Starfish Gazette-October 28, 2017

Please Mark Your Calendars:

• First Grade Fall Festival is on Tuesday morning. We are looking forward to Lynn Girard, Stephanie Ciccanesi, Danielle Petlick, and Andrea Benson helping us run centers on Tuesday morning.  If you would like to join and volunteer, please send me a quick email.  Fall Festival will start around 9:00.  
• Parent Conferences begin next week. I look forward to meeting with you. I will send out a reminder email with your child's conference time this weekend.
• Early Release on Wednesday at 12:50 pm. (Parent/teacher conferences)
• Early Release on Wednesday, November 8th at 12:50 pm. (Parent/teacher conferences)

Here's just a glimpse on what we've been working on:

• Finished our first Reading Unit-Reader's Build Good Habits.  Celebrated our learning with using Chatter Pix app to share our learning. We are excited to begin our next unit about Nonfiction texts
• Learned about the human skeleton from Mystery Doug
• Played Blind Buddy Sort and Tic Tac Toe during Word Study
• Practiced tapping and spelling words with qu pattern
• Worked on the formation of lowercase e in our handwriting books
• Read about bats in Scholastic News
• mixed our own paint and painted sunsets to tie into our science observations of sunlight
• Read our first chapter read aloud as a class, My Father's Dragon.  We have two chapters to go!
• Continued working on their "Small Moments" books
• Came up with clues about our Halloween Costumes
• Learned how to balance out addition and subtraction equations with the equal sign
• Learned how to determine if a math equation is true or false
• Worked on solving addition and subtraction equations with the number line.  Learned how to draw our own number lines as a tool to solve facts independently

Here are some questions to promote school talk...

1) Who is Mystery Doug?
2) What is the name of your word sorting group?
3) Can you tell me how you played Clap, Snap at morning meeting?

4) Can you tell me about the Chatter Pix app that you used this week?  How did you get your mouth to move?

5) Can you tell me about your STEAM challenge this week?  Did you have to build your structure more than once? Who was your partner?

6) Tell me about your science observations of daylight? What have you noticed so far?

A Day At The Farm

Starfish Gazette- October 13, 2017

Please Mark Your Calendars:

FIELD TRIP to Coppal House Farm Corn Maze on Tuesday, October 17th...AM Only
Please pack a snack and drink from home. 

If you are a chaperone for our field trip: Please arrive at Coppal House Farm no later than 9:10.  We will be loading the buses back to school around 11:20

First Grade Fall Festival - Tuesday, October 31st. I am still looking for volunteers from about 9 to 11. If you available and interested please let me know. Thanks.

Here's just a glimpse on what we've been working on:

• Worked on tapping out short vowel words on our white boards
• Played sort memory with partners with our Words Their Way sorts
• Did alphabet aerobics with short vowel words
• Working on writing across pages with our Small Moment Stories
• Read books about Firefighters and the important jobs that they do
• Turned and Talked about solutions to problems in our everyday lives
• Played Subtraction Bingo and Subtraction Bowling during math workshop
• Started our first few lessons on I Ready
• Read our just right books to our reading buddies
• Had a visit from the Stratham Volunteer Fire Department to learn about Fire Safety
• Continuing to build our reading stamina during Reader's Workshop

Here are some questions to promote school talk...

1) Can you tell me 3 important things you learned Fire Safety on Friday?
2) What was your favorite part of the Fire Safety centers?  Was it going on the firetruck? Was it seeing Sparky?  Was it seeing the firefighter dress up in his gear?

3) What happened to the bread in your science experiment?
4) Can you tell me how you played subtraction bowling?  Maybe you can show me how you played at home?

5) Can you show me how you tap out words? Can you tap out job, lick, sat, and flag for me?

6) Who was your partner that you played Subtraction Bingo with?

Have a nice weekend!

