Buon Giorno!

It has been a very busy couple of weeks with fall conferences, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with each of you.  I have met with about 3/4 of student families so far and I feel lucky to be working with such a supportive and caring group of people!

Our class had an amazing time studying owls the last couple of weeks.  The students were so invested and enthiastic about the topic that they wanted to write nonfiction books about everything they learned.  This activity was really student directed - they came up with the headings and got to pick and choose which pages and how many pages they wanted in their books.  I was blown away by their drive and eagerness to share what they had learned with others - it was very inspiring!  I hope that you enjoyed their books as much as I did!  As you can imagine, they were thrilled to have a teacher from Chewonki come to teach our class about owls.  They heard owl sounds, got to touch owl body parts (talons, wings, skull, beak, etc.), and saw three live owl up close and personal.  The presentation was unforgettable!

Here's a sneak peek into what our first graders have been up to:

• We added hola, shalom, gutten morgan, ohaiyo, and buon giorno to our list of greetings and learned how to greet someone with a pinky shake and butterfly shake.
• During read-alouds we have been working on gathering background knowledge.  When reading with your child at home, you might ask them, "What do you already know about this topic?" or "What do you know about ___ that might help you understand this characters problem?"
• We learned about plural words (adding s and es), months (they should be able to list all 12 months in order), and we are learning how to change the first letter in a word to make a new word.
• In handwriting, students have now learned and practiced all capital letters and we have moved onto the lowercase letters c, o, s, v, w, and t. 
• Our authors are now working on "zooming in" on one small moment and then stretching the story out with enough detail for the reader to understand and enjoy their story.  All of the writers in our room have made huge progress already this year!
• In math, we have continued to work on counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s and counting pennies and nickels.  Students are telling time to the hour and half-hour and have been learning strategies for solving addition and subtraction number models.  We also did some work with patterns and even and odd numbers. 
• We started a new unit on balance and motion this week.  Ask your child how they balanced a crayfish on their finger!

I hope that everyone had a great Halloween!  Thank you for not sending in too much candy with your child!  Hopefully everyone gets lots of rest this weekend, since the excitement and candy overload from Monday has led to lots of belly aches and headaches during the school day this week!