It has been a wonderful first week back at school, thanks to your wonderful children. It has been a long time coming and I have really appreciated all of your support and well-wishes. I know it has been a struggle for some of the kids to have this transition at the beginning of the year, but it feels like we are bouncing back nicely and finding our rhythm.
We have continued our work at literacy and practicing our read-to-self and writing choices. We have been working up our stamina in both areas. We will be introducing word-work next week. This is a time when kids get to work on their sight words, which consist of the first 25, the next 50, the following 100, and the final 200 for first and second grade. The kids work through them all at their own pace, getting quizzed by friends and adults.
In first grade math we are working on the number line, learning our cuisenaire rods, math games, dot cluster cards, and addition facts. The kids are all working so hard! Ask your child about some of the motor challenges we do to help build our right and left brain connection. It has been a real treat getting to know your children as math learners. We started making our math journals as well. This is going to be where we do some of our work and where kids get to record their math thinking. I look forward to you seeing this and noticing what great thinking they are doing.
In Writer's Workshop we have begin to work on our first writing piece, titled "My favorite...". The kids all chose which favorite to write about (favorite vacation, food, sport, etc.). We talked about the writing process in general, in that while writing you should think about your handwriting, spelling, punctuation, and as writing as many words as possible. We'll be working on these skills as we go through the coming weeks and months.
We've also been talking about Rumney CARES and will be discussing it more next year and connecting these to our class norms. The kids have done a wonderful job talking and working on these. It takes time to gel, but these kids are doing a great job thus far.
Again, it has been a great start tot he year and I look forward to many more great days to come!
All the best,
Ben
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