Megan Murphy

Starfish Gazette- October 10, 2017

Dear Starfish Families,

I hope you had a wonderful long weekend. It was nice to have that extra day of family time and getting things done around the house! For families that did not sign up for a fall parent teacher conference at open house, I will send home the available times this week and we can finalize our schedule.  I will send home a reminder of your date/time to each family as time gets closer.  I'm looking forward to sitting down with each of you to share the progress your child has been making in 1st grade.  

We had such a fun day on Friday with our Christopher Columbus Innovation STEM Day.  I hope you enjoyed the video clips and photos your child uploaded onto their SeeSaw account.  Thank you for the many bags of recycled materials for our boat creations.  We have almost 5 bags full of materials left over! We can't wait to use the recycled material for future hands-on projects. 

Our First Writer's Celebration


At the end of each writing unit, we try to find a way to celebrate our hard work and love for writing.  We had so much fun reading our Pigeon stories. We hope you enjoyed having your child read their story to you. We all had a chance to read our story to our classmates. The students' reading voices really brought their books to life!

We are on IReady
We took our first diagnostic assessment on our new web based math curriculum called I Ready.  The first day the whole class logged onto the Chromebooks but as the week continued, the kids started logging on during small group centers.This allows us to set lessons that are just right for your child during math workshop. We are excited to start using I Ready as a component of differentiated math learning in the Starfish Classroom.  A paper about signing on to I Ready at home will be in your child's blue folder this week!

What's New During Math Workshop:

          In Unit 2, your child is beginning to learn strategies for solving addition problems. Last week we did many math activities around building math addition fluency to 10.   

 Do Anytime Activities

1.     Count orally by 5’s and 10’s while riding in the car.  Occasionally count down, or back.

2.   Count numbers of objects around the house and while shopping.  Have your child keep track using tally marks. For example, count the number of doors in your house.

Flashlight Friday

During Reader's Workshop on Fridays we have introduced Flashlight Fridays.  This is a fun way to share books with our partners.  The kids can't wait to try reading by flashlight again this week!

Reader's Use Strategies to Solve Tricky Words

Can you believe these cute stuffed animals are helping us to solve tricky words?


Meet Lips the Fish who teaches us to look at the beginning sounds of words.


Meet Chunky the Monkey who teaches us for look for chunks or parts of words we know


Meet Eagle Eye who teaches us to look at the pictures to help us solve tricky words


Meet Skippy the Frog who teaches us to skip the tricky word to ask ourselves what would make sense in the sentence.


During our reading lessons and when conferencing with the kids individually, the Starfish are learning that word solving takes careful monitoring. We have been playing the game "Guess the Covered Word" by choosing a few words in our books, covering them with small sticky notes. The kids have been using a variety of strategies to guess the word. The starfish are discovering it sometimes takes a few strategies to figure out the word!

Creating our new writing folders

Thank you so much helping your child come up with writing ideas.  We decorated our writing folders on Friday and shared our story ideas in partnerships.  We are excited to write our stories across many pages!

Upcoming Important Dates
October 17-Field Trip to Coppal House Farm

• FIELD TRIP to Coppal House Farm October 17th-AM only
• Please pack a snack and drink from home

October 31- First Grade Fall Festival (More Information Coming Home Soon!)

If you would like to volunteer to help us from  9-11:40, that would be great! Please send me an email to let me know.  


STEM Challenges in the Classroom

Every Friday we are incorporating a STEM Challenge in our classroom.  The STEM challenges are helping to practice the components of a Growth Mindset in our classroom. It has become a favorite part of our week in the Starfish classroom.  

Some things to ask your child to promote school talk:

• Who is Eagle Eyes?
• Who is Lips the Fish?
• Who is Chunky the Monkey?
• What have you been doing during quiet time?
• Who do you like to sit next to during lunch?
• How are you building good habits as a reader?
• Can you tell me a number sentence that equals 10 like 5+5?
• Can you tell me about the count on strategy? Can you show me how you use it?
• Can you tell me about Flash Light Friday? Who did you read with?
• What have you been doing in Social Detectives?
• What's your favorite math game you have played this year?
• What did you do on the Chromebooks this week?

Have a great week,

Megan Murphy