Calendar.  In celebration of Reading Month, we will do a variety of activities.  This calendar will be part of the children's homework.  Please place this on the refrigerator or in another important place.  If you are busy some days and do not have time to read, you may play catch- up as needed. I've included FREE days to help you play "catch-up".  Please return this to school completed on March 30th.  Those that complete and return the calendar will receive a special prize. 

2. In preparation for the annual, READ ACROSS AMERICA in the month of March, I ask that your child bring in a few of their favorite Dr. Seuss Books to share with the class.  Last year I had the starfish bring in Dr. Seuss books to share and we were amazed with how many books we had never read before or heard about.  Dr. Seuss has written so many wonderful stories and it was a blast to share books from our home collections.  Please bring in 2-3 books from your own collection to be displayed on the Dr. Seuss shelf in 1R for the month of March.  Please write your child's name on the inside cover so we can make sure the books are returned back to the right bookshelf at home!

 

 

2. District Meeting at 7 PM in Cafeteria on Friday, March 8th.

 

 

3. The starfish and Koalas will present the musical, "Friendly Neighborhood Helpers" on Thursday, March 28th at 6:30. 

 

 

To Promote School Talk Try the Following Questions…  

 

 1. Who came in last Friday to be the Mystery Reader?  

2.  What did you play during PE last week?  

3.  Tell me how Mo Willems inspired your writing?  

 4.  Can you sing the "February" song?”  

5.  Tell me about the Contra Dances in P.E. with IC and IM

6. Tell me about your new chapter book that you are reading?  What is it about?

 7.  Tell me about The Number of the Day?

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the rest of vacation!  See you soon!


Megan Rochford