Spelling, SNAP Words, and Goals! OH MY!

This afternoon you will find some exciting spelling stuff in your child's Leadership Binder! This week we will be working on our very first Spelling Principle - You can add a letter to the beginning of a little word you know to make a new word. In addition, each child has chosen three Snap Words to focus on this week. We will store our Spelling Principles at the very beginning of our binder. This week it looks like this:

We will have ten words that follow this principle on our Friday test.

You will also find FOUR pages of First Grade Snap Words in our Goal Setting section. At the beginning of the school year each child was assessed on these words to see which ones we know and which ones we still need to practice. Your child highlighted all the words they know today at school. PLEASE DO NOT HIGHLIGHT WORDS AT HOME. We will use these pages to keep track of our Snap Word mastery, choose weekly Snap Words, and SET GOALS! Speaking of setting goals...

Please talk with your child about the Snap Words he/she already knows and the three they have chosen to practice this week. Then, work together to create a REASONABLE Snap Word goal we can work towards for FIRST QUARTER. You do not need to worry about second, third, or fourth quarter goals. We will set Snap Word goals at the beginning of each new quarter!

Writing Museum!

Today we displayed all of our writing for a WRITING MUSEUM! It's always fun to read your friends' stories!

We Can Add A Letter To The Beginning Of Little Words We know!

Fabulous Friday!

Happy Friday Fantastic First Grade Families!

We had another amazing week in Room 21! With 16 days under our belt we are in routines, know expectations, and are SO close to digging into the real LEARNING of first grade. Next week our CSR, Mrs. Marting, will begin meeting with reading groups and shortly after that Miss Greteman will begin meeting with reading groups! 

These First Graders continue to be ROCKSTAR WRITERS! This week we started zooming in on our small moment stories. Instead of picking a watermelon idea like a whole entire vacation to Florida, we are choosing seed stories like finding a starfish on the beach. We also aren't afraid to spell tricky words like "eventually" and "Halloween" because we are learning spelling strategies! This week we've focused on STRETCHING through words. Ask your kiddo what tricky words they stretched through during Writer's Workshop this week! 

Today we met with our writing partners for the first time! Writing partners are an important tool during Writer's Workshop! They can help us through the writing process and keep us on track with our planning, writing, and revising. When we first meet with our writing partner, we need to do some STORYTELLING:

1. Partner 1 tells their story. 

2. Partner 2 listens and asks questions. 

3. Partner 1 tells their story again, saying MORE. 

4. Partners switch!

5. Partners write their stories!

Don't forget - if you do any reading over the weekend to mark it down in your Leadership Binder!

Terrific Tuesday!

Happy Tuesday Fantastic First Grade Families!

I hope everyone enjoyed the three day weekend! It sounds like lots of people squeezed in some final trips and pool time! :)

HOMEWORK:
We have officially started HOMEWORK in Room 21! Concord has set a school-wide goal of reading ONE MILLION minutes by the end of the year! To do our part, we will be reading 10+ minutes EVERY night to help reach that goal. You will find a light bulb recording sheet in the "Goal Setting" section of your child's Leadership Binder tonight. Please have your child color in one light bulb for every ten minutes read, then initial inside each light bulb. This is considered homework so please make it a priority each night! This nightly reading can include: reading to your child, your child reading to you, or your child reading independently.

SPELLING:
We are getting VERY close to officially starting Spelling in Room 21! This week we all have the same list of SNAP words that we will test over on Friday. You will find it in your child's Leadership Binder this afternoon. You may think, "These words are easy! My child already knows them!" and that's OK! This week we are focusing our brains on, "What does Spelling look like in our classroom?" opposed to "I am learning new words." We will spend this week getting familiar with word work choices (to practice spelling words) and being responsible for our list of words. Next week Spelling will become differentiated and we will start with our first principle!

Fantastic Friday!

Happy Friday Fantastic First Grade Families!

We had another wonderful week in Room 21! We're keeping track of reading, making goals, revising our writing, and so much more!

This week we began getting familiar with our sorting journals. Once Word Study begins and we are learning how words work and the principles of spelling, we will be doing A LOT of sorting. This week we sorted our classmates names, vowels and consonants, capitals and lowercase, and tall/short/hanging letters.

We have been learning about the good habits good readers have. We know that good readers take a sneak peek, do something at the end of a book, and READ READ READ! To help us keep track of our reading, we use our reading mat and post-it notes to set goals. When we get ready to read, we make a stack on our START side, then start reading our way through the stack. As we finish a book, we move it to our STOP AND START AGAIN side. If we finish all of our books, we start making our way through the stack again!

We learned another math center! Ask your kiddo how to play "In and Out!"

This week we learned a REALLY important saying in Writer's Workshop - "When you think you're done, you've just begun!" After we finish a story, we know that we need to REVISE. We can revise our story by rereading it from the beginning and making sure we've answered WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, and HOW so our reader knows ALL about our small moment! I bet we will come back on Tuesday with some more small moment story ideas